Much has been happening in blogland – Gaurav Sabnis gets a legal notice from IIPM about his post on the institutes’s tall claims – requesting him to either back of and apologize or else…
And Rashmi Bansal gets, to put it mildly, obscene comments on her blog. And what’s so strange about that? Because these comments seem to originate from people supporting the insitution that she had earlier published an incisive – needless to add, negative – report on. And they all lead back to newly created blogs with only one or two posts, usually dealing with the same theme – a supplementary website to their original one.
Strangely enough (or maybe not) none of the comments have anything good to say about IIPM. Instead, they all attack the writer – and if it is a woman, then it is even easier… Absue her in filty language and threaten her with physical violence.
All I can say is that these responses on their blogs speak more about the quality of the institution and its students than anything Rashmi or Gaurav might have to say. Having said this, I can actually sympathise with these students – how many times have you all spent loads of money on a coveted product promising the sun and the moon and a few stars, and then found that all you have got is some mud. Post purchase dissonance. And when someone else points out to you what a fool you have been, and that a false marketer with a ponytail and a flop movie behind him is just as bad as any other, then you are bound to direct your anger towards those who pointed it out to you – considering the money has already been spent and the dream seller has moved on to his next big thing in life.
Please keep this issue alive and lend your support to Rashmi and Gaurav. Other bloggers who have already written about this : Harini, Kaps, Anshul, Press Talk, Walk with me, desipundit, The arbit council, Patrix
Update : There is one comment – actually two from the same er, person – on Rashmi’s blog that is worth a dekko. This person is doing a PhD, has done a PhD, will do a PhD, is teaching PhD students – whatever, it doesn’t muter (no typo this) – at Haas UCLA. Uh, where? Harini just googled for Haas and came up with Haas Associates – A resume writing service specializing in resume writing for the IT industry.
But more importantly, this person is proud of his alu mutter. He says it not once but several times in his comments. I quote, I’m proud of my alum mater, and where it has reached, without governemnt subsidies or interference. He also accuses Outlook editor Sandeepan Deb of writing a book on alu mutter. Sanjeev Kapoor has stiff competition.
Another Update : I found this recent post of mine on MBA institutes – where I have written And while on this, I was searching in Fabmall for some books and I noticed that Arindam Chaudhuri’s book Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch is to be found under the Humorous Section. Go check it out. Fabmall has my vote for best ecommerce site of the decade or some such thing.
Further updates as on October 12: Three days after the ugly controversy first reared its head on the blogosphere, over a hundred blogs have linked to it. Fake IIPM blogs have disappeared and other equaly fake IIPM blogs have appeared. The rants and threats from IIPM “students” have gone from bad to worse.
Legal notices are flying fast and furious across the blogosphere with Varna receiving one from the “legal cell” of IIPM.
Hindustan Times coves the story in its third page today. Mumbai Mirror mentions this in their bloggers’ park corner. And hopefully, other newspapers and TV channels will carry this soon. A no-words-minced post from Harini here on this.
Gaurav’s professor from IIML calls the IIPM bluff. No words minced here either.
For detailed updates, head to the fantastic desipundit.
After the flopped movie, they are now trying to use MLTR concerts to promote their brand among the student community. Wonder whether IIPM has asked all its students to go on a blog bashing binge to vent their anger.
Charu, the attacks on Rashmi are pathetic. They are doing more damage to IIPM’s nonexistent imgae than manybe the articles itself did.
Dare to think beyond the IIMs indeed. I wouldnt dare to. Not a place filled with so many indecent people.
Well, it shows, doesn’t it ;-).
Absolutely, it just shows!
i can understand if they get peeved with JAM’s report. but, to stoop to ugliness .. .makes it sound as if JAM has been too tame in its writing about IIPM 🙂
what do they teach the students there …
Hi, Here is yet another scenario. We really don’t have any evidence that the ‘commenters’ on Rashmi’s blog are ex-students of IIPM. That may not be so. They may very well be different avatars of our friend Arindam, or his hired thugs posing as ex-students. Of course, in either scenario, IIPM has chosen a pretty good way to demolish whatever little reputation it ever had.
Real ex-students of any institute would at least try to be decent in their comments. The only ‘crime’ committed by the students of IIPM was in not doing enough of ‘due diligence’ before going there. So, I suggest that we desist from attacking their students, and keep the focus just on IIPM and its thuggish ‘promoters’.
