Irked by IIM-Ahmedabad’s ‘superior’ attitude towards mentoring India’s 10th Indian Institute of Management (IIM), the Union HRD Ministry has decided to drop it from its new IIM mentoring plan. IIM-Udaipur in Rajasthan, which was to be mentored by IIM-A, will now be mentored by IIM-Indore.
Highly placed sources in the ministry said IIM-A had offered to monitor the institute only after a director is appointed to IIM-Udaipur and its faculty recruited, would it ‘mentor’ the institute. The mentoring as offered by IIM-A would largely be limited to leadership training of faculty to run the new institute. This “superior attitude” of IIM-A is said to have miffed the ministry which was looking at IIM-A to guide IIM-Udaipur from the scratch and raise it much like the older IITs had done with the new ones set up over the past two years. After a few rounds of discussions between IIM-A and the ministry, the latter decided to turn to another IIM for the mentoring.
The two new IIMs at Udaipur and Kashipur (Uttarakhand) are expected to begin their first academic session this year itself and their directors are set to be appointed.
“The HRD Ministry asked IIM-Indore to help mentor IIM-Udaipur sometime last week. We will help in whatever way we can. We have already helped with IIM-Raipur and whatever little experience we have, we will share with Udaipur which is expected to start its first academic session in June this year,” Prof N Ravichandran, Director IIM-Indore said.
He, however, refused to comment on how IIM-Indore suddenly came into the picture.
Prof Samir Barua, Director of IIM-A, however, told The Indian Express that the country’s oldest B-school had “never said no” to mentoring IIM-Udaipur. “We wanted to follow a process that we believed was the best way to mentor an institute, which the ministry may not have agreed to. But we never said no.”
Barua, however, maintained that he would not like to comment on the “superior attitude” allegation, adding that the institute’s rationale was “based completely on choice of process”.
Unlike the IITs, older IIMs have not been enthused about the idea of being made to mentor the new ones, citing limited faculty and resources.
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