Sudhir Jalan , president of the All India Management Association (AIMA), is the former head of the apex industry body, FICCI. This gives him the unique advantage of having access to the association's ample funds and to Ficci's network of powerful people to reinvent AIMA. In this interview with Aarti Kothari , he talks about his priority list, the changing face of AIMA and the reservation issue. Excerpts:

AIMA was constituted as an apex body of professional management. However, any public discussion about management education in India does not feature AIMA. Why is that?
I've been given the impression that we are seen as a 'fuddy-duddy' organisation. But that is about to change. I took over as president in October 2005. One of my first missions was to make AIMA's constituents active. If you want to be a strong person, you need to tone up all parts of your body. Historically, a president of AIMA visits 7-8 local management associations (LMA) in a year. I have already done 13 visits in just seven months and 12 more outside the LMA areas. It may be surprising but I'm the first president of AIMA to visit Guwahati in 35 years. These visits help in figuring out the kind of problems being faced by the LMAs. Some say they need more speakers, others ask for more events or programmes. Yet, others are looking at financial assistance.

This year, the AIMA Council of Management has given us Rs 50 lakh to spend with the mandate that we show them results.

Tell me more about AIMA. How is it structured?
We are a 49-year-old not-for-profit body based in Delhi. We have 61 LMAs as our members, some 30,000-professional individuals and about 3,000 corporates as our members.

What are some of the new initiatives AIMA is taking?
According to a commissioned study done by some professors, there's a wide gap in the supply of quality executive education. And if we can meet that demand even by 40 per cent, it's going to be a significant contribution. So we want to upgrade our executive education courses. We're also looking at how distance learning can be improved. What do future students want to learn? How to spread it?

The dhoti -wearing farmer needs to understand management in irrigation, horticulture and so on, as much as the tie-clad executives do. But the IIMs together take about 800 students a year. Other schools put together take another 15,000. But India is becoming a source of management supply to the world. We need thousands of students to be educated in management. So we took the bottom-of-the-pyramid approach, that is, distance learning. In fact, AIMA started its certificate PGDM by distance learning 35 years ago, even before IGNOU. We were the pioneers.

Two years ago, we started a Shaping Young Minds Programme (SYMP), which is conducted four times a year. About 1,000-1,200 students take part in these. A study done by AIMA with ACNeilsen says that students from the Top 10 schools get into service jobs whereas it is graduates of the next 10 schools who turn out to be entrepreneurs. Through SYMP, we invite successful persons to address these youngsters by talking about their own experiences. For instance, we did a spiritual programme in Mumbai sometime back. It was a huge hit. I have the representatives from Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and Jamshedpur fighting over who is going to host the next one.

We have over 1,000 B-schools in India, most of which are simply in the business of making money. Is AIMA empowered to do something about this situation?
We will allow mushrooming but will step in to weed out the bad ones. We advise AICTE informally on which B-Schools are in it for the business of making money.

What are your views on HRD minister's suggestion about imposing a quota for OBCs in the IIMs and IITs?
Reservation is such an outdated concept. It is anti-reform. Today, if you say seats should be reserved for the OBCs, where will you draw the line? After 10 years the Gujjars, Yadavs, Jadavs and so on will all say they want certain number of seats. You are creating artificial barriers. The government is acting against the spirit of the Constitution.

One day I was sitting with the director of a reputed IIM. I asked him what he will do if the proposal for OBC reservation goes through. He said he'll have to lower his testing standards.

When do you expect a final decision to be taken on the reservation issue?
I should think no decision is a good decision. But coming to the point, first the Parliament will debate the issue and then form committees and sub- committees. So it's tough to say by when we will have a definite answer.