Harini, seriously… what do they teach there? to answer this comment, you must go back to Rashmi’s blog and read comments by a certain desi howardroark. he claims to be proud of his alu mutter. go read it 🙂
Abi, it is possible that these comments were not left by students, past or current – but it is also possible that one or a few of them were. In any case, the whole thing makes the institute and the management come up in a very bad light – I am behind Rashmi on this and hopes she takes this up as a serious issue
and do read desi howard roark’s comments there too!
charu,the last time students got worked up about anything was during the Mandal days. and i was in school at that time 🙂
this is a put on job.
btw howard roarke was expelled from college in Fountainhead. basically he thinks taht the curriculum is crap and doesn’t let him get creative 🙂
Hi, I just made a post on my blog; I have suggested some sort of a tag, by strongly urging readers to blog about it. I hope IIPM will back off from this high handed display of stupidity.
The abusive language in Rashmis comment section is pathetic.
Just as an aside, there is a Haas school of business, not in UCLA, but UC @ Berkeley http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/
Charu, Thank you for your note (on Patrix’s blog) re my response to DesiHowardRoark. It is easy to take these idiots on, isn’t it? Nikhil
hi guys, just posting a reply i’d left on rashmi’s site. hope it helps. regards and wishes, andrew
hi rashmi, i am a current student at iipm and i have read jammag, your site, other blogs and frankly, i feel you have given very biased comments from your side about iipm.
i have also heard from an iipm faculty that even your firm has received a legal court notice about this case. somehow, i appreciated that a lot because the reality is, not only iipm students across india, but even our alumnii is pretty convinced about you have not researched the truth about iipm. we’ve been here for an year and we really know the amount of effort that iipm takes. but despite iipm having such a massive effort on ensuring the highest quality of academics and infrastructure and placements (and of course, despite daring to think beyond…; a statement which peeves of many from a particular bunch of institutes) a very one-sided viewpoint from you and some other bloggers – some of whom are iim passouts – seem steeped in blogging utterly wrong information. all you need to do is to walk in yourself to any iipm campus and ask any student about what is iipm.
frankly, have you personally visited any iipm campus and on the campus talked to faculty or student? you yourself would accept you personally have never visited any iipm campus. i repeat “on the campus” because you have never done that yourself. it seems that your junior journalist – who might have been part time – has gone really overboard with inexperience in journalism.
further, if there is an institute that dares to think beyond iims, u of course would have read the various news articles from iipm where iipm actually extolls the virtues of iims being there and being benchmarks in management. show me one article where any iipm faculty has said that iims are bad. the fact is that we are really thankful there are institutes like iims that are world benchmarks. if iipm cannot dare to think beyond the iims, what is the information being passed out to us. never dare? that seems one-sided. at least for once, do not be so one sided.
and seriously, at least now, please do visit any campus and on the campus talk to faculty and students instead of just keeping on referring to blogs and emails, which anyways have no credibily (not even this post should be taken for granted, pleas confirm yourself).
because finally it’s not about a war where you believe you are fighting against iipm, it’s about realizing that there is an institution that at least is contributing with a lot of sincere and dedicated effort to studentss and corporations. that is why the confidence in my statement that you yourself should come to any campus and talk to any student on the campus.
do not please have such a one sided viewpoint. i (and my friends) have failed to understand the reason why your article and other viewpoints are so one sided.
i am sure your journalistic standards would prevail.
regards
andrew
Have you noticed how IIPM’s response to Blog affair has been – first threats, then some disgusting comments, then asking for journalistic integrity.
I have a funny feeling – that in AC’s magazine next month he will print a tiarde against blogs and how they need to be regulated. Anyway, I am just clarifying, this has nothing to do with IIPM students. As for alu mutter, I’ld like mine with a side order of naan.
And by the way, this is from a comment Swati made on my blog – you you thought the Haas UCLA business was funny…
Ponytail’s dad claims to have a D.Sc from the Berlin School of Economics. A look at the Berlin School of Economics website shows that they do not offer a D.Sc!
It is probable that they offered one in the past (though very unlikely), but the Berlin School of Economics was founded in 1971, while IIPM was founded in 1973. Daddy ponytail further claims that he worked for HLL after completing his D.Sc. If you put all this info together, you get logical impossibility.
Here’s a link to the Berlin School of Economics website:
http://www.fhw-berlin.de/fhw2000/english/introduction.htm
Hello Desipundit guys and Friends,
I do not know whether you are right or wrong in this IIPM issue.
I also do not know if you guys(or Gaurab Sabnis) ever defamed/damaged reputation of that Institute. I read the Legal Notice on Gaurab Sabnis’s Blog. I did read the comments on Rashmi Bansal’s Blog.
