
India blocks 73 URLs criticizing IIPM, an MBA college - dotmanish
http://www.medianama.com/2013/02/223-iipm-website-blocks/
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mtgx
It's been proven time and time again that whenever any censorship blacklist is
created, for whatever "good reason", it will end up being abused for purposes
that have nothing to do with the original purpose of the list. Although, in
this case India actually telegraphed from the beginning that it will be used
like this, when they said it will be used against "negative" comments or
something like that.

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alan_cx
Fascinating.

Currently our (UK) Prime Minister is in India trying to sell our universities
(amongst a lot of other things) to Indian students. Lovely bit of inter-
cultural exchange right? Generally speaking, yes, absolutely. The more the
merrier as far as I am concerned. However...

Back here in the UK, the very same PM has trebled the costs of going to
university for English and Welsh students, pricing many out, raised the
education thresholds meaning less students can qualify, while he is supported
by racist right wing tabloid Murdoch press who hate immigration, foreigners
and most of all dark skins who threaten middle class house prices. Oh yeah,
our right wing is that racist. Yet there he is offering unlimited places for
rich Indians who can afford UK universities, while clearly snubbing Indian
education. If proof of a substandard Indian education system were needed, the
rich flocking to the UK for it will do the mass Indian population nicely.

So, here we have our PM pricing out his own country's students, claiming
immigration is out of control and evil, while offering to open the flood gates
to Indian rich kids who can afford UK education, while snubbing their own,
which clearly has its problems as shown by this article.

While I personally am all for immigration, (and believe me Indians in
particular have done the UK proud, and me personally, so much so I argue they
are more British than us fairly useless white lot) I cant quite work out how
this all plays out for both the Brits and Indians. Seems like a perfect slap
in the face to both of us.

This whole thing is a bizarre contradiction to me. If we in the UK really
wanted to help India out, perhaps we could have out flag ship universities
help the Indian education department (whatever) improve its own situation. Er,
freely share our education knowledge.

Oh.... Freedom of information. Can't have that, can we?

Anyway, I'm a bit confused by the whole thing. And I can't help thinking our
PM is making it worse, mostly for the Indians. If the cream of their crop
flock here, then where does that leave their education system? If Indians fill
out the university places left by Brits who can no longer afford it, where
does that potentially leave race relations in the UK?

Oh, last thought. What if these students stay on afterwards? Brilliant for us,
but aren't we then brain draining India? Again, at a detriment to them?

Yup, confused.

(For Brits reading... yes I know Scotland's education is separate.)

~~~
gnufied
Just to set facts straight - for best of Indian students UK hasn't been
destination of choice for higher studies (for awhile I think). I come from one
of the top 10 engineering universities and none in my batch selected UK for
higher education. I repeat None.

It may sound little weird, but the reason UK, Australia and New Zealand
universities needs selling in India is because "it needs selling". UK isn't
attracting brightest Indians (probably just richer students), it is US that
gets best of them.

As for India's education system - it is meh agreed. But I believe our
undergrad (read B.S) is just fine. It is higher education and research
facilities where we have done a thorough whack job. But this won't be fixed
overnight. Problem starts from rather poor salary of university professors,
little research grants and last but not the least, smart people attract other
smart people.

Brain drain[1] indeed is a problem for us, but the problem will need fixing by
improving quality of higher education.

1.[http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-
bra...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-brain-trade)

~~~
easternmonk
"But I believe our undergrad (read B.S) is just fine." - That is not true.

~~~
adamnemecek
Could you elaborate on that (I know nothing about the Indian education)? I was
under the impression that the IITs were good. Would you disagree with that? Or
is it that there is a couple of schools which are good but the rest is so-so.

~~~
eshvk
The IITs take a bunch of smart people in. These are people who have the
necessary drive, intelligence to succeed in any environment. That doesn't
necessarily mean the institute itself is good or something.

As far as the rest of education system, my experience was that rote memorizing
was encouraged and people were not necessarily taught how to think or even
encouraged how to think. I dunno, maybe it is a cultural thing but I didn't
like it.

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suprgeek
This is about more than censorship. As has been repeated by many others IIPM
is a Degree Mill at best and an active in-progress scam with many victims at
the other end of the awfulness spectrum.

The "Dean" of IIPM - an extremely charismatic fellow by the name of Arindam
Chaudary - likes to use every weapon at his disposal to silence those that
want to expose his shenanigans. Think about how Scientology goes after its
critics - this person is in the same boat. He has managed to sue/pressurize
and bully anyone that wants to stand-up to him.

The media have been just as guilty - they get many full page adverts and TV
spots so they have no issues hyping this "institute". This is a tragedy for
pretty much every student of that institute.

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shared4you
For those of us living outside India, FakingNews and such other sites are
still accessible. "The Hindu" newspaper [1] asked the right question: why
weren't the defendants given a chance to explain their "defamatory" opinions?
It's like, "Oh, I don't agree with you. You must be censored and punished!".
Wonder how is Internet surviving in India at all.

