ThoughtfulChaos

I agree. Lets give Andy a chance. We are all ears Andy (if you have anything more to say)

Hi Anonymous,

Nice of you to come and comment here. I would have usually not answered this since all that you ask has already been answered a zillion times elsewhere but something makes me want to answer this. So here goes...

The first exception I take to your comment is the fact that you have chosen to ask questions that are convenient to you and ignored issues that are not. You have taken a very limited perspective of the entire issue and I find your queries and statements very shortsighted.

"I fail to understand the audacity by which you guys are spoiling the name of a prestigious institute"
You should have realized by now that this is a PR disaster of IIPM's own making. I have said this many times and I will say it once again: the easiest and most sensible way for IIPM to have tackled this was to provide hard facts that refute the allegations made in the JAMMAG article. Is that so hard to do? Till date all IIPM has been doing is shooting off legal notices (which btw are hilarious and ridiculous), threatening bloggers and claiming compensation for ridiculous amounts of money. Any defense of the claims till now have been by IIPM students and not by the management. After all an official release from the management sounds a thousand times more credible than scattered comments by students.

"it’s the students studying there whose future is being ruined cos of your egoism"
It is my humble opinion that IIPM is a sham institute. I would rather have the issue made public so that thousands of students who would have joined it in the coming years do not do so thereby saving their time and money. The allegation that you make should be directed at your management and so-called pigheaded students union for doing stupid things not once, not twice but again and again. I recommend that you try and talk to your management and Students Union. I sincerely feel that your wellbeing and future are not their priorities.

"I understand the fact tht the legal notice thing was imprudent , but it was done by some whimsical fanatic and not by IIPM"
Imprudent would be a gross understatement. The qualifiers I would use are threatening, intimidating, hilarious, ridiculous, entertaining and logically inconsistent (I know many of the adjectives I have used seem contradictory but what can I do?). It was an all-out threat shrouded is (pseudo)legal jargon. I agree with you when you say it was done by a whimsical fanatic. That fanatic is the IIPM Legal Cell. Read what your all-India dean A Sandip said to the Hindustan Times.

"if we had to issue a legal notice, it would have been done in public using the mass media which is normally used for issuing the full page advertisements…"
Then why didn't you? As far as I can see the sole aim of the legal notices were to coerce the bloggers into taking down the posts from their blogs. Thus issuing this notice through the media would not have served the purpose. No sane institute would do things that garners them negative publicity. This became a big issue simply because Gaurav and the JAMMAG team had the guts to be NOT cowed down. In fact I am still amazed that IIPM's top management handled the whole thing. They had many 2nd chances, and they blew away all of them.

"good or not would be decided by the people who study there and cannot be evaluated by bloggers by just visiting the IIPM websites and its affiliations"
A website is the Internet 'face' of an organization. Why the heck have it if you don't mean it? Just look around the recent posts concerning this controversy and you will realize that even the websites of IIPM and its associated institutes are a sham. Your logic is also flawed because that way the truth will never come out. If Institution X were a fraud and only its students could comment on it then no student would ever say bad things about it because it would not be in her best interests. The fraud would go on and every year more students would be duped. Please understand that an individual has a right to voice his opinion even on things that he is not part of. If I were to follow your chain of reasoning then I could never question MPs (since I am not a member of the parliament), I could never question Indian cricketers (since I am not a part of the Indian team) and so on. Bloggers have not evaluated IIPM just by visiting its websites or affiliations. JAMMAG did some real-world investigative journalism and so did many other bloggers.

"I completely agree that iipm does exaggerate its prowess and existence – but the collg , course contents and faculty is not all tth bad. About the publicity – well Prof Arindam. C has just taken over the reins of the chariot from his father Mr. M. K. Chaudhuri .. Any young MBA who wants to expand his fathers business will think of expanding it – thts wat was done – for newer ventures there has to be publicity for penetration of the masses.. tht explains the advertisements."
No problem with that. But if IIPM has the right to 'exaggerate' (as you so euphemistically put it) then how can you question the right of another individual to question that exaggeration? No problems against the ads per se... but tons of problems with the tall claims made in the ads. The right to advertise has not been questioned but the claims in the ads have been questioned.

"Mumbai is just in its 4th yr and the placements of our previous batch is more than decent.."
If this is true then why can't IIPM just issue an announcement that details these claims in a clear and verifiable way.

"I am a student of IIPM Mumbai and be rest assured tht the course contents are definitely much superior thn the regular MMS courses being taught in the crème d la crème b schoolc in mumbai (cos I hav my scholl classmates spread all over these institutes).. the best part is we all have common visiting faculty… to name a few we have Ms Chetna (XLRI passout / Ex Prof of IIM B and also teaches at NITIE – IIT mum) .. we hav Prof Amdekar (who teaches at MET Mumbai) – Prof Rege (who teaches at Chetana collg.. ) – Mr Viplav who designs the defence softwares for the Indian Govt… now this is the mumbai portfolio and from what I hav heard we are not even 10% as good as IIPM delhi… now if we hav the same prof who teach in other known institutions…how can it be a scam.. The entire course is so well designed and well structured.. plus being an autonomous institutes we can just ask nor any change in the colg as and when we want.."
If you (and better still IIPM itself) had said this very early and in clear terms the controversy would not have occurred at all. Please don't mind when I say that I doubt these claims... if these were true then why the heck did IIPM not release such detailed verifiable facts early on? It would have clearly shown that JAMMAG's claims were not true. I think the silence speaks for itself. Even now IIPM is not saying anything officially. It is all very well for students to go around leaving comments but the institute issuing an official release is a thousand times more credible.

