Future's So Bright (They Gotta Wear Shades)

No summaries or analyses here, others have already done it.

With each passing day, L'Affaire IIPM rises to Everestian proportions of stupidity. Let's put it this way: if countering a magazine article was the toughest business challenge these guys have faced up until now and the best they could do was respond with aggression, pathetic verbal shots and intimidation, then their company is doomed. Kaput, khatam.

I don't care one way or the other about the institute, its alumni ("alum", as one of them referred to their institute, perhaps confusing it for "Alu Mutter") or even the veracity of JAM's reporting, though I hope it was a fair report. No one likes to read false claims - not the prospective (or current) students and certainly not IIPM's promoters and its faculty.

But it is the quality of response that disappoints me. This response is now practically a reflex action among mobs, Indian or otherwise. Don't like a film? Burn the theaters down! Don't like a book? Kill the writer!! Don't like the article? Harass the journalist!!!

Come on, MBA wizards of IIPM, should you not be just a wee bit, a teensy-weensy bit, an itty-bitty bit more articulate than threatening to set your own laptops on fire? What next, you will hurl your feeding bottles at the wall and soil your diapers in serious protest?

Are the heads of companies in India following this important thread? They should be. Because from this rather ludicrous episode one thing is clear: these graduates lack managerial talent, so hire them at your own risk. Not all of them, of course. Just the few who went around posting anonymously on blogs and the group that wanted to burn down things...

And one more thing: Gaurav Sabnis is a braver man than I. So is Rashmi Bansal, except that she is a woman and a tough one at that :)