I do not know if appropriate (and Free) legal help and counselling is available to Gaurab Sabnis and other bloggers. If you guys are innocent and are facing any bullism, then the rapid action force (including Lawyers) in YahooGroup saveindianfamily can guide you to protect, defend and safeguard yourself legally. Even though some of you may not agree with the activities of Save Indian Family group, we feel that we must put an end to the days of “Legal Terrorism” or Legal Bullism where the strong can get away by threatening the innocent meek of legal action to shut their mouths.
Please just hold your breath. Do not get angry or outraged. Keep calm and chalk out a plan of action.
Best Regards
sumanth(at)saveindianfamily(dot)org
hi guys, i had replied to mridula on another site. again, adding the reply out here so that it could assist in your post debate. regards and thanks.
dear mridula, your question is logical and i hope i can give an answer to it; though it might not be the official one. here goes.
your question is, why does iipm advertise full page ads and iims do not. there could be two straightforward reasons to the same as i see them. one is that iipm has seven branches across india compared to other institutes that have only one branch and need to advertise only once. iipm also has two sessions per year, that could further double up the already seven multiple on the ads (making it 14 times). and compared to the perception premium that fms or xlri might already have, on which i would not be able to put a figure, but a figure of double could be at least figuratively placed, making the number of ads to be at least 28 timesin a year.
if you additionally add the fact that iipm has to advertise for its bba programs also, apart from the mba programs (even tho many ads carry both together) now that would amount to almost one ad every two weeks throughout the year. now i really don’t know the number of times the iipm ad has come out – i really have not counted – but it is safe to say that my insti would be advertising around this average. that’s the first reason.
secondly, if an institute were providing such wonderful placements, students must be falling over each other to join it is your second question. i should say that that happens across iipm campuses. at the same time i should also clearly mention that while only around 40000 apply to iipm entrance exams, almost 3 lakh plus apply to iims, thus there is a huge difference between the application numbers between iims and iipm, and that difference is accepted by me. just for calculations (to be honest, not precisely, but just approximately) i was just aggregating the no of students in all the campuses in mba and bba programmes; the total students in all the seven campuses of iipm would be approx equal to 8000 plus. but you’ll have to factor in the fact that around 25% are bba students; still you’llhave a humongous 6000 or so mba. you’ll again have to factor in the fact that there are two batches etc etc.
now for placements, it is a fact that around 25%of the batch doesn’t apply for placements. now i really don’t know how you would take it but i didn’t believe the figure myself till i became part of the placement coordination committee (i’m not the secretary tho, that’s brijesh prasad under a.sharma). almost 25% of the batch are sons and daughters of businessmen or people who wish to start their own businesses or people who are laterally placed before the last term starts. if one were to go by the companies that came this year, from sap, to oracle, to max, to a.paints and so on so forth, i can tell you this much that at least as far as my investigations could reveal, placements were really good. in one of my posts, you would’ve noticed that i wrote about rashmi not doing correct journalism. for example, one of her statements was that students got into hln and not HLL. she did not mention that hln (or hindustan levers network) is a division of HLL (hindustan levers limited) and that it was actually HLL that recruited the students? if an iipm student got into the nescafe division of nestle, would it be wrong to write that the student has been recruited by nestle. or should one keep writing only nescafe (which might sound a little inane)?
that is why i was somehow confused on why did rashmi write each and every statement so negatively. since i have been here, i have had almost around 15 ivy league professors who have come to iipm campuses and have taken seminars at iipm. when our professors met rashmi at her office and asked her why she wrote, apart from other false statements, another false statement that no such professor had come over to iipm, she responded that these professors only took seminars with iipm students and not sessions (??!!??!!)
you can ask rashmi the truth behind this statement of mine and if she really is honest, she won’t be able to deny even one part of this statement as our professor provided us all the details of his meeting with her that happened in front of three other people, including another journalist that rashmi knows herself.
the fact is, rashmi knows she has lied on more parts than one. and that is something that is so bad of a person who says she is a journalist.
she writes that there is no wi-fi in any of iipm campuses and that no student has any laptop. i believe her part-time journalist pulled a fast one on rashmi herself (because when i see her blogs, she sounds sensible; that is why i am really surprised she wrote this). all students have laptops provided by iipm and all students have access to wi-fi in all our campuses.
that is why i requested rashmi to come herself to the campus and ask any student (any student) whether the student has a laptop or whether the campus has or doesn’t have a wi-fi connection. if rashmi were to do that, i am so sure she would withdraw her own comments because that is truly not journalism.
