The Architecture of Identity: When Nostalgia Became a Weapon
How
IIM Ahmedabad's Elite Alumni Fought—and Won—a War to Preserve Crumbling Bricks,
Leaving Their Alma Mater Trapped by Its Own Success
At the
Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, a quiet governance crisis has
unfolded over the fate of fourteen decaying dormitories designed by modernist
master Louis Kahn. What began as a routine infrastructure decision by the
management—demolishing structurally unsafe buildings—ignited a firestorm of
global opposition. Powerful alumni, international architects, and heritage
bodies mounted an asymmetric narrative campaign that forced a humiliating
retreat. This article dissects the anatomy of that capture: how concentrated
nostalgia defeated diffuse utility, how elite graduates weaponized their
training against their own institution, and how IIMA now finds itself
paralyzed—unable to demolish, unable to rebuild, and condemned to watch its
iconic campus slowly crumble under the weight of its own mythos.
The Kahn Dormitories
They learned to optimize the
world, to weigh and price and plan,
Then turned those skills against the school that made them what they are.
The bricks were sacred, truth was not—the data ran and ran,
But sentiment, well-armed with words, had traveled from afar.
Prologue: The Hot Potato
On December 4, 2020, the Indian Institute of Management
Ahmedabad did something that seemed unremarkable. The board issued an
Expression of Interest inviting bids to demolish and reconstruct fourteen of
the eighteen student dormitories on its main campus. The buildings, designed by
the legendary American architect Louis Kahn between 1962 and 1975, had suffered
decades of decay. Roofs leaked. Bricks spalled. Concrete slabs had fallen from
ceilings, endangering students. A 2001 earthquake had cracked masonry beyond
repair. The management had engineering reports, photographic evidence, and a
fiduciary duty to act.
What followed was anything but unremarkable.
Within weeks, the institute found itself at the center of an
international firestorm. Over six hundred architects and academics from 118
universities across thirty countries signed an open letter calling the proposed
demolition "an act of cultural vandalism." Pritzker Prize
laureates—architecture's equivalent of Nobel winners—joined the chorus. The
World Monuments Fund issued statements. Louis Kahn's own children appealed
directly to the director, calling the decision "calamitous and irreversible."
Alumni, many of them titans of Indian industry, mobilized through WhatsApp
groups and letter-writing campaigns.
On January 1, 2021, the board capitulated. The Expression of
Interest was withdrawn. The buildings would be "saved."
But from what, exactly? And at what cost?
The answer, as this article will explore, is far more
complicated than any single headline captured. The IIM Ahmedabad dormitory saga
is not simply a story of heritage preservation triumphing over corporate
philistinism. It is a cautionary tale about the structural vulnerabilities of
elite institutions, the weaponization of sentimentality by powerful
stakeholders, and the eerie ease with which rational governance can be
paralyzed by those who claim to love an institution most.
The Asymmetry of Intensity
To understand how a routine infrastructure decision became a
five-year governance quagmire, one must first grasp a fundamental principle of
political economy: concentrated intensity almost always defeats diffuse
interest.
Consider the two sides of this conflict. On one side stood
the management: a board of governors, a director, and an administration
responsible for the daily operations of a premier business school. Their
concerns were mundane but urgent. The dormitories, built with exposed brick and
minimal concrete encasing, had deteriorated badly. IIMA Director Errol D'Souza,
in a letter to alumni, described "second-class bricks" and warned
that "concrete and slabs falling from the roofs" had caused
"damaging consequences for the lives of the residents." Independent
structural engineers assessed that even after astronomical capital expenditure,
the restored dormitories would remain unsafe for habitation. The management's
objective function was clear: optimize for student safety, fiscal prudence, and
institutional growth. Their interest, however, was diffuse. No single
administrator stood to gain personally from demolition. The benefits—safer
buildings, more functional spaces, reduced liability—would be distributed across
thousands of current and future students. There was no concentrated
constituency fighting for demolition.
