Madam Chairperson, I thank you for giving me this opportunity.

          I would like to thank the Minister for his eloquent introduction of this Bill. On the face of it, as he said, the Indian Institutes of Management Bill is a fairly routine one and he has presented it in a very unexceptionable light, but I do have some concerns which I would like to share with him.

First of all, the legislation brings to the fore certain larger issues involved in our Government’s approach to the higher education sector and secondly, of course, there are specifics on the Bill that I would also like to address. The larger point is that we have in our country, a potential demographic dividend because of our youthful population, but it is very clear that if we do not revitalize our education sector, particularly the higher education sector, this demographic dividend potentially will transform into a demographic disaster. If we cannot train, educate, equip our young people to take advantage of the opportunities that the world economy and the national economy will offer them in the 21^st century, then we will actually end up with a lot of frustrated unemployed or under-employed young people. We have seen the consequences of that in our tribal areas with the Maoist movement, the naxalite movement and we do not want to see that kind of a negative consequence amongst our youth at large in our country.

I do fear that this seems not to have been given the importance that it deserves by our Government. I am not blaming my friend, the HRD Minister. The problem lies at heart in this Government’s inability or unwillingness to provide the necessary resources required to be able to drive our higher education sector towards the demographic dividend. If we were to look, for example, at the specific case of the IIMs, they were created many years ago very much as an earnest of the State’s determination to equip, train our bright young people to contribute towards their future by equipping them with management qualifications which were earlier unknown in our country. Management education has been around for 100 years or more in countries like America, but in our country, it really started with the IIMs.

What is striking is that instead of investing in our future through strengthening our higher education, what have we seen in the share of budgetary outlay towards education? In the most recent Budget, it was stagnant at only 3.7 per cent and only a meagre 1.5 per cent has been allocated to higher education altogether, even though the need has risen year after year, the population is growing year after year and inflation is also reducing the value of the amounts year after year.  The Standing Committee Report in March this year, which discussed the Demands for Grants of the Department of Higher Education, made very strong and pertinent observations and noted that though the Government claims to have increased the expenditure for IIMs and IITs, these institutions have been dealing with a chronic shortage of resources and funds that deters them from competing with the global institutions against which we must benchmark institutions like the IIMs. Only three of our IIMs feature in the list of Top-100 Management Schools in the world as per 2017 Financial Times’ ranking.

Considering the quality of students that we get in the IIMs - we have very rigorous selection procedures in place in our country and strong competitive examinations - I must say that we are failing our young minds if we cannot offer them access to the best universities of the world in our country. There are young men and women who have to go out and compete with the world where in a globalising economy, Indian companies also hold their own with multinational corporations and against the best that the world has to offer. Why can we not offer them the best or even better educational facilities than are available in some of these western countries? I believe that having only three out of 100 is a travesty, and I think that it reveals that the Government is not doing enough to bolster their development.

Now, the Government is proud to announce that it has created another institution of national importance. I welcome and applaud that, but the expenditure of the Government towards higher education in real terms is coming down, and in nominal terms it is increasing very modestly. I think that it is 2 per cent in the last couple of years.

Now, when you have an institution of national importance, it must also be an institution of budgetary importance. But where is the budgetary importance that has been given? I think that my good friend, the HRD Minister, is not getting the support that he deserves from the Finance Ministry and it seems to me that for the Government to make understandably very ambitious claims about its efforts, these have to be matched with suitable budgetary allocations. I can see my friend, the Minister for Women and Child Development, has the same problem. This emphasis on fiscal rectitude is all very well, but not at the cost of the nation’s objectives and priorities.

In fact, if I can just return to the HRD Ministry, having worked there myself for a brief period, if we see how the Government’s budgetary priorities are functioning with the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), I know that it is not connected to the IIMs directly, but it reflects a larger problem that in the name of fiscal probity and controls you are starving the one thing that we have all created, that is, to          promote excellence, equity and access to institutions of higher education in the States. We had hoped to upgrade those poor Universities through the RUSA, but by March of this year only 46 per cent of the total Central share of RUSA expenditure has been released and only 24 per cent has been utilised.

My worry is that this shows either a lack of intent or a lack of monitoring of implementation or both, and I want to draw the Minister’s attention to this issue. We have a similar problem when it comes to teachers in higher education. The Government launched the Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission on Teachers and Training, which is supposed to strengthen the creation and training of teachers in our educational institutions. But what do we see? There is no progress in the establishment of Centres in the Universities, and a tiny fraction of the fund has been utilised since 2014.

