The Narendra Modi government’s decision to award Institute of Eminence (IoE) tag to a non-existent institute which has only ‘future plans and intentions’ would be ‘beyond rationale and highly subjective’, thought the Finance Ministry when the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) came up with greenfield institute category.
A year before the decision to award Mukesh Ambani-owned Jio Institute as an IoE was made public, the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (HRD) raised objections and warned the centre against such an action.
‘Detrimental’, ‘Defies all logic’, ‘Demotivational’
According to the details revealed in the Right to Information (RTI) filed by The Indian Express, a note dated February 23, 2017 written by Department of Expenditure (DoE) read, “…for the private institutions which are yet to be established, granting of the status of Institutions of Eminence based on future plans is beyond rationale and is not supported. The laid down criteria in this regard is highly subjective.”
The five-page long note further read, “This methodology will give an edge to an institution which is not even established yet by improving its brand value and positioning it above the already established government and private institutions. This will be demotivational and therefore, detrimental to higher education ecosystem. Grading an institution as ‘Institutions of Eminence’ only based on intentions and a plan defies all logic. Hence the same should be revised.”
Alumni, past performance is an important factor in international rankings, then how can a new institute compete?
Before the Finance Ministry, the HRD ministry had its doubts. HRD circulated an internal note asking suggestions on the IoE draft report from six division heads.
On July 20, 2016, the technical education division, which looks after IITs, NITs, IIITs and AICTE, responded to the note saying, “Considering that established global reputation of the alumni and research are crucial factors in these ratings (international rankings), new institutions cannot make this grade in a five-year period. The focus should therefore be on institutions which currently exist and are already in the global ranking scenario.”
On August 8, 2016, the division which looks after international collaboration in the education sector wrote “In order to correctly evaluate the institutions based on their past performance, there should be at least 5-6 batches who have graduated from the institution and, therefore, the institution should be in existence for about 8 to 10 years”.
Also Read: Institute of Eminence Scam: How Narendra Modi Govt Bent Rules To Favour Jio Institute
The Empowered Expert Committee (EEC), which was the ‘special panel’ entrusted with the responsibility of assessing and choosing IoE, found it difficult to award IoE tag based on ‘proposed information’.
The report said, “Since this category of institutions is ‘proposed’, there are no ‘achievements’ to assess their performance, which made the work of the EEC exceedingly difficult. EEC had to assess the potential of the proposed institution on information relating to the promoter group, their financial standing, commitment of finances and infrastructure for the ‘new’ project, their reputation as leaders or doers in their respective field of activity and, based on these, arrive at an understanding of the soundness of the proposal and the chances of it achieving the desired IoE goals.”
Even though serious concerns and objections were raised by the Finance Ministry and the HRD, the PMO chose to ignore and override them. The PMO twisted and altered the draft rules prepared by the MHRD and orchestrated the Institute of Eminence scam.