On the other side stood the alumni: wealthy, influential,
globally connected graduates of the very institution they now sought to
restrain. Their interest was concentrated. For them, the Kahn dormitories were
not merely buildings. They were the physical anchors of memory—the rooms where
they had pulled all-nighters, the corridors where friendships had formed, the
brick arches that had framed their transformation from ambitious students to
corporate elites. Salem Ganapathy, a 1971 graduate, captured this sentiment
when he told ThePrint: "We lived in the dorm about fifty years ago.
Whenever I meet a recent pass out from the institute, I ask them their dorm
room number. It is the love for our shared buildings which connects us
all." Another alumnus, Vishweshwar Raste, framed the opposition in organic
terms: "All the buildings are a part of the campus' body and demolition of
any buildings will be like removing limbs from an organism's body."
The alumni were not merely sentimental. They were organized.
Within days of the Expression of Interest announcement, approximately three
hundred former students created a WhatsApp group called "Save Louis Kahn's
IIMA." A separate Telegram group followed. The alumni forum, with around
forty-five thousand members, became a coordination hub for letters, media
outreach, and legal threats.
What the management faced was a textbook case of Mancur
Olson's Logic of Collective Action: a small, intensely motivated
minority can overwhelm a larger, disorganized majority because the minority's
stakes are high and personal, while the majority's stakes are low and diffuse.
The management had data. The alumni had grief—and grief, when articulated by
the powerful, is a formidable political weapon.
The Weaponization of Heritage
The alumni's first tactical move was to reframe the debate
entirely. They understood intuitively that arguing for "nostalgia"
would sound weak and self-indulgent. So they abandoned the language of
sentiment and adopted the language of global stewardship.
Within weeks, the conversation shifted from "should
these unsafe buildings be replaced?" to "is IIMA willing to commit
cultural vandalism against a modernist masterpiece?"
The rhetorical pivot was masterful. The Council of
Architecture's president, Habeeb Khan, wrote to the IIMA board that the
proposed demolition was "impossible for any respected architectural
firm" to participate in and that the buildings had withstood the 2001
Bhuj earthquake as "a testament to its basic structural safety." The
international letter, signed by over six hundred professionals, declared that
the buildings "represent the finest examples of the late work of Louis
Kahn and demolishing them amounts to an act of cultural vandalism. It seriously
jeopardizes the legacy of Kahn and of modernist architecture, especially in the
Indian subcontinent, where there's a dire need for the conservation of
modernist heritage."
William Whitaker, curator of the Kahn Archives at the
University of Pennsylvania, offered a stark warning: "The school and
the dorms are a unit. Remove one and the magic dissipates, never to
return." Architectural historian William J.R. Curtis, writing in the
Times of India, argued that the entire original campus plan—including faculty
housing designed by Kahn's associate Anant Raje—deserved protection. "With
its layers of protective structure in textured brick, its shaded walkways,
planted sunken courtyard and bold geometrical arches," Curtis wrote,
"the MDC has a timeless air."
Apparently, the batches of the last 7-8 years have missed
out on something profound. But, more on that later.
The management suddenly found itself fighting a war on two
fronts. Domestically, they faced an organized alumni network with deep pockets
and media connections. Globally, they faced the combined moral authority of the
architectural establishment—an establishment for which Louis Kahn occupies a
place akin to Shakespeare in literature or Beethoven in music. The board's
original rationale—safety, cost, functionality—was rendered almost irrelevant.
In the new frame, anyone advocating demolition was not a prudent administrator
but a philistine.
The institute's own director, Errol D'Souza, had written to
alumni questioning "why we should presume that the past is not changeable
and why we should assume that future generations will value things in exactly
the same way that past generations have." It was a reasonable
philosophical question. In the heat of a moral panic, it landed like heresy.
