Since the Central government-promoted IIMs admit a minuscule 2 percent of the 2.2 lakh graduates who write their annual CAT (Common Admission Test), in 2016 your editors took a considered decision to rank only non-government private B-schools which admit the vast majority of business management students, writes Dilip Thakore

SPJMIR’s Varun Nagaraj (left): “consistent commitment to excellence”

India’s top-ranked B-schools led by the 20 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the first of which — IIM-Calcutta — was established in the early 1960s followed by IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bangalore shortly thereafter, sited on hundreds of acres of lush campuses but who admit barely 5,000-6,000 postgraduate students per year, have transformed into islands of privilege and unaccountability. Requests for interviews by your editors are routinely rejected by busy directors. Yet half a century since they were established with American largesse (a subject on which they suffer collective amnesia), the IIMs, which until the new millennium used to heavily subsidise students’ tuition and residence fees (current fees: circa Rs. 13 lakh per year), have failed to revolutionise India Inc. Per-employee productivity and returns in Indian industry remain among the lowest of major nations.