In fact, coming back to the IIMs, let us look at the vacancies. Just recently, this very month, the Minister of State in HRD responded to an hon. MP’s question about vacancies in teaching positions and he stated that 26 per cent of faculty posts in the IIMs and 35 per cent of faculty in the IITs are lying vacant. Now, the race to create more institutions in numbers, which is definitely necessitated by our population growth, must not overshadow the aspects of quality of education. We cannot make up in mindless numbers the glaring lack of quality in higher education in India, but for quality we need resources; we need money; we need facilities; and we need faculty. This is where I am sorry to say that the Government is collectively lacking.

The Government has also delayed the implementation of the Higher Education Financing Agency. How many years have we been hearing about this from the hon. Minister and we have actually not seen the establishment of this Agency? If we really want to have an effective higher education sector for our youth, then the Government has to be more innovative in its approach.

We can have slogans, but those slogans must be fulfilled in reality and that is not happening. The multi-pronged malaises have really held the Universities of India back from realising the aspirations of our young people, and I think that only a vision that goes beyond superficial change and that goes beyond slogans to real tangible action will work.

Now, let me come to the specifics of the Bill. I want to agree entirely with the Minister that brand ‘IIM’ has truly come into its own and it is synonymous with the world-class management education with a distinctively Indian flavour. Even though, only 3 of those IIMs have made it to top 100, those 3 are, I think, a revelation of what the rest could be like. After all, the story of our country’s economic resurgence would be incomplete without acknowledging the critical role collectively played by the IIMs in providing our country with an amazingly talented, motivated and highly successful pool of managers who have gone on in many ways to transform every area of our society and our economy with their exceptional leadership. It is because they have done that and because we all have come across very distinguished IIM alumni and the difference they made to India, I also want to affirm that in my view, they have realised the hopes and vision of the man who established the IIMs – Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru – who had the vision to realise that India needed management education and brought it into this country. As in many other areas of our nation-building, we must pay homage to his far-sightedness in realising that if India is to meet its Tryst with Destiny, India would need world class leaders for business and industry as well.

          Now, let me turn to the specifics of the Bill because while applauding many good things about it, I do want to acknowledge that it is clearly an improvement on the earlier draft that was circulated by the Minister’s predecessor. That had been assailed by various legitimate controversies. I congratulate the Government on having been able to move past those issues and to come up with a very far-reaching Bill. I want to really congratulate Shri Javadekar Sahib because there is a significant degree of autonomy conceded for the first time. I think, it is really a remarkable moment when a Government Minister in our system actually surrenders powers and says, “please have more autonomy.” Many of us have been clamouring for this for some time. I want to congratulate the hon. Minister that he has taken this step. Though I support this thrust, I must say that I have some concerns.

          He has already summarised the Bill – Institutions of National Importance. One thing that is very striking is that the post of Visitor is abolished. The Visitor of these IIMs was the Rashtrapati. It is perhaps a slightly surprising welcome to our new Rashtrapati that he is being stripped of a function as soon as he takes over. But, Shri Javadekar Sahib will be answerable for that. It may be an odd welcome but nonetheless the result of this is that the Board of Governors has a lot more authority. They will select the Chairperson; they will select the Director; and neither the Rashtrapatiji nor the Human Resources Development Minister will now have a role in the selection of the top executives of these IIMs. I think, relinquishing Government control is an example that I am very glad he has set through the IIMs. I hope he will follow it in other institutions and create more autonomy for good, higher universities and institutions. May I request him in the Cabinet to encourage his colleagues in other Ministries to start doing the same thing? We really need to see some of this control and over regulation being moved aside.

One particular feature, I want to congratulate the Minister for is that he has insisted that the Board shall comprise three women members. It is absolutely necessary. And five alumni, which is a very good thing. Those who are proud of being educated in these institutions will have an influence in how successive generations are also educated. It is an excellent idea. The Annual Report of IIMs will be tabled in our Parliament. The C&AG will audit their accounts. All of this is good because then we too can ask questions and do some oversight when we see the Report.

The Coordination Forum is an interesting initiative. We had contemplated this in our time. I must say that you have taken a bold step that you are not the Chair, Mr. Minister but you have left it to an eminent person chosen by the Board to Chair the Coordinating Committee. I want to welcome all of these features. Where do I have some problems?