Conservation architect Brinda Somaya, whose firm SNK had
successfully restored the Vikram Sarabhai Library—a project that received
UNESCO recognition in 2017—argued that restoration was both possible and
preferable. She noted that the sample restoration of Dormitory 15 had
demonstrated the viability of the approach, though the institute had found the
results "not satisfactory." Shubhra Raje, a professor at CEPT
University and daughter of Kahn's associate Anant Raje, expressed shock at the
news: "The restoration of dorm 15 and the library are proof of the fact
that the buildings can be restored."
The Asymmetry of Liability
Perhaps the most crucial structural advantage enjoyed by the
alumni was their complete insulation from consequences.
Consider the distribution of risk. If the management
proceeded with demolition, they faced immediate reputational damage from global
architectural bodies, potential boycotts by influential alumni donors, negative
coverage in international media, and legal challenges from preservation groups.
If the management preserved the buildings, they faced continued structural
deterioration, ongoing safety risks to students, legal liability if a slab
collapsed and caused injury or death, and the opportunity cost of stranded
prime real estate on campus.
The alumni, by contrast, bore none of these risks. They did
not have to sleep in the damp, cracking dormitories. They did not have to
answer to a court if a roof fell on a student. They did not have to balance
budgets or explain to faculty why funds were being diverted from academic
programs to brick restoration. An anonymous IIMA alumnus quoted in the Times of
India captured the accusatory tone of many critics: "There needs to be a
thorough investigation of the negligence in maintaining the campus by engineering
and estate management over the past ten years. It seems the IIM-A authorities
have little clue about managing heritage campus beyond fixing Band-Aid and
floating tenders for concrete."
This anonymous alumnus articulated a common refrain: that
the deterioration was the management's fault, and therefore the management
should bear the cost of fixing it. What went unstated was that the alumni were
demanding a solution—preservation—while offering no financial or legal
guarantees.
The management, in its January 1, 2021 withdrawal statement,
acknowledged the bind: "Our first priority as an educational institution
is to the students who come to learn, the academic community, and the faculty
who participate with them on that journey. Expert opinion does inform the core
of our decisions, but we are also driven by the safety of those who utilize the
buildings and are sensitive to the functional requirements of users of the
space, their needs, as well as financial considerations." This was the
language of a trapped administration: acknowledging competing claims while
committing to none.
The Second Offensive
The management did not simply roll over after withdrawing
the Expression of Interest in January 2021. They waited out the immediate media
storm, gathered fresh engineering data, and launched a second, highly
calculated offensive.
In November 2022, the Board of Governors—now chaired by
Pankaj Patel—announced that they were officially stopping all restoration works
on the old campus. Backed by technical reports from the Indian Institute of
Technology Roorkee stating that the brick masonry had "insignificant
residual life" and was "uninhabitable," the management
renewed its push to flatten the fourteen dormitories. This time, they attempted
a narrative compromise. Instead of proposing a complete replacement, they
promised to reconstruct the new buildings in a way that "paid homage"
to Kahn's geometric aesthetic while embedding modern, functional interiors. The
idea was to separate form from substance—to preserve the visual language while
updating the lived experience.
Speaking at a June 2023 meeting with alumni, Chairman Pankaj
Patel presented findings from IIT Roorkee, stating that though theoretically
possible to restore the buildings, it was "not advisable" given their
current condition. Restoration, he said, was "impractical and
prohibitively expensive."
But the alumni were not persuaded. The global network
mobilized again, calling the proposal "skin-deep Americanization"
and "cultural vandalism." The rhetoric had not softened. If
anything, it had intensified.
Then came the real game-changer: an internal intervention.
The Kiran Karnik Committee—an independent review led by the former Nasscom
president and illustrious IIMA alumnus—pulled up the management. The
committee's comprehensive report sharply critiqued the administration for
attempting to dismantle an iconic heritage footprint "without consulting
the alumni." The report explicitly recommended a structural pivot toward
inclusive decision-making and mandatory alumni involvement in long-term spatial
planning. According to alumni accounts, the committee essentially ruled that
the management's approach was fundamentally flawed because it treated the
alumni as external stakeholders rather than co-custodians of the institutional
legacy. Going forward, any major spatial decision would require structured
alumni consultation.
