In an exclusive interview, IIMA director Samir Barua says the Centre wants to keep IIMs free from govt interference.
The meeting of IIM directors with Union minister of human resource development, Kapil Sibal, held in New Delhi recently helped clear the air over many contentious issues that threatened to pit the premier B-schools against the Central government. The most thorny of these issues are centred on the B-schools’ demand for greater autonomy.
The director of IIM-Ahmedabad, Prof Samir Barua, is satisfied with the talks he and the other IIM directors had with the Union HRD minister. Barua told DNA that he sensed an openness to new ideas in Sibal which, sadly, was missing in his predecessors. “The HRD minister is willing to listen to what we have to say, to engage in dialogue,” Barua said. “It is a change, and we like it very much.”
The IIMs have long felt that they need greater autonomy to give their best, especially now when foreign B-schools are expected to set up shop in India after Parliament passes the Foreign Universities Bill. In an article he had written for DNA earlier , Barua had highlighted why the IIMs should be given the freedom to offer salary packages on a par with those offered by international B-schools.
At the meeting, the IIM directors had discussed with Sibal their most pressing worries regarding the future of the institutes. Their chief concerns were: the institutes’ inability to attract the best faculty because of financial constraints; lack of international exposure because they have no campuses abroad; and red tape posing problems in the appointment of the IIMs’ board of governors, chairman and directors. Sibal gave each of these concerns serious attention and seems to have addressed most of them satisfactorily.
Campuses abroad
Barua said the HRD minister was willing to consider the proposal that the IIMs should be allowed to open campuses abroad. However, a final decision in the matter has not been taken yet. “The minister is willing to consider expansion abroad,” Barua said. “In fact, he said: ‘If we have something nice, why shouldn’t we allow it to go abroad?
It will be a feather in India’s cap’.” Incidentally, earlier, when IIM-Bangalore had first proposed that it be allowed to set up a campus in Singapore, the proposal was greeted with hostility and the institute had to eventually shelve its plans.
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