The Union HRD ministry's diktat to the six Indian Institutes of Management, asking them to slash student fees from Rs 150,000 to Rs 30,000, has rattled many an management expert and IIM faculty member.

But not all the IIM directors are opposed to the government's decision.

Dr Amarlal H Kalro, Director, IIM-Kozhikode, feels that the government has "the prerogative to take certain decisions, including changes in the structure of fees."

• The IIM Controversy

"I think the fee cut decision has become a major controversy because it has been blown out of proportion. It has suddenly turned into a very emotive issue," Dr Kalro told rediff.com in an exclusive interview.

Dr Kalro, who has in the last five years helped make IIM-K one of the top management institutes in the country, says he does not feel that the slashing of the fees is a retrograde move and will not affect the quality of education at IIMs.

"I can say with authority in the case of IIM-K that the reduction in fees will not affect the quality of education here. Moreover, I do feel that the government has its own priorities and it has the prerogative to take certain kinds of decisions," Dr Kalro said.

According to him, the government of India invests in education. "There is a place for both private and state-sponsored education. The private people charge what they want. The state has the authority to determine its policies," the IIM-K Director remarked.

He said as far as the IIM-K is concerned, the lowering of fees would mean a reduction of only Rs 1.7 crore (Rs 17 million) of revenues for the institute.

One reason why the fee-cut does not affect IIM-K is that the institute is one of the 'leanest' management institutes in the country. It has only 25 non-faculty members, 22 faculty members, 185 postgraduate students and 208 students in the distance-learning programme, said Dr Kalro.

He said that all these years, IIM-K had been getting its funds regularly from government of India without any hiccups. "Originally the government of Kerala was also supposed to contribute 40 percent of our capital costs, but we have got only a little bit from the Kerala government so far," he added.

Not many students at IIM-K, however, agreed with the viewpoints of its director. Says Ganesh Prasad, a final-year student who has been recruited by HCL Technologies, Chennai.

"I do not know how smaller IIMs -- like IIM-Kozhikode and IIM-Lucknow -- will carry out their bigger research projects after the fee cut. If the government cuts the fee, it should help the IIMs in other ways," Prasad said.

According to him, the bigger IIMs with bigger corpus of funds may easily manage whether the fees are cut or not, but "I fear the smaller IIMs would be seriously affected."

Agreed Gaurav Kohli, who is all set to join Wipro Technologies next month: "Cutting the fee at this juncture is not the right decision. If the government cuts the fee, it should increase the grant through other means."

Prasad feels that the IIMs should be asked to carry out major research projects for the government. "In that manner, the IIMs can help the government and the country on a larger scale," he stated.

Prasad also said that the government is unnecessarily interfering in the functioning of IIMs.

"IIMs should be made independent and autonomous because IITs and IIMs have been doing well all these years without government intervention," he added.