The management had been outmaneuvered not by external
protesters but by their own governance architecture. An alumnus-led committee
had effectively ruled that alumni must have a seat at the table—and a veto over
demolition.
The Current Status: Demolition by Neglect
As of mid-2023, the operational reality on the ground
shifted decisively away from the wrecking ball. The management pivoted to what
can only be described as an elaborate holding pattern.
The institute shelved the 2022 demolition plan. Instead of
pushing for modernization via reconstruction, the official directive shifted
back to an active "rethink" focused on maximum conservation. To
handle this political hot potato, the board appointed a specialized panel of
world-class experts. The first was K.B. Jain, an eminent conservationist who
had worked directly with Louis Kahn in Philadelphia, bringing unparalleled
historical credibility. The second was Marina Tabassum, the renowned Bangladeshi
architect celebrated globally for her innovative contemporary work with exposed
brick, bridging traditional craftsmanship and modern design.
The panel's mandate was to conduct a thorough forensic
survey of the structures and recommend a path forward. But the underlying
engineering nightmare remained unchanged. India has vast experience conserving
stone monuments, but there is a profound lack of technical expertise in
stabilizing distressed, load-bearing exposed brickwork from the modern era.
What the management has effectively done is create a
risk-dilution mechanism. By bringing in Kahn's historical associates and global
brick-architecture experts, they have insulated themselves from future
criticism. If the elite panel concludes that a structural section is physically
impossible to save, the management can say: "Kahn's own disciple said it
couldn't be done." If the panel devises a plan, the management can turn to
the wealthy alumni and say: "This will cost several hundred crores. Fund
it."
Either way, the urgent safety threat is managed by keeping
the buildings non-functional and fenced off. The reputational threat is
neutralized by paying homage to the heritage grid. The issue has been
successfully institutionalized, audited, and committee-fied. But the buildings
are still decaying.
Kolkata-based architect Laurent Fournier offered a sharp
observation on the irony of the situation: "As an architect, this IIM-A
affair is already a great learning. That you can justify the demolition of a
building in the name of 'worshipping' its architect is something new. A sad
intellectual feat! This throws strong light on the reality that heritage is
anonymous, not by accident but in its very nature. Otherwise people who
preserve it can't own it. We must own heritage."
The Psychology of the Elite Alumnus
To understand why the alumni fought so fiercely, one must
move beyond governance mechanics and into psychology. The Kahn dormitories were
not merely buildings to them. They were proof.
The IIMA academic program is famously grueling—a crucible of
case studies, deadlines, and intellectual combat. Alumni look back at their
time there as a rite of passage, a period of transformation that separated them
from the merely ambitious and marked them as part of an elite. The
exposed-brick austerity of Kahn's architecture became the physical metaphor for
that crucible. The shared bathrooms, the sparse rooms, the corridors where
late-night debates unfolded—these were not inconveniences to be endured but
badges to be worn. The harshness of the environment was inseparable from the
rigor of the education.
Salem Ganapathy articulated the frustration felt by many
when he asked: "I understand that the number of courses have increased and
they need more space to accommodate the increasing number of students. But what
disappoints me is that the space was not maintained over the years. Brick
buildings in other countries survive for about one hundred years. Why is it
that only in our country such a beautiful piece of modern architecture loses
its integrity within fifty years?"
This question—why did the buildings decay so
quickly?—contained within it an implicit accusation. If the buildings failed,
it was because the institution failed them. And if the institution failed them,
then perhaps the institution had also failed, in some small way, the alumni who
passed through those halls. To defend the buildings, then, was to defend the
integrity of one's own transformation. To argue for their preservation was to
insist that the crucible remained intact, that the magic had not dissipated.