"but its our prerogative which institute to go for…. "
A bigger prerogative is the right of speech, of voicing one's opinions, don't you think? Indeed its your prerogative to go to the institute of your choice, but it is also my prerogative to voice my own opinion. You have exercised your prerogative and I continue to exercise mine.

You have asked me to ask you questions and here they are. I realize that you possibly couldn't answer all of them and your answers are your own but try your best anyways. Best case scenario would be if IIPM were to answer this 'officially', but I don't see any chance of that happening.

1. Why has IIPM not refuted the basic questions thrown at it by JAMMAG till now? Assuming for a second that the entire blogosphere was wrong the basic questions still remains.
2. Is this the way a management institute (supposedly with better course contents than others) handles an issue? Isn't this PR disaster of IIPM's own making?
3. Why the heck did IIPM get in touch with IBM and use pressure tactics? Why did the IIPM Students' Union threaten to burn laptops? IIPM tried to intimidate Gaurav Sabnis with the legal notice but when he didn't back down they tried to intimidate him through his employer. Whats your take on this?
4. How can IIPM try to restrict an individual's right to freedom of speech?

Please understand that I have nothing personal against you or IIPM students. I am not questioning your intelligence or capabilities. This bad publicity is indeed going to be problematic for you. But step back from the issue for a moment, analyze it from a neutral point of view and I think you might get what this is all about. There is indeed somebody responsible for this controversy but it is not me (or other bloggers).

I welcome more of your views on this issue and what you think of my replies.

Hi Tiffin,

You asked me what I think of IIPM's quality of education.

When I read the JAMMAG article for the 1st time it seemed credible and true to me. Later on the actions of IIPM, their handling of the entire thing (especially their silence when the article actually came out), their websites, their affiliations, their legal notices, the suspect academic credentials of people associated with IIPM all seemed to confirm that JAMMAG's coverage. A simple refutation early on would might have changed my mind about IIPM. So the answer is YES, I do believe that IIPM's quality of education is low.

You might ask how can I trust JAMMAG's article and subsequent allegations?. After all I didn't actually study at IIPM so how can form an opinion? Going by that logic I can never form an opinion about anything I read or see, because you see I cannot be part of anything and everything. An opinion is exactly that: what I think of something.

For e.g. lets take the IITs. It is commonly accepted they provide excellent technical education. I subscribe to that belief. Most probably you do too, maybe you don't. In either case how did you form that opinion? (assuming you are not an IITian, in case you are substitute it with some other premier institution). You didn't actually study at IIT, did you? You formed that belief from word of mouth reviews, from their placements, from media coverage, from their websites, from their affiliations, from their alumni and their achievements, from their faculty and from many other things.

You claim to be from a "college-ranked-one-of-the-best-in-the-world" and you claim to be sensitive to those studying from a "not-so-good-college". How did you arrive at these qualifiers? Your statement implies that most people consider your would rank your college very highly. How did most people arrive at that conclusion? I am sure not all people who say so have actually studied in your college.

The keyword here is credibility. Credibility of the institution and credibility of news sources.

I hope I have made myself clear. Btw I am curious... which college did you study in?

What do you have to say about this
http://thalassamikra.blogspot.com/2005/10/information-pertaining-to-iipm.html

Avenger: Do u think the people at IIPm have nothing else to do but reply to a bunch of jobless, senseless, pathetic, rediculous bloaks like you.??
Me: Didn't you just do what you said you don't have time to do? Maybe that means that the adjectives you so generously and thoughtfully heaped on me actually apply to you. Nobody can respond (or should respond) to every allegation or claim leveled against them. But for an issue of this magnitude it does make a lot of sense to respond, respond quickly and respond with facts. After all if IIPM can issue a legal notice why does it not have the time to respond with facts?

Avenger: A million losers may comeout with comments against the president of India does that mean he is gonna sit around answering all those senseless losers like u
Me: If a million people are saying the same thing about the President of India I am sure even he will respond. Anybody with an iota of common sense will respond. On a sidenote I can almost see the title of my next post: "Indian President gets dragged into IIPM controversy" :-)

Avenger: BRAVO BRAVO!!!!!!!!! oh i guess we got TIPU SULTANS out here braving the odds against teh mighty
Me: Maybe not Tipu Sultans but I can confidently say that there is at least 1 Avenger who is "braving the odds against teh mighty"! BRAVO BRAVO Avenger!

Avenger: IIPM jus gave me job on campus and a god damn good one too..
Me: Good for you. Congrats!

Avenger: Who on eart gave u the authority to question that..
Me: A teeny-weeny thing called Freedom of Expression granted to me by a teeny-weeny thing called the India constitution.

Avenger: Well we paid for it and its totally our discretion wether we keep it or burn it or even shove it up!!@#@#@@$@...
Me: I was under the impression that the laptops were free. Anyways I agree with you when you say that it is your discretion what to do with your laptops. Tell you what... why don't you burn laptops _AND_ shove it up @#@#@@$@... That would make for a nice spectacle.

Avenger: u mite just have to face a volley of harsher fragments of our imagination...which might not even find a place in your vocabulary...
Me: My my. Do you guys have a course in your curriculum called Stupid-Humourous-Threats 101?

Avenger: well whoever gave u the idea that digging up such an issue wud make one bit of a difference to anyone concerned???
Me: You yourself commented that “I fail to understand the audacity by which you guys are spoiling the name of a prestigious institute “ So what exactly are you saying? Please decide...