A cut above the rest
Chairman of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, and software icon N R Narayana Murthy is justified in flaying the government order to lower fees in premier management institutions.
The Human Resource and Development (HR&D) Ministry had recently ordered that the annual fee for IIM students be slashed from Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 30,000. Narayana Murthy has rightly described the step as "retrograde" and "ill-advised".
On the contrary, all IIMs, IITs and RECs in the country should double their fees to attract the best faculty, stock up its libraries with the latest case studies and develop new curriculum.
The ministry has no business in these areas other than to ensure unhindered support for poor, young intellectuals seeking admission into these institutions.
The students should have special privileges like default issuance of valid documents like income-tax number, 100 per cent best-rated nationalised bank term loan papers, stipulated clause endorsement on passport without any sort of collaterals and guarantees at the time of admission itself.
This arrangement will help not only poor students but also students who don’t want to depend on their family. The logic here is that students passing out from these institutes ensure a minimum package Rs 3,00,000 at the campus much before completion of the course and hence have zero issue of repaying capacity.
These documents are sufficient to ensure repayment and compulsory filing of I-T returns irrespective of their further studies or employment status.
Mr Rao of IIM, in his statement on reforms including the fee structure of self-finance institutions, is very sensible. As it is employment is uncertain for these students after they complete the course. At the same time, the government cannot penalise the managements. It must look to heavily subsidise these self-finance institutions.
Let us not go into the source of funds for creating these institutions’ infrastructure or whether there is involvement of politicians and mafias in the process. What is clear is that the governments have failed in their primary responsibilities for the past 10 years when over 1,000-odd self-finance institutions have come up.
It is time for the HR&D Ministry to balance its act of uplifting the poor and ensuring the smooth running of premier institutions to help youths graduate as professionals. It is the responsibility of senior institutions like IIMs, IITs, RECs to be generous and provide affiliation to many second-line institutions.
India has a huge market for students and everybody wants a finger in the pie.
Mani Thirumurthy
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