Demolition would not merely remove bricks; it would retroactively tarnish the
memory of every all-nighter, every breakthrough, every friendship forged in
those rooms.
Director Errol D'Souza's letter to alumni was an appeal to
reason—to the cold, analytical frameworks that IIMA itself taught. "We
felt it necessary to keep you informed as we are the custodians of the Louis
Kahn buildings that have the potential to inspire future generations," he
wrote. "Over the past couple of decades, the buildings have undergone
dilapidation and structural deterioration. The earthquake at the beginning of
the millennium and water seepage through ageing and deterioration of the
exposed brick walls has resulted in large cracks in masonry and periodical
detachments of it in fragments. They are unsafe for living." But reason
was never the battleground. The battleground was identity.
The Irony of Management Education
There is a profound, almost tragic irony at the heart of
this saga. IIM Ahmedabad is globally renowned for teaching the rigorous
application of cost-benefit analysis, risk mitigation, fiduciary
responsibility, and strategic optimization. Its graduates are trained to make
precisely the kind of decision the management attempted: dispassionate,
data-driven, forward-looking. Yet the very people who graduated from this
system completely abandoned these principles when dealing with their own alma
mater.
The alumni did not forget their training; they simply
applied it to a different objective function. Instead of optimizing for the
institute's operational efficiency, they optimized for their own emotional and
identity preservation. This is the ultimate inversion of strategy. In a
hostile takeover, an activist investor identifies a company's vulnerabilities
and exploits them for financial gain. Here, the alumni identified the
institute's vulnerabilities—its dependence on brand equity, its fear of
international scandal, its transient leadership—and exploited them for
sentimental gain.
The open letter signatories made this high-stakes framing
explicit: "The dormitory buildings are intrinsic to the historic core of
IIM-A and cannot be separated formally or experientially from the buildings
around the Louis Kahn plaza. Together they make a singular campus setting with
no precedent nor match in the world. To keep one and not the other, would
destroy the architectural soul of your esteemed campus."
The alumni successfully executed a hostile narrative
takeover. They proved that in high-stakes institutional politics, the
perception of risk is far more powerful than the reality of risk. The
management's calculations about student safety and fiscal prudence were trumped
by the alumni's ability to threaten the institute's most precious asset: its
global reputation. The management was not defeated by irrationality. It was
defeated by a more sophisticated rationality—one that recognized that
intangible assets like brand, reputation, and narrative can be more valuable
than tangible ones, and that those who control the narrative control the
institution.
The Permanent Dead Zone
What is the current state of the Louis Kahn dormitories at
IIM Ahmedabad? They sit in a state of permanent architectural purgatory.
They cannot be safely occupied. The structural reports are
unambiguous on this point. Students are housed elsewhere, in newer facilities
on the expanded campus. They cannot be cost-effectively repaired. The IIT
Roorkee assessment concluded that restoration would be "prohibitively
expensive" and might not even succeed given the extent of decay. They
cannot be cleared to make way for the future. Any attempt at demolition would
reignite the global firestorm, undo the careful consensus-building of the past
two years, and expose the management to renewed accusations of cultural
vandalism.
So they remain. Fenced off. Crumbling. A monument not to
Louis Kahn's genius, but to the power of an elite network to enforce permanent
structural paralysis.
Laurent Fournier's observation cuts to the heart of the
tragedy: "That you can justify the demolition of a building in the name of
'worshipping' its architect is something new. A sad intellectual feat!"
The tragedy of this outcome is that it serves no one's interests. The alumni
who fought so fiercely for preservation have not achieved preservation; they
have achieved stasis. The buildings are not being restored. They are not being
maintained. They are being left to the elements, quietly decaying behind locked
gates. The management has not achieved modernization; it has achieved
paralysis. The prime real estate at the heart of the campus remains stranded,
contributing nothing to student life or institutional growth. And the
students—the current and future students for whom the institute ostensibly
exists—inherit a campus with a dead zone at its center, a monument to their
predecessors' nostalgia rather than a living environment for their own
learning.
