Winners, Losers and Looters of IIMC

A feast is on at IIMC. Once again there is a new batch of over 150 youngsters
full of dreams and aspirations. Most of them feel that they have “arrived” once
having got admission in IIMC.

The “exterior” of IIMC is so beautiful that it is quite deceptive. It creates an
illusion that it is the best mass communication institute in the country (and
the NAM countries) if not in the world. The glitter in the eyes of new entrants
and the bristling activity in IIMC campus in the beginning of new academic year
reflect a hope.

And, it is this hope that bad teachers and instructors attempt to blur as their
first lesson to the students. Every enslaving act has first to kill hope. IIMC
Management pretends ignorance about the fcat that this hope is under a
full-scale assault by bad teachers & instructors, the crooks and those in
between.

The Management seems to be hand in glove with corporate media schools to erode
the importance IIMC. Wittingly or unwittingly IIMC Management is part of a
conspiracy to to undermine the brand value of IIMC. Most of the good faculty
members have been poached by corporate media schools. Others are negotiating to
move out. Instead of inviting quality visiting faculties only friends of
director are called.
IIMC Management has divorced professionalism from its approach and seems to have
mastered the art of choosing unsuitable faculties. It has fallen prey to power
brokers.

There is a debate underway about the need to update the course content at IIMC.
There is a need to bring the faculty members and management also under scanner.
The question is not only of the competence of the faculty but also of their
service conditions.

Competence and talent is attracted through the reputation of an organization and
the pay package it offers. It is not to argue that the competence and experience
of the faculty members does not require to be revisited but why to blame an
individual who has been appointed an assistant professor for a monthly salary of
Rs. 15,000/- on contractual basis for three years- without any other benefit not
even of leave, increments, medical, gratuity, DA etc that every employee is
entitled in even the private sector.

You must be aware some of IIMC faculty members are contractual bonded labour.
These contractual bonded laborers are considered second grade by the permanent
professors & IIMC Management.

Also at this juncture the competence and talent must take a back seat. The major
question is whether the faculty is students-friendly, whether they have any
sense of commitment and involvement.

Even the person who is a cook in canteen or a chokidar at the gate contributes –
we do learn from every person that we come across and that is what all-good
journalism is all about. The same is true in the field of advertisement and
public relations where human resources are valued and their performance is
appreciated through incentives.

In the present scenario, the students of IIMC draw a better salary at entry
point in large number of cases than the faculty members. The faculty is neither
appreciated nor deemed worthy of incentives.

In such a situation, it is relevant to recollect the anecdotes concerning IIMC
faculty and their background, which led to such a plight.

There are those who know how to mint money unscrupulously. A Professor of IIMC
once boasted that he is highest paid academician in the world- and the logic was
that his monthly emoluments are around Rs. 50,000/- and he had taken only three
classes in the year which makes it Rs. two lakhs for one lecture- a feat indeed
and that too at IIMC which is an Indian public institute run through public
money not Bill Gates’ company.

One is at liberty to feel proud that you are alumni of an institution that
engages highest paid academician of the world.

One often hears that the IIMC faculty is not up to the mark! IIMC has done
everything to make them “up to the mark”.

Has any one ever heard of any educational institution in the world that first
appoints a faculty member and then discovers that its syllabus cannot be related
to the high educational qualifications (Ph.D. in French) and expertise in “core
area”? As a consequence the syllabus has been altered and a capsule of
“language and communication” introduced to justify the appointment and keep the
Doctor professor employed and engaged. That’s a different story that the
concerned faculty member is still employed although not in academic and
professional work of IIMC but in many ‘other’ activities that keep other faculty
members busy.

Is it surprising that IIMC students who are trained on this module keep
complaining about the course content?

There is one more Professor (Full) who is always dependent on his seniority and
permanent post to protect his “high status” in the power structure of IIMC. He
has been with the Institute for over fifteen years but still no one is aware of
his “core area” of teaching and training in relation to the syllabus of IIMC
courses.