mridula, coming to your final point, if you write something about iit kanpur, the guys there are not going to bat an eyelid. neither would iipm bat an eyelid. but how would iit kanpur professors react if some journalist were to hire part-time journalists, take out a print journal (jammag is a print journal) and write false things about iit kanpur.
to quote the case of iit kanpur, you can ask any of the professors of iit kanpur how they jumped up at journalists when their center for enterprise technology (cet), a private company started by iit kanpur in collaboration with EL-NET (go ahead, ask IIT Kanpur professors, they won’t be able to deny even one word of it) left thousands of students across india high and dry after eating away a lot of their money. journalists wrote about how iit kanpur had usurped money of thousands of students. iit kanpur went up in arms agains many such net sites and journalists claiming that it was EL-NET that cheated students and that iit kanpur was just the testing and certifying agency.
the example i am quoting is for telling you that it’s not about iit kanpur or iipm, but about a journalist writing false things (or being given false articles by her hired hands). if there were something that could be attempted, it could be a truthful debate rather than blog slur which is what i feel is neither ineffective nor adequate.
regards and wishes,
andrew
Andrew (above).
The issue is simple.
Gaurav Sabnis’s post was an opinion and a link.
The legal notice was a clear threat to his right to express himself.
IIPM is therefore guilty of trying to arm-twist Gaurav Sabnis into silence.
The students of IIPM will suffer. They should talk to the IIPM management instead of trying to defend their institute on blogs. This will only lead to more exposture and infamy for you all.
Hope you all understand.
Handle this as a crucial public relations issue, not with amaturish legal notices.
Hi Charu
This story just getting bigger and more ridiculous. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious for Gaurav and Rashmi, especially Gaurav who felt compelled to resign today.
It takes generations for an educational institution to build a good reputation. IIPM seems intent on trashing theirs in week.
Andrew,
I am a layman and my idea of the whole issue is probaly not as deep as a lot of other ppl incl. your own “alum”. But one thing seems to be clear is clear to me. IMHO, the point everyone seems to really refer to, they ask “why does iipm advertise full page ads and iims do not” is not the number of ads, but the material highlighted in the ads. Essentially, everyone wants to know why your institution is being creative with this advertising. And as for you justifying the advertising with the fact that very low numbers apply to your institution as opposed to the ones on top of the scale, that is laughable.
I don’t have a job. So should I just pay some newspaper to run a full page ad with my picture and my contact details so that potential employers can call me based on my professional attire in the photograph? Or should I contact the HR departments of potential employers with a professionally worded copy of my resume. I would probably reach more ppl with the first alternative which would give me 100 percent points for creativity, but is that professionally acceptable? That’s the question. So you see where we (I and every other person who has spoken for the bloggers concerned) are coming from?
And more recently the question on everyone’s minds is that why would a educational insitution attempt to act like the wronged kid in a playground quarrel. Everytime young kids are slighted, they run to their parents for support. Thats just what your institution seems to have done by childlishly threatening a potential employer with unwanted publicity (it might not be negative, but its definitely not required) if it failed to rein in one of its employees. And by the looks of it, the company seems to have done its bit professionally and asked the blogger to make his own decision. And if your institution is going to harp on this by promoting it as a “victory”, they might as well and go ahead and look up a good dictionary for the definition of “pyrrhic victory”. Because the dance seems to have just begun and who knows if your institution has the legs to keep up with the hordes out there.
What’s the big deal about what Rashmi wrote? It has been an open secret what IIPM has been upto all these years. She has just brought it out in the open.
I know quite a few students of IIPM personally who have told me months ago what Rashmi has written now. Frankly, most of the ex-IIPM students I know are pretty shady with the exceptions of a few who are not shady ‘coz of their own character not ‘coz of Ponytail.
Andrew’s justification of the no. of ads IIPM put out is seriously funny. He obviously didn’t pay attention or wasn’t taught (latter more likely) in his marketing classes.
The only qualification for entering IIPM is how fat your father’s bank balance is. I mean what kind of students get into IIPM… losers (Sorry for using such harsh words but at this point of time I just can’t think of a more appropriate word) who have no where to go but get their fathers to pay them thru an “MBA”. I mean come on, the whole world knows this… what’s the big deal in this.
A friend of mine is a prof in an MBA institute in Pune and he harbours ambitions of running his own MBA institute. One day we went crazy and started doing a back of the envelope business plan for an institute… and boy was it a profitable venture. But the moment we realised how wrong it was, we immediately dropped the idea. We couldn’t let ourselves ‘sell’ education like this (Obviously Ponytail has no such inhibitions). My friend has since dropped hs idea of running his own MBA institute. He now wants to open a vocation based management school which will be “closer to the nature”… I am still waiting to hear more details from him on this.