The Broader Lessons
The IIM Ahmedabad dormitory saga is not an isolated
incident. It is a case study in a broader structural phenomenon that afflicts
elite institutions worldwide: the capture of governance by successful alumni
who treat the institution as a museum of their own achievements rather than a
living ecosystem for the next generation.
Several lessons emerge from this protracted conflict.
First, brand equity is a hostage surface. The more valuable
an institution's reputation, the more vulnerable it is to narrative attack.
IIMA could have demolished those dorms without consequence if it were a
tier-three engineering college with no global footprint. It was precisely
because the institute had built a world-class brand that it was rendered
powerless. Success created the lever used against it.
Second, concentrated intensity always defeats diffuse
interest. The alumni cared more than the students. They cared more than the
faculty. They cared more than the administration. And because they cared more,
they organized faster, fought harder, and won decisively. This is not a bug in
institutional design; it is a feature. The question is whether any governance
structure can counteract it.
Third, narrative warfare beats empirical data. The
management had structural engineering reports, safety data, and fiscal
projections. The alumni had Louis Kahn's ghost and the moral authority of
global architecture. In a hyper-connected media environment, the story wins.
The numbers lose. This is uncomfortable for institutions that pride themselves
on rationality, but it is the reality of modern governance.
Fourth, elite education does not civilize the ego; it merely
equips it. The alumni who paralyzed IIMA were not irrational radicals. They
were highly trained strategists who understood exactly how to exploit
institutional vulnerabilities. Their education did not make them more
civic-minded or cooperative; it made their selfishness more sophisticated. This
is a sobering truth about meritocracies: they produce graduates who are better
at winning, not necessarily better at governing.
Fifth, the "success tax" is inescapable. Elite
institutions depend on their alumni for endowments, placements, consulting
projects, and brand amplification. This creates an irreversible dependency. The
moment an institution leverages its alumni's power, it implicitly signs away a
portion of its sovereignty. The alumni network becomes a sovereign entity of
its own, holding a permanent veto over the institution's physical and cultural
landscape.
The Unanswered Questions
As the IIM Ahmedabad saga continues to unfold—the expert
panel deliberates, the buildings decay, the management waits—several questions
remain unresolved.
Who bears the liability when something fails? The buildings
are currently unoccupied, which mitigates immediate safety risks. But what if
the decay accelerates? What if a section of wall collapses onto a pathway? What
if a visitor ignores barricades and is injured? The alumni who fought for
preservation have signed no indemnity bonds. The liability remains entirely
with the management.
Can restoration ever be financially viable? The IIT Roorkee
report suggests that full restoration would be "prohibitively
expensive." But "prohibitively" is a matter of perspective. For
a wealthy alumnus with a net worth in the hundreds of crores,
"prohibitive" might be merely "expensive." Will the alumni
who demanded preservation put their money where their nostalgia is? Will they
fund the restoration they insisted upon?
What about the next generation? The alumni who fought this
battle are predominantly from older cohorts—men and women in their forties,
fifties, and sixties for whom the Kahn dormitories are living memory. As those
cohorts age and their intensity wanes, will the next generation of alumni feel
the same attachment? Or will they look at the decaying, fenced-off buildings
and wonder why their predecessors condemned them to live with a dead zone at
the center of campus?
Is there a path forward? The current strategy—appoint
experts, conduct studies, delay decisions—is a holding pattern, not a solution.
Eventually, a decision will have to be made. Either the buildings will be
restored (at enormous cost), demolished (at enormous reputational risk), or
left to collapse on their own (at enormous liability). There is no fourth
option. Physics does not negotiate.
The Inescapable Contradiction
The most profound contradiction at the heart of this saga is
this: the alumni who fought to preserve the Kahn dormitories were fighting for
an experience that no longer exists.
