IIM is where I belong to . (really ???)

Never in my life I've felt more cheated, except for may be when the BCCI announced that its a private body and not actually INDIAN and from that very day, I never had same interest in watching Cricket.

IIM, 3 characters which when pronounced together make a lot of eyes glitter. Cracking "CAT" has been considered as a proof of intelligence, perseverance and common-sense. So much so that the people who couldn't get a call from an IIM, were able to secure admission into the world's best Management Institutes like Insead, wharton, LBS etc. They attracted the best minds of the country (and arguably some of best of the world).

Lesser mortals like us, who had not been to these coveted Institutes always thought the people who would be teaching these extra-ordinarily intelligent people must be oozing with talent, common-sense, innovation and confidence. These institutes named as "Indian Institute(s) of Management" were thought of as proud possessions of a emotional country much like IITs , Sachin Tendulkar and Lata mangeshkar.

But then, very unlike the later three, IIMs probably didn't think the same way, with the passage of time they realized that " They are getting the best in India anyways" so its time to do some-thing else. They further realized that they don't feature in the top global B-Schools ranking, and the only reason for this is they don't have a campus outside India(how intelligent of them), and they thought about opening a new campus out-side India and that with-out Government help and these are the same IIMs which lack faculties and funds and have to increase their fees beyond reasonable limits to compensate for it, and I am not sure where else one can find an example where a government (or so we believe) institute takes more fees than its private counter-parts.

And this isn't enough, since the IIMs wanted to be 'like' their international counterparts, they decided to go for profile based selection, and that in such a way that even if one scores a 100 percentile in CAT, one may not have a call from the IIM(s) of one's choice, it doesn't even matter if he/she is a district topper from a state board(like bihar or UP). Some-one who is rank 10 in his/her school in a ICSE board school in a metro(say Mumbai) will have added advantage over some-one who is from a village (in say U.P), who was the district topper and that while he helped his old father in fields and earning bread, justice !!! Right.....

And as if this was not all, they decided to take another step towards getting global, they decided to conduct CAT online, citing rising number of students as the major reason. Whereas IIT-JEE which has higher number of applicants and AIEEE which has much more higher number of applicants continue to be paper based examinations, and this in a country where more than 60 % population lives in villages.

The infamy that has been in store for the IIMs regarding tender distribution for Computer Based Test and then the organization of the entrance exam itself is some-thing about which saying something will be like showing a knife to the devil.

The questions which haunt me now are

* What is more important ? Global recognition and a position in Top B-schools rankings, or imparting management education to the most deserving candidates in a fair and un-biased way.

* Does IIMs even consider themselves as "Indian Institutes of Management", or do they consider themselves as just another B-School for which name, fame and money are more important than anything else ?

* Are the following points justified.
==> "even a 100 percentiler not getting a call from an IIM". (and please don't give the reason that its same in GMAT)
==> The same IIMs which justify increasing fees, because of lack of funds and not mentoring new IIMs because of lack of faculty have enough money and faculty to open new IIM campuses abroad and that with-out government funds.
==> CAT going online, even though it anyways favored the tech-savvy English speaking population over others, and justifying it for increasing number of aspirants when more than 3 times students sit for AIEEE which is a paper based test.
==> Denying details of how and why the tender was given to one particular company, and if it was really because that company has vast experience than how come this fiasco.
==> How can the director of an IIM say something like " this is part of the game" when some students who have toiled hard for these 135 minutes don't get a level-field to play the game ?
==> 14 % students have been directly affected by this fiasco and director of another IIM declares that first administration of CAT has been successful.5


and this is when we are not even talking about all the funny details about Hardware incompatibility / virus attack / extra load etc as if they were not even expected and came out of blue, when they had prepared themselves with the best possible security....

To sum it all in a few words I would like to quote Munira Lokhandwala an IIM alumni.

"If I would have known this in 1996 when I applied to the IIMs I would have thought twice before learning any management from them."

P.S -> If even an ardent IIM-fan like me is thinking in this direction, I am not sure that IIMs will continue to attract the best in the country any-more as a friends tag on my g-talk list says "XAT authorities are happy, they will have a better batch than IIMs this time".