The leadership storm brewing in IIM-Calcutta
Dear Srikrishna Thank you for reading the article and for your comments. At The Ken, we value both sides of the story equally. That's why questions seeking clarifications were sent much in advance to the Director as well as three members of the Board, whose names had come up consistently while reporting. We also reached out to IIM-C students to figure out whether they has experienced any kind of change within the institute. But as I'm sure you understand, these type of decline in academic standards, culture change or research is only felt over years. Still, the sharp stop in both faculty hiring and research output was something that we thought was pertinent to bring out. We presented the reporting we could gather. I specifically don't understand the implication here: "Many of us who have had long corporate careers know that the way organizations or even governments function today is vastly different from what it was twenty years ago. So why should it be any different for an academic institution?" Are you saying that IIM-C should be less democratic in its functioning, to mirror the zeitgeist? If so, that's not a conclusion that we can draw as journalists. We can only present facts, and leave it up to the reader to decipher if this is a good or bad thing. If the vision indeed was to centralise control--for good reason--it would hopefully come through the Director's responses. Which unfortunately did not come despite repeated attempts. If and when the IIM-C administration chooses to respond, we will be happy to update the story.