IIM placement season generates a particular kind of media coverage in India — the annual ritual of astronomical salary figures, investment banking offers, and consulting packages that prompt both celebration and anxiety in equal measure.
What the Numbers Mean
The average and median package figures that make headlines are real. They also tell an incomplete story. The distribution is extremely wide, the highest offers go to a small number of students with specific profiles, and the purchasing power parity of an international offer versus a domestic one involves considerable arithmetic before the comparison is meaningful.
None of this is a criticism of IIM graduates or the institutions. The placement figures represent genuine market validation of a genuine education. The point is that the way these numbers circulate in public discourse creates impressions that do not quite match the underlying reality.
The Larger Question
What concerns me more than the salary figures is the concentration of the best management talent in the country into a narrow set of sectors — investment banking, consulting, FMCG — that serve a small fraction of the population. The incentive structures make this rational for individuals. Whether it is good for the country is a different question.
There are IIM graduates doing extraordinary work in sectors that do not generate headlines. That story is harder to tell but more interesting to me than the annual package spectacle.