A Call to Arms

With my home PC in hospital, it is only today that I came to know about the latest storm brewing in the Indian Blogosphere.

Rashmi Bansal and Gaurav Sabnis, had earlier questioned IIPM's (tall) claims made in various advertisements in MSM. Rather than responding civilly, IIPM, and some of its (alleged) students have targeted them both and seemed to have started a smear campaign against the two. Gaurav has been slapped with a legal notice. Rashmi's youth mag, JAM, too has been threatened with legal action.

Rashmi has been targeted with particularly vicious, uncouth, and distasteful comments on her blog by so-called IIPM students. The writers of these comments seem to be fake bloggers who have started their blogs in the past few days purely with the purpose of running a campaign against Rashmi and Gaurav. If one goes by the nature of comments put up on Rashmi's blog, IIPM students receive no training in (or rather don't have) any norms of ethical and civil conduct. Such students reflect very poorly on the institute. But if the institute itself is build upon false claims and deceit, can we expect anything better from its students?

If IIPM really offers the infrastructure, facilities, and placements that it claims, I feel, eventually, the truth would have been known by everyone and Gaurav and Rashmi would have been condemned by many. But by launching a slur war, IIPM has done its credibility much harm. Anybody reading those vicious comments is definitely never going to be a part of IIPM. Also those comments and the campaign have served as a call to the blogger community to stand together, fight, and protect their own. And the community has overwhelmingly sided (with what they justifiably believe is the side of the Good guys) with the two.

IIPM stands to lose much more than Rashmi or Gaurav in this "fight." It would be in IIPM's interest to announce and do a third party impartial audit of its claims vis-a-vis its facilities.

Or IIPM should stand down and issue a personal apology to Rashmi and Gaurav.