IIM-Ahmedabad professors question Jairam Ramesh’s view

The email inboxes of faculty members of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) turned into a discussion forum on Tuesday. The subject was the statement made by environment minister Jairam Ramesh that IIMs and IITs have earned their reputation because of their students and do not have world-class faculty.  

The exchange of ideas heated up soon after senior faculty member of IIM-A, Prof Anil Gupta, shot out an email to all his colleagues and received instant responses from them. When DNA spoke to faculty members at the IIMs in Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Kolkata, some said they do not have time to think about Ramesh's comment and would rather focus on academic sessions and research. A few believed he is hogging limelight by making such statement while a few agreed with his view of lack of world-class faculty and research.

An email doing the rounds of the faculty circuit argues that faculty shortage has nothing to do with quality research. It points out that the reputation of excellence of IIMs and IITs is not only because of good students. If so, companies would directly hire students after the CAT scores were out and train them internally, argues the mail.

"A good artisan doesn't blame his tools. He (Jairam Ramesh) has crossed the limit. It's a challenge to teach students who are sharp and bright. Some of our best research institutions are government-run. He should not berate these institutions but rather look towards making them even more effective," said professor  Gupta.

Another faculty member of IIM-A, professor Sebastian Morris, was Ramesh's junior at IIT-Bombay. He invites Ramesh for a serious debate. "If only good students have made IITs and IIMs what they are today then why don't recruiting agencies offer jobs directly to those who score well in JEE and CAT. Surely, organisations can do without the training that these "mundane" institutions provide," he said. 

Professor Morris believes there is a contradiction in the minister's statement. "If indeed the majority of the faculty have such pedigree (are from IIMs, IITs or foreign universities) then by Jairam's own admission of the students being good the faculty (at least as individuals) should be excellent. If they are not as a group, then the ecosystem is to be blamed. And surely the ecosystem is in the main determined by the government and its actions and policies. Similarly, the ecosystem gets the blame when we realise that faculty sourced from among the best institutions in the west are unable to be as productive here as they would have been there," he said. 

"I think if Jairam can answer why India's PSUs are not world-class then he would understand why IIMs and IITs may not be in the same rank as the MITs and Stanfords. The answer is interference where control is sought by government over operational decisions without the realisation that thereby control in terms of the primary task is lost.

After all there cannot be accountability without autonomy. So BHEL despite having two decades lead over Shanghai Electric is unable to reach world-class and IOC can never match up to Petronas," argued professor Morris.  Dean of programme initiatives at IIM-Kolkata, Sougata Ray said, "I fail to understand why we give so much importance to a statement passed by someone not associated with the education field? It is the job of certain people to pass comments on prestigious institutes and people of the country so as to hog the limelight and I suppose Mr Ramesh has done just that."