Today's The Hindu—not for the first time—had an extra front page
devoted to an advertisement from IIPM, complete with gushing top-half
copy masquerading as news reporting. Over the past year or so, Arindam
Chaudhuri's snake-oil salesman grin has been a frequent visitor to the
back page of The Hindu, and many an innocent exclamation mark has been
sacrificed to extol the virtues of IIPM. I can't even begin to imagine
the amount of money that must change hands for this kind of coverage.
I'm not sure if it's more depressing that IIPM has accumulated such vast
quantities of money by selling snake-oil, or that The Hindu is happy to
soak it up and print acres of whatever drivel is sent its way.
(For those who are wondering, IIPM is the
Indian Institute of Planning and Management,
an unaccredited business school that is in the habit of
suing
anyone who points out that their advertisements are full of lies.)