The good doctor was going to make the IIMs more accessible by reducing fees, but it turns out fees werenever a show-stopper. Low-income families have been sending children for decades, and banks line up to financethem.

The good doctor doesn’t want students to take loans for education. But Government ads proudly proclaimthat student loans have brought education to millions, and given India a shining. Why do they contradict himbefore he even speaks?

Admission has been tough, especially the Common Admission Test (CAT) and interviews. This year the papershad leaked for the first time. The good doctor was all set to scrap the CAT, but many other papers have alsoleaked, so his hands are full. The pre-medical exam is just the latest. Very distracting, this.

The good doctor knows he can run the country and the IIMs and all educational institutions better than anyNarayana Murthy. Yet people tell him he has never run any institution to deliver tangible results. Insolence!

The good doctor reserves the right to appoint the IIM boards, or change them whenever he wants to. It ishis ministerial prerogative, isn’t it? Yet they object when he changes the board before an awkward meeting,and say he is violating due procedure.

Procedures not followed? Horrors! This gets his bureaucrats in a tizzy. It may be a sustainable objection,they whisper, because the appointments were made without the mandatory consultation. Another irritant, anotherroadblock!

Out comes the trusty weapon, the allegation of financial irregularities. The good doctor dutifully trots itout on a TV show, and promises to get skeletons tumbling out of cupboards. Skeletons do tumble, but they turnout to be of his very own hatchet man. The Allahabad High Court orders a CBI inquiry into an earlier posting.From Allahabad, his own home ground! The bitter irony of it all!

Coming to financials, someone puts pencil to paper and comes up with figures. 1200 students at Rs 1.5 lakhseach comes to Rs 18 crores, they say. The proposed fee reduction will need a subsidy of Rs 14.4 crores perannum, and the good doctor is committed to it. Except now the finance ministry says it has no request forfunds, and no money anyway, for this purpose.

Meanwhile some of the IIMs, exact number to be confirmed, do toe the line, and agree to cut fees. The gooddoctor says its five of them, but the bold print says three, and the fine print says all are subject to theSupreme Court’s final decision on the matter.

And the Supreme Court wants a written commitment about autonomy and subsidies, raising the question aboutthousands of other institutions, teaching management and all other subjects. It’s a whole Pandora’s boxgetting opened out there.

How did it all start? Anyone remember why? It was supposed to be a help in an election year. What happened?

Where are the missing WMDs?