The first issue is that the Bill is completely silent on the issue of – I have just five issues – reservation in teaching staff particularly. I have already mentioned about the 26 per cent vacancies in teaching staff and faculties. On top of that, you do not say anything about reservations for people in the faculty positions. I know that my good friend the hon. Minister has stated that the law of the land will always apply. But, I do not find a satisfactory mention of this in the Bill. Earlier, there was a specific provision. Today, it is no longer there. What is interesting is that there is a very vague language saying that IIMs shall try to recruit teachers from the weaker sections of society. I do not understand as to why as in the previous provision, it could not be explicitly stated as a requirement in the Bill. What is particularly worrying is that of the 233 faculty members in the six IIMs that we have information for, only two belong to the Scheduled Caste Community and none from the Scheduled Tribe Community.

Now we are living in an era where more and more of our Scheduled Caste brothers and sisters are speaking of entrepreneurship as the way out of their lot in life. Dalit entrepreneurship is a major theme in recent years. And I think it is a worrying neglect of the legitimate aspirations for business leadership and business development on the part of our Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities that we have only two, amongst all of them, out of 233 faculty members. I would urge the Minister to give this attention.

The second issue that the House must contemplate is a consequence of a good decision. The decision to give all 20 IIMs in the country the right to award degrees is welcome and I support it. Prior to this, IIMs like other universities used to offer something called a Post-graduate Diploma in Management which obviously was not universally accepted as an MBA, particularly in many foreign countries. If IIMs give MBA degrees, which now they are going to be allowed to, that will be very good. But it will now create a difference between the IIMs and all the other private and semi-private institutions of management which are still stuck with giving PGDMs.

The Minister sahab has got to be aware that creating a new differential is not going to help the challenge of educating the large number of young people in our country who need management degrees. And it will be an unnecessary disadvantage placed upon these other institutions. Therefore, I propose that the Government in its next step should have a more ambitious Management Education Bill so that other management institutions can benefit from these reforms, create a National Management University to which they could all be affiliated and which can issue MBAs as well so that it is not only the IIMs giving MBAs as a result of today’s Bill but other management institutions can also do so.

Singapore did something very similar with the Singapore Management University. It has been a huge success, improved management education in the country but has also gone very far in terms of global recognition.

The third issue, Madam. The complete control of the Board that has been granted by this Bill over the fee structure worries me a little bit. I completely advocate autonomy of the university in other matters, IIMs and so on. But a lack of control of the Government over the quantum of fees may lead to disadvantages for the marginalised sections in our society.

The needs of the nation could not be properly met if students from poorer families would have to undertake the burden of very heavy loans just to be able to study in a government institution, which is what the IIM is. They would then feel obliged to look for lucrative jobs in the business sector, they would not necessarily try and work back to their communities, and the chances of such an IIM graduate burdened with loans pursuing academics or research or even teaching in future IIMs would not be there. Therefore, I think it would defeat the purpose of the Bill if there was not some way in which we could retain some control.

Fourth concern is lack of full-time Directors in the IIMs. In November 2016 the Minister has told us that 13 of the 20 IIMs are functioning without full-time Directors. The Government has failed to fill up these vacancies consistently, and this is creating a vacuum of leadership in the IIMs.

Then there are two small provisions which I want to mention. One is your changing the name of IIM Calcutta to IIM Kolkata in this Bill. Actually I am a little worried about the erosion of the brand value of IIM-C as a term. But equally, I come from Kerala and we already have an IIM-K in IIM Kozhikode. How can you have two IIM-Ks?  You will actually undermine the identity of both. I think this requires a rethink, and you might want to leave IIM Calcutta as Calcutta or call it IIM Kolkata but let it be known as IIM-C because that is a very distinctive brand.

Finally, a rather petty thing has been done, Madam Chairman, in this Bill. With great regret I want to mention that the Government has decided to drop the prefix Rajiv Gandhi from the name of IIM Shillong. This is symptomatic of a pattern of attempting to demolish traditions and erase history. Of course, Rajiv Gandhi’s contribution to this country is something that does not need one name here or there to justify it. He has done a great deal to take India into the 21^st century. But I must say it is rather petty of the Government to stoop so low in such a manner.

To conclude, Madam, management education is extremely important in our country. These institutions have actually done a great deal for India. They have driven our nation forward. Many of the IIM products will hold key positions in our economy, in our society. Therefore, I hope that the Government will actually see this Bill as an opportunity to bolster the potential of these institutes, address these flaws, and give India the management leaders that it deserves.

Thank you, Madam. Jai Hind!