.. just as another blogger Varna received a legal notice and a threat to be sued for 175 crores, in the ongoing saga of IIPM v/s freedom of speech, MSM seems to have woken up and printed its first story.

But Varna’s story first. She blogged about a debate she participated in – where she was told she is too aggressive for a woman. The funniest part is that today is Vijaydashami and in the south we celebrate it because the Mother Goddess killed Mahishasur. Aggression, my left toe nail :). And as in the case of Rashmi, hoardes seeminglyloyal to the corporation descended on her blogsite and began sexually slandering her.

I know many of your dirty secrets. Especially about how you cheat on your many boyfreinds for money. I am glad you have not let your shadow in on IIPM.

This is one of the comments left on her blog by someone claiming to be IIPM #1. One of the things that can reassure blogdom is if Iipm puts out a statement disassociating itself, and unambiguously condemning, comments of this nature.

This is sexual slander. And i guess any women’s cell will take it up and fight on the victim’s behalf. I hope that all concerned who are resorting to this sort of defence of the corporation realise what they are upto.

Back to the MSM. HT today has an article on this, here.

FOR THE first time in the history of Indian cyberia, it appears that a blogger has had to quit his job for expressing his personal opinion on a particular educational institute, and on the claims that it makes through its advertisements.

Blogger and Mumbai resident Gaurav Sabnis, who till recently worked with IBM Mumbai’s server department had, in his personal blog gauravsabnis.blogspot.com, linked to an article in JAM magazine that questioned the veracity of IIPM’s advertising. He had added a comment of his own, raising questions about the educational qualifications of IIPM’s founder, author and management guru Arindam Chaudhuri.

IIPM reacted by issuing Sabnis with an e-notice that threatened him with a lawsuit if he did not withdraw his post. According to Sabnis, IIPM also got in touch with his employers, IBM, and attempted to pressurise them to have him remove the blog posts.

Failing that, IIPM reportedly told IBM, their students would burn the ThinkPads that IBM had supplied to IIPM.

The story goes on to quote A Sandip, dean of IIPM

“We are not concerned about the blog, and in no way has the written matter on the blog affected us,” says A. Sandip, IIPM’s all-India dean.
“But we are going to take legal action against the blogger for defamation. The person is identifiable. It is a legal notice against the person and not the blog.”

Read rest of the story here.

I am personally flabbergasted. ‘In no way has the written matter on the blog affected us” but we are all so incredibly bored of planning and management that ” we are going to take legal action against the blogger for defamation”. thereby allowing something that didn’t affect to come into public purview, create a ruckus amongst influencers in blogland, and drag our institutes own name through mud, just because we can. Makes perfectly logical sense 🙂

Note: the bits in quotes are Prof. Sandip’s. The italics are my remarks. My legal firm has a bunch of very fine litigators. Thank you.

Update:
Express has this piece here.