IIM professors retort to Ramesh’s comments

Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s remarks that faculty of the premier IITs and IIMs are “not world class” on Tuesday prompted a retort from the teachers who termed them as “simplistic” which showed “tremendous ignorance.”

Mr. Ramesh kicked up a controversy on Monday by claiming that the faculty of the IITs and IIMs are “not world class” but said these institutions are “excellent” because of the quality of students.

“It shows that Jairam Ramesh has shown tremendous ignorance about the intellectual capabilities of these institutions. I would not deny the fact that these institutions needs to do much more,” said Anil Gupta, a Professor with IIM-Ahmedabad.

However, he said, it was not right to say that the faculty was not contributing.

“But to say that faculty is not making any contribution and it is just because of the quality of students... then people should take the CAT scores and give job to them. Why do not the companies give jobs on the basis of CAT scores?” he questioned.

Sebastian Morris, another professor at IIM-A, said Mr. Ramesh’s remarks were “simplistic.”

“If you look at it, a fairly significant part of the faculty in IIMs and IITs would be having same qualification and same background as the faculty in the top class institutions, which means they have done their PhDs abroad,” he said.

Mr. Ramesh had also said there was hardly any worthwhile research from these institutes.