The report of the IIM Review Committee is finally out. If this were a student report it would get an A on “describing the current problems”, a C on all the sections they call “our analysis” — a C and not a D because some of the arguments made in the analysis are brilliantly tautological. As we tell our IIM students, if the analysis gets a D, don’t even bother checking your grade on “quality of recommendations” — even if they make sense by some fluke, please go back and do your analysis-diagnosis again, with more rigour and depth. On integrity and intent, this report gets a straight F. The key thrust of the recommendation is that the boards governing the IIMs be configured in such a way that the government gets more control, and then be given greater decision making powers than they currently have. What is more, the report says, very early on, in a gratingly obsequious manner, “Government is to be congratulated for allowing IIMs absolute academic freedom. Admissions to the PGP programme are purely on merit and both Government and the IIMs are to be congratulated for this”. Why should anyone have to congratulate the Government for not messing around in areas where they have no mandate (refer to the MOA), and no expertise?

This report can make a terrific case study or student assignment for a course on corporate or institutional governance — because it makes the need for better governance to drive excellence, as the centre piece of its recommendations, but is conceptually limited in its understanding of what governance is. “Long term excellence of any institution is closely correlated to the quality of governance “, it says. Cannot argue with that at all. But the definition of governance articulated in the report and used to guide all recommendations, is: “Good governance requires that all involved should have clarity of roles and powers to execute the allocated tasks & accountability for the results”. If that is the necessary and sufficient condition for good governance, even the most mismanaged PSUs or the most crony boards have exemplary governance. Everyone knows who has the authority to take which decisions, and there is total clarity around it, as is the clarity for who takes the flak when it is results time.

... contd.