Gaurav, Rashmi and Free Speech

Gaurav Sabnis resigned from his job at IBM. And the more I read about this IIPM-saga, the more appalled I am. A management institute makes tall claims in its advertisements, which are by way of investigation checked out by a magazine here, here and here. The magazine questions the veracity of the claims, and is mercilessly attacked by a group of absolutely new bloggers, some of who are ostensibly IIPM students. Gaurav Sabnis, a fellow blogger, takes the initiative and writes about it on his blog in order to spread the word around. And so, IIPM puts pressure on Gaurav's employers, IBM, to force him to delete the posts. So as not to harm IBM's interests Gaurav resigns from his job, voluntarily, as he states emphatically here.

First, I am totally with Gaurav Sabnis, Rashmi Bansal and everybody else who stands up for freedom of speech. The fact is neither Rashmi nor Gaurav did anything illegal. While Rashmi had an absolute right to check the accuracy of every statement made by IIPM, Gaurav also had as much right to try and spread the word around. If IIPM felt there was no element of truth in what either JAM or Gaurav had to say, they should have countered the statements in a civilized manner. Making personal attacks on people, putting pressure on them or their employers is not the way of an institute that claims to produce world-class management students.

It is also shocking that Gaurav had to quit his job. Such arm-twisting are certainly not the ways of the world. While I am totally with Gaurav on this, I still don't really believe that IIPM would have gone ahead with its threat of burning IBM laptops in front of IBM office. Neither do I believe that this "bad publicity" would have been something that IBM could not have withstood. IBM may not have asked Gaurav to resign, but I think they have let themselves be willingly drawn into the controversy. This I believe was unnecessary.

To me this controversy is unwarranted: ideally, IIPM should have just questioned the veracity of JAM's investigations, just as JAM did with IIPM ads; sued JAM if necessary, without having to sling mud on people. This has become personal now, and that is really shocking. And this is what I am against. A lot of people have been voicing their protest against these horrific developments as can be seen from this post at DesiPundit. I am with them too.