Please understand that IIPM is by no definition an educational institute as we all know. Its purely a business which happens to be in the education sector. Getting Ivy league prof on campus to do seminars is a part of building brand image of the product. The students themselves are so dense that it really doesn’t matter to them whether the prof is from an Ivy league college or Timbuktoo.
What happened to Gaurav is sad but at the same time it makes me feel proud that people like Gaurav exist. Hats off to him.
The effort by the blogging community is simply amazing. I have started the google bombing process.
Why attack someone’s command or lack of it on English especially when it’s not his/her first language? Don’t get to see any relation with. Or do you belong to the group which thinks that IQ is directly proportional to one’s command over queen’s lingo?
alu matter?? HILARIOUS. had me fallin off my chair
Bring out the writer in you! Weave a story! Watch your story unfold with your fellow bloggers.New twists, new turns while this absurd fiction goes places. See your story through virtual eyes.
Visit my blog for more details.
http://www.bachelorblues.blogspot.com
Story so far…
Bachelor:
It was a crowded raliway platform. Manav looked around in apprehension at the other students bustling around him with their luggage in tow. He weaved around them and looked at anxious mothers kissing their children goodbye and worrying fathers giving out last minute advices. He dragged his torn suitcase behind him and searched for any empty seat. The train was to leave to in fifteen minutes. Finding an empty seat in a compartment, Manav tried to put his suitcase on it and occupy it, but one look at his tattered clothes and the girl sitting there moved to occupy the empty seat. Nobody would let him sit near them and Manav was left standing all alone struggling to stop the tears streaming down his face. And then he saw….
Kay Yes said…
… a woman who looked like his mother! At a closer look, he found it was not his mother! His tears did not move any of the fellow passengers. They looked at him with disgust.
Just a month back, his life too was as cozy as theirs was! His family had gone on a vacation to Kashmir! And just when they were about to leave Uri, the earth quake struck! Everyone of his family was lost in it! He went to Delhi by an Army van. None of his relatives were ready to accomodate him. With no one to support him, whatever little wealth his family had, was split among the relatives! Finally, it was decided that he should stop his studies & get back to Delhi to work in his Uncle’s kiraana dukhan!
So he is, in the station, on the way to Trivandrum,with his tattered clothes & torn suitcase, that he has been wearing since last week. He would go to the Sainik school in Trivandram and get back his belongings to join the prestigious job in his Uncle’s petty shop!
Suddenly, something struck him! He hit the girl who did not give him the seat, snatched her gold chain, jumped out of the train and ran like a mad fellow, until he was stopped by….
I have nothing to do with IIPM either through friends or family, but out of sheer curiousity, I visited their campus and it was not even a semblance of what was described in the newspaper ads. WiFi … i deliberately used my laptop to figure if such a network existed, but it did not. Swimming pool … maybe they have packed it somewhere for usage as and when necessary.
I called up their telephone numbers advertised and guess what, they talk straight about course costs … that is the only thing that they possibly know about the course. I asked them about course contents and they asked me to check with someone else or come to the campus … so much for efficiency and professionalism.
When will I get my legal notice??
Anurag
My blog talks about –
1. IIPM who is to be blamed?
2. One liners on IIPM.. sample
Q. What is the message of the blogging community to Arindam Chaudhury
A. Rok sako to rok lo!!
Really stupid of IIPM to pursue this matter to this extent! Hope Gaurav good luck!
My supporting entry at http://www.desihub.com/blog/page/mihir/20051013#indian_blogosphere_heating_up
hey I thought India was a free country….wonder when we became the slaves again….
Poeple have a voice/issue they raise it….if somebody has a problem with it and cannt discuss it “on the table” then they are no better than fundamentalists who “terrorize” under various names..
IIPM’s high handedness shows how “reputed” the college is.As Mark Antony said, Arindam Choudhry id indeed an “honourable man”.
After more than 50yrs of independence the pitiful state of India can be corrected only by Blogger power.Lets be true Indians and expose cheats like Choudhry .Three cheers to bloggers and blogging power.
http://yuppieland.blogspot.com
I WENT TO BANGLORE CAMPUS AFTER READING ALL OF VEIWS .ITALKED WITH STUDENT EVERYONE TOLD ME THE INSTITUE HAVING GOOD REPUTATION.AND GOOD PLACEMENT ALSO.BUT ITS COSTLY THAN OTHER BSCOOL