One keeps hearing about the need to upgrade the course content. How about
upgrading the intellectual content IIMC faculty?

There are suggestions galore. Perhaps, sarcastically one suggestion is that
alumni community should demand downgrading of the syllabus so that large numbers
of faculty members are kept at least busy with educational activities. This
would provide them little time to indulge in lies, half-truths, manipulation and
running down everyone who happen to come on their way.

IIMC alumni should understand at least now after so much experience in
communication and media that at IIMC, the way it is shaped today, faculty is not
for students rather students are for the faculty. It seems that the primary
responsibility of student community is to keep the faculty in comfort and in
good humour and not to create problems.

These are many glaring cases that we can share some later point of time.
Currently attempts are underway to create fresh artificial conflicts between
various journalism courses (most of us know about such conflicts).

IIMC at this juncture is confronting a disaster that will decide and define its
future, if there is any future left for this ‘polytechnic’ full of “bad teachers
& instructors” and the “crooks” without a faculty.

How these bad instructors of the polytechnic have survived so far?

They survive because IIMC runs only nine months course and by the time they get
exposed to students, they are safe as the student community is out on their jobs
or are struggling to get a job. They do not get time to express their anger for
the wrong that had been committed on them in those nine months.

And again in this age people do not want to “waste” their time on the issues
that relate to “public good” and their personal interests are no more attached
with the subject that is called IIMC. They feel they do not have any stakes left
in it. So by the time these “wonderful nine months” are over everyone is busy
and they develop different kind of stakes.

Are you aware why and how IIMC hostel got discontinued? One needs to know in
order to demand the hostel back for the students.

The IIMC Management was afraid that students living under same roof might get
united and create problems. Every corrupt and rotten system has some inbuilt
defences so the hostel was discontinued on the pretext that it is required for
IIS-a totally false pretext indeed.

After few years, on the insistence of a section of faculty & a particular batch
of students the IIMC Management agreed to provide hostel but only to girl
students as it was perceived that they will not form some kind of “union”, it
was presumed. After all they are girls.

IIMC hostel was been built for diploma course students and initially they used
to live there. No problem of any serious nature was ever reported. There was a
Boys Wing and a Girls Wing and all of them used to live there happily and in a
community. Learning takes place in this kind of community through peers, which
is an advantage with our Dhenkanal branch.

It is high time the well wishers of IIMC came forward, spared some time for our
alma mater or for “public good”. Perhaps the concept of heaven was created when
people refused to come forward for collective good- the public good and needed
to be motivated by fear- a “good fear of god” indeed.

There is an alternative. Come to IIMC. Tell the employees that you keep on
meeting Shri Jaipal Reddy and be part of the loot.

P.S: Earlier IIMC faculties were appointed Visiting Faculty at Mussoorie IAS
academy now this trend has been discontinued. Will some one confirm? If it is
true then why it happen?

Is true that Vartika Nanda, Associate Professor, Television Journalism has been
kept out of teaching?
Is it true that Librarian Ram will take television journalism's classes?
How can a librarian be assigned to teach television module?
Is it true that Hemant Joshi will teach Radio Journalism?
Is it true that Pradeep Mathur has been transferred to IIMC Dhenkenal?
Does Dr. P. Bapaiah, Registrar, IIMC have any role of in it?

S. K. Arora, IAS, Chairman of IIMC and Praveen Kumar Tripathi, IAS director,
IIMC are busy in their search for a full time director? Some names, which are in
circulation, include Amitabh Chakravarty [who is he?] (some say he is a better
choice), K M Shrivastava, Professor of News Agency Journalism (some say a
controversial choice), Umakant Mishra, Director, Publications Division, Ministry
of Information & Broadcasting (no opinions) and Subhash Dhuliya, course
director, Hindi Journalism, IIMC Dhenkenal

Will it not be better if all the students of the current batch are made members
of Indian institute of Mass Communication Old Students Association (IIMCOSA) list so that they can report the goings on at IIMC?