I seriously doubt if Pratap Bhanu Mehta will get a response from any of the “respected heads of IIMs” to his letter (‘Lessons in Unreason’, IE, April 25). Therefore, as one who came pretty close to being one — having been offered the opportunity of being considered (and having respectfully and in retrospect fortunately declined) for appointment as director of IIM, Ahmedabad, I think a response from me can possibly be the closest to one.

He was being generous in referring to the IIMs as the “mightiest institutions” in India. There are no mighty institutions left in India, and while the “terse one-line order issued by a joint secretary of the Government of India” was the final straw, the bringing down of IIMs “to their knees” was the culmination of a process that began several years ago.

It was in 1990-91 when, in the flush of liberalisation, the government froze grants to the IIMs at the then prevalent levels and asked them to become self-sufficient. The government offered to match the savings these institutions made out of their sanctioned grants, as a contribution to a corpus fund. IIM-Ahmedabad started saving and asking the government for matching contributions. The government made matching contributions for a couple of years but stopped pretty soon.

After this, several factors seemed to have come together. As the corpus and reputation of the institute grew, its capacity to raise money on its own grew, the grip of the politician-bureaucratic combine on business and industry (including the public sector) started loosening due to liberalisation, and the admissions to the institute continued to be completely tamper-proof, the combine decided to look for ways to clip its wings. The mechanism for this which came to be chosen was the process of appointment for the chairperson of the Board of Governors (BoG) and of the director.

... contd.