The crucible they remember—the shared bathrooms, the sparse
rooms, the late-night debates in un-air-conditioned corridors—was not merely a
function of architecture. It was a function of an era. The institute has
changed. The student body has changed. The world has changed. Even if the
dormitories were perfectly restored to their 1970s condition, they would not
recreate the 1970s experience.
Director Errol D'Souza acknowledged this uncomfortable truth
in his December 2020 letter: "In today's world our experience is that
students hardly use these shared spaces as they have gravitated to virtual
modes of interacting." This was perhaps the most controversial statement
in his letter—and the most honest. The architecture of "meeting" that
Kahn so carefully designed belongs to a world before smartphones, before social
media, before air-conditioned comfort became an expectation rather than a
luxury. Today's students, D'Souza noted, prefer attached toilets and private
spaces. They interact online as much as in person. The crucible has changed.
But the alumni cannot accept this. To accept it would be to
acknowledge that their own experience—so formative, so transformative—cannot be
replicated. And if it cannot be replicated, then perhaps it was not the
architecture that made them who they are. Perhaps it was something else.
Perhaps it was the rigor, the competition, the selection. Perhaps the buildings
were merely containers, not sources. That is a difficult truth to swallow. It
is easier to fight for bricks.
The Verdict
What, then, are we to make of the IIM Ahmedabad dormitory
saga?
It is, on one level, a story about the power of organized
sentimentality. A small group of determined alumni, armed with global
connections and moral authority, successfully overrode the rational
decision-making of a world-class management institution. They proved that in
the battle between utility and identity, identity usually wins.
It is, on another level, a story about the structural
vulnerabilities of elite institutions. IIMA's dependence on its brand, its
alumni network, and its global reputation created precisely the leverage that
was used against it. The institute's greatest assets became its greatest
liabilities.
It is, on a deeper level, a story about the limits of
meritocracy. The alumni who paralyzed IIMA were the products of its
system—trained to analyze, optimize, and execute. They used those skills not to
build but to veto. Their education did not make them better stewards; it made
them more effective obstructionists.
And it is, finally, a story about the tragedy of
institutional capture. The buildings are neither preserved nor replaced. The
management is neither decisive nor free. The students inherit a campus with a
wound at its center. Everyone lost. No one won.
Architectural historian William J.R. Curtis, concluding his
Times of India op-ed, urged a focus on "protecting Kahn's vision for the
campus as a whole from debasing and destructive interference." But
protecting a vision is not the same as protecting buildings. And protecting
buildings is not the same as protecting an institution. The alumni may have
saved the bricks. Whether they saved IIMA is another question entirely.
The Way Forward—If One Exists
Is there any way out of this paralysis? Governance experts
have proposed several structural reforms that could prevent future captures of
this nature.
One proposal involves fiduciary decoupling and legal
indemnification. If external stakeholders—including alumni associations—legally
block the decommissioning of a safety-compromised asset, they should be
required to sign indemnity bonds assuming civil and criminal liability for any
structural failures, alongside legally binding endowments to cover maintenance
costs. This would force activists to move from abstract moral posturing to
concrete financial exposure.
Another proposal centers on charter-based automation.
Hardcoding infrastructure lifespans into institutional charters, creating
independent Technical and Safety Audit Committees whose decisions on structural
safety automatically override both the Board and external stakeholders, would
give administrators a perfect shield: "Our hands are legally tied."
A third approach involves stakeholder diversification.
Formally embedding current students, faculty unions, and future infrastructure
planners into spatial planning committees with voting rights would flip the
moral asymmetry. When a nostalgic billionaire is confronted not by a defensive
administrator but by a current student saying, "Your nostalgia is
compromising my safety," the dynamics shift significantly.
But these are long-term solutions for future crises. They do
nothing for the buildings that stand—or crumble—today. An anonymous IIMA
alumnus quoted in the Times of India in February 2021 expressed a hopeful view:
"In the West, businesspersons and eminent personalities who wish to create
a legacy are often associated with the preservation of heritage structures and
things of great beauty. In India, only a handful of businesspersons do that.