[1]: [http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/this-gag-order-is-
no-f...](http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/this-gag-order-is-no-faking-
news/article4425390.ece)

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teeboy
I think a lot of people are confused with the hawkish name of this
institution. It represents the very worst of Indian education system, not the
best or anywhere near it. Infact, it's a diploma mill which is not even in the
Top 100 management institutes of India. Arindam, the director, himself comes
from a family of illustrious cheats with a larger than life image.

Easiest way is skim through this site: <http://www.iipm-fraud.com/>

The govt has little clue of what it is doing. Hopefully 1 more year, and we
can get rid of this regime for good.

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shrikant
They've done this before against an excellent piece of investigative
journalism done by an Indian magazine called The Caravan, called " _The Sweet
Smell of Success_ : How Arindam Chaudhuri made a fortune off the aspirations
-- and insecurities -- of India's middle classes."

That article was taken down, but I'd pulled a PDF of it then, so here it is
for anyone that wants to know more about the shadiness that is IIPM.

[https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15497688/Sweet%20Smell%20of%20Succe...](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15497688/Sweet%20Smell%20of%20Success.pdf)

~~~
cynwoody
Would anyone buy a used car from this man?

<http://goo.gl/mmEuI>

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ishansharma
I am an Indian and this is worrying situation. The university in which I study
has censored a lot of things(game websites are blocked among many other) and
many others are doing same.

The thing is that people are making it a habit to block Internet. And shady
institutes like this are just going out and asking far away courts for blocks
which they can easily get.

~~~
thewisedude
Just to be clear- The university that you study has the right to censor
certain websites because they are providing you internet and hence they can
stipulate the rules(for the service they are providing). However, the argument
here is that the government should not block URLs because they are not
providing the service and they are just regulators of this service. The
argument here is that as regulators, they are going out of their purview by
curbing on freedom of expression (guaranteed by the constitution).

~~~
canttestthis
By your argument, censorship by ISPs is justified.

~~~
thewisedude
Yes. If they do, what might happen is you might choose a different ISP. Its
simply not in their business interest to censor content, hence they dont!

Typically, if they have to censor, it would have to be based on an agreement
with the customer before hand, else it would be a violation of consumer
rights!

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runarb
IIPM, welcome to the Streisand effect :)

Never heard about them before, but guess that this case will get so widespread
now that it will be impossible to sue and block all the critics. Maybe this is
a case they can analyse at there school?

~~~
theanalyst
Very much so! normally no one would have stumbled across many of those links,
now all news articles publish all the urls at one place, and of course
everyone is curious what they say

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illuminate
"an educational institution"

Aka "diploma mill", most likely.

~~~
meaty
This times a million. We've had a LOT of suspicious unverifiable
qualifications presented to us from that part of the world.

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xmen
To know more about Arindam - <https://www.quora.com/Who-Is-X/Who-is-Arindam-
Chaudhuri>

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bhashkarsharma
Thanks for removing 'educational institution' from the description. IIPM is
probably an educational institution as much as a circus is a wildlife reserve.

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arjn
This isn't the first time I've heard or read negative news about IIPM. The
background story behind this institution is a gigantic red flag.

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bruceb
They always advertise in the Times of India which is the largest English
language daily in the world (more than NYT, WSJ, and USAT combined).

What was funny was that they said hurry the deadline for the next
batch/semester is a certain date. APPLY NOW! ...of course what would happen
after that date? Oh wait now its some new date to apply for the same
batch/semester. All you had to do was look at the site to know it was a highly
questionable place to get an education.

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rikacomet
The reality is that the policy in India, has not been formally formed about
copyright. Whoever takes this battleground, will have a significant advantage
on his side.

IIPM, is actually a viral sort of university, with an aggressive strategy of
hard marketing, slight overstatements, and over time, they are indeed becoming
better and better. But at the cost of many lambs.

as someone said here, its a degree mill for now.

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ankitml
How come most comments are about UK? The link is about how freedom of speech
has been strangulated in India by a university which is not recognized by law.

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lake99
It does not look quite so bad to me. There is a big difference between saying
"the food was so bad that I puked" and saying "the cook tried to poison me".
The issue is being debated, both, in public and, via the court.

~~~
nithinr6
What if there's actual evidence of 'the cook trying to poison'?
<http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-IIPM-Best-only-in-claims> (If you are
from India, you may need to use a VPN to access this.

~~~
vignesh_vs_in
you can always use google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.careers360.com/news_3067-IIPM-
Best-only-in-claims)

~~~
Alterlife
Airtel (Indian ISP) has gone ahead and blocked google cache of the page as
well.

~~~
shared4you
Here you go: (PDF)

<https://anonfiles.com/file/ccf0d66fbf4ec550c57e7f0776e8479d>

Let us see how many websites can they block :)

