Believe it or not, three-member R C Bhargava committee report has revealed that the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have not been fair to every meritorious candidate. High fees and scholarship rules that vary from one IIM to the next have kept deserving candidates out, reports the Times of India

“Each board member feels that education at the IIMs must be ‘means-blind’, which means that anyone with the required qualifications must not be denied admission due to non-availability of means. The IIMs have not been following that entirely.” says Mr. Bhargava

The committee has recommended “further improvement”, added Bhargava, in the IIMs’ schemes for scholarships, fellowships, freeships and other forms of financial assistance given to students. The panel pointed out that the upper-limit of a family’s total income to make a student eligible for a scholarship varies from one IIM to the next. However, on the contentious issue of fees, panel members felt that the decisions “must be left to each IIM board”, which is the policy followed currently.

Apart from defaulting on a fair admission policy, the three-member review committee, which visited the IIMs and submitted a report to the Union HRD ministry, found that several recommendations suggested by previous panels remained only on paper. The earlier panels were the H P Nanda IIM review committee (of 1979) and V Kurien’s second IIM review (1991). >> read complete news