Hopefully, things will change and India's rich heritage will be protected by
legacy builders."
The hope is noble. The reality is messier. Legacy builders,
it turns out, are also legacy protectors—and sometimes the legacy they protect
most fiercely is their own.
Conclusion: The Autophagous Institution
The IIM Ahmedabad dormitory saga reveals a deeply unsettling
truth about elite institutions: they are autophagous—they can be consumed by
the very excellence they produce.
Systemic rigor produces elite graduates. Elite graduates
accumulate power, influence, and global connectivity. That power, when turned
inward, can paralyze the institution that created it. The graduates do not
intend harm. They intend preservation. But preservation, when weaponized,
becomes a form of slow violence—a death by a thousand consultations, a
demolition by neglect.
The management wanted to fix a concrete and brick problem.
They failed because they forgot a fundamental rule of the modern prestige
economy: when your brand is worth everything, you can be made to pay anything
to protect it.
The buildings will likely remain standing for years, perhaps
decades, gradually decaying behind their fences. The expert panel will
deliberate. The alumni will watch. The management will wait. And the
students—the current and future students—will inherit a campus with a monument
to the past at its center, a monument that serves no purpose except to remind
everyone who passes that institutions are not governed by reason alone. They
are governed by memory. By identity. By the fierce, irrational love of those who
passed through and refuse to let go.
The container has become more sacred than the
contents. And the institution, trapped by the brilliant minds it fought so hard
to cultivate, quietly rots at its core.
Reflection
The IIM Ahmedabad saga is not merely a story about
buildings. It is a story about the limits of rationality in human affairs. The
management had the data. The alumni had the memories. In a perfectly rational
world, data would have won. But we do not live in a perfectly rational world.
We live in a world where people fall in love with places, where identity
becomes anchored to physical space, where the fear of losing one's past can
override any calculation about the future.
This is not necessarily a flaw. Attachment to place is what
makes us human. The alumni's love for their dormitories—however inconvenient,
however expensive—is a real and valid emotion. The tragedy is not that they
loved too much. The tragedy is that love, when combined with power, became a
prison.
The buildings cannot be saved in any meaningful sense. They
will continue to decay. The alumni who fought for them will age. The students
who never knew them will inherit the problem. And eventually, perhaps, a future
generation will make the decision that this generation could not: to let go.
Until then, the bricks stand. Fenced off. Crumbling. A
monument to the beautiful, terrible, inescapable fact that the institutions we
build to shape us will eventually be shaped by us—and sometimes, we shape them
into tombs.
References
Dinamalar. (2021, January 1). IIM-A revokes decision
to raze iconic buildings by Louis Kahn.
The Hindu. (2020, December 31). Council of
Architecture, architects urge IIM-A not to demolish dorms.
BusinessLine. (2023, June 18). Reconstructing the
legacy of Louis Kahn at IIM-A.
SURFACE Magazine. (2021, January 13). Demolition
Scrapped for Louis Kahn Dormitories in India.
The Times of India. (2021, February 11). IIM-Ahmedabad
writes letter, no spirit say stakeholders.
TheWire. (2021, January 1). IIM Ahmedabad Rolls Back
Decision to Demolish 'Iconic' Dorms Designed by Louis Kahn.
The Indian Express. (2021, January 2). After
protests, IIM-A drops plan to rebuild student dorms designed by Louis Kahn.
ThePrint. (2020, December 26). *IIM-Ahmedabad alumni
slam demolish drive, say buildings in other nations stand for 100 yrs*.
The Indian Express. (2020, December 25). Explained:
Why IIM-Ahmedabad wants to raze the legacy of Louis Kahn.
The Times of India. (2021, January 10). Protecting
Kahn's IIM-Ahmedabad campus plan (Op-ed by William J.R. Curtis).
Comments
Post a Comment