Whew....!!! what a season and as though the heat wasn't enough, the inanities just don't stop. Jairam Ramesh opens his mouth wide open and this time tells us another truism. This alumnus of IIT-B who was honoured by their faculty in 2001 as their "Distinguished Alumnus", spilled the beans, the truth about their faculty yesterday. Reputed for his loud mouth and cavalier indifference to time and circumstance (for eg. his criticism of the Indian Home Ministry and fellow Chidambaram in a public forum at Beijing as being paranoid about China) he sometimes tells us the truth that we already know.
"There is hardly any research happening in IITs or IIMs. The faculty in these institutes are not world class. It is the students which are setting the high standards in these institutes" he declaimed deafeningly!!! Now this could mean of several things, that in the other places in the country there are neither world class faculty nor students. If the bulk of the country are anyway not IIT/IIM then the country doesn't exactly shine the way his forehead does; and if despite that the country is growing, it must be in spite of his government and their wisecracks. An alternative reading of the statement is that if institutions are privatised rather than be governmental setups, it would foster world "classness". Obviously he doesn't see the wholesale thuggery of privatised engineering and MBA schools started by his politician ilk, even in his home state of Andhra and Karnataka. To add insult to injury he thinks that a centre of "Marine Diversity" sponsored by Relaince Industries will show us the way of world class institutions. And when was the last time I heard of Reliance's world class institutions? I guess Jairam Ramesh refers to Nita Ambani's pet Dhirubhai Ambani International School. And a politician in collusion with the Ambanis; it is difficult to establish, which side is the more villainous.
Now the stupidity of all this is that some of the IIM faculty have started protesting and giving the media some entertainment. Now would we even remember when was the last time we even read the contents page of the IIMA journal Vikalpa (assuming that we might browse through the contents of an HBR-knowing full well that some of us are reading challenged). I don't think it is very wrong to assume that the top business schools have merited largely because of supply far far outstripping the demand. Where on earth will you have 3,00,000 people applying for less than 1000 seats as is the case with the IIMs. Now under such an acute shortage of "world classness" there would be several private schools who rush to fill the gap and they claim to be the top 20; not out of merit, but given the relative absence of standards with competition. With such a ratio would you be surprised that Jairam tells us only truisms that he usually does with "Kautilyan" aplomb? Indeed he might protest and say but 'I have had a distinguished career from Carnegie Mellon and MIT (Massachusetts)and know what I am talking about'. Well if he did know what ails it he has done precious little than be an arbitrary Green broker running with the hares and hunting with the hounds.
When you wish to create world class institutions then you need to attract talent not by paying faculty monkey nuts and bank on their sense of patriotism and service. Research in India in business or engineering is dead (maybe was stillborn). Privatisation has caused the rot even worse than the stench of government institutions (which business school we know has broken the mould?- ISB probably by a long long shot). But the way forward is ironically even more privatisation. The government has no business in higher education and must focus their energies on literacy, a promise well past their deadlines by several decades. Until then lets recite Hanuman Chalisa to save ourselves from Jairam.
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