Indian students say trumpeting salaries attract criminals

Booming India's top business school may be proud to trumpet its graduates' lucrative job offers, but some students are demanding a stop to the common practice, saying it may tip off criminals and cause "personal problems."

To the average Indian, Gaurav Agarwal and Venkatesh Shankaraman, who graduate this year from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, hit the jackpot -- Agarwal landed a London job at Barclays Capital for US$193,000 a year, while Shankaraman will reportedly take home about US$70,000 next year from an unidentified employer.

Such salaries are high by Western standards and a fortune in India. Therein lies the problem, say the two students.

"Salary details, especially when they are above normal com-pensation levels, tend to catch the attention of unscrupulous elements and could cause immense physical as well psychological distress," they wrote in an e-mail to the school's director, P.G. Apte.

Their offers were publicized without their consent and have "caused a lot of personal problems for us," they wrote, without giving details.

Agarwal Shankaraman's offers were front-page news in India, where media gush over signs of the country's economic boom -- and where telling people your income isn't frowned on as it is in most Western countries.

The Times of India newspaper said the students had "created history." The Press Trust of India news agency headlined its story "Job Hunting: IIM graduates make a kill!"

Despite hype, Agarwal and Shankaraman said in their e-mail that since the news was released, "our individual experiences ... have not been pleasant."

Their "were inundated with calls after their salaries were made public," they wrote, saying such information is "very personal and should never be discussed in public."

The Times of India quoted the e-mail yesterday. Apte said it was accurate, and that next year the school would try to keep such information private.