More diversity in faculty hires at newer IIMs

Although a few of the newer Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) have made some progress in hiring faculty from Scheduled Castes and Tribes, and Other Backward Classes during the last 12 months, these communities make up lower than 10% of faculty at the older, extra prestigious IIMs, in response to information obtained via RTI requests by a Ph.D graduate from IIM-Bengaluru.

Members of the Global Alumni Network, a bunch of about 300 alumni of the IITs and IIMs preventing for social justice in these elite establishments, welcomed the restricted progress, however requested why the older IIMs are being allowed to interrupt the regulation “with impunity”.

Also learn: Over 60% OBC, SC positions vacant in IIMs

At the very high of the status record, IIM-Kolkata has no SC or ST faculty, nevertheless it does have two OBC faculty members, who make up lower than 3% of its complete power of 77. IIM-Bengaluru has 6% of its 103 faculty from reserved classes: 3 SC, 1 ST and a pair of OBC group members. IIM Ahmedabad stated it “does not maintain category wise information for faculty” and failed to supply any data to the RTI filed by Siddharth Joshi.

Of the opposite first era IIMs, Lucknow has lower than 5% of faculty from reserved classes, whereas Kozhikode has lower than 10%. Indore echoed IIM-A, and stated no data was out there. All information is for December 2020.

“The key is to implement reservations in the doctoral programmes, so that the pool of diverse candidates available for faculty hires increases. But most of these PhD graduates [from reserved categories] are now filling up positions at the newer IIMs, as the older IIMs are still resistant,” stated Dr. Joshi.

Some of the second era IIMs have achieved higher. The Institute at Shillong has greater than 30% of its faculty from reserved classes, whereas Raipur has 25% and Jammu greater than 22%. At the opposite excessive is IIM Nagpur, which doesn’t have a single faculty member from any of the reserved classes.

To perceive the faculty recruitment course of, Dr. Joshi’s RTI queries additionally requested for a break down of the variety of candidates who utilized from every class utilized, have been interviewed, provided jobs, and accepted employment at every IIM between January 2019 and December 2020.

The response confirmed that in some circumstances, a whole bunch of candidates have been listed however none made it via the hiring course of.

At IIM Lucknow, for instance, there have been 888 candidates for faculty positions over the 2 12 months interval, together with 197 from reserved classes. Only seven have been shortlisted for interviews, and none have been provided jobs. Of the 691 candidates from the overall class, 59 have been shortlisted and 12 have been provided jobs.

“The IIMs cannot continue to use the excuse of unavailability of qualified candidates. They need to be intentional, and scout for applicants, as done in affirmative action programmes by the world’s top western universities,” stated Anil Wagde, an alumnus of IIM Kolkata. “They also need to ensure that biases are not allowed to play out through the shortlisting and interview process.”

Since 2019, when Parliament handed the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, the IIMs have been actively lobbying the Education Ministry to exempt them from the regulation’s necessities to order faculty positions for SCs, STs, OBCs and Economically Weaker Sections (EWS). They had earlier cited a 50-year previous Central authorities memo which exempted scientific and technical posts from reservations.

In November that 12 months, the Education Ministry instructed the Lok Sabha that the 20 IIMs had solely 11 faculty from the SC/ST classes. On Monday, it instructed the Lok Sabha that the IIMs have crammed 21 posts reserved for SCs and 5 reserved for STs, together with 36 reserved for OBCs, which remains to be far beneath the legally mandated quotas.

“There has been some incremental progress, but the IIMs are still not actually implementing the law. The problem is that most are not taking any intentional steps to change the situation, just paying lip service. The older IIMs are acting with impunity,” stated Mr. Wagde.