IIM Ahmedabad Director to Meet With Teachers, Discuss SC/ST Quota Implementation
New Delhi: Faculty members at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad have forced authorities to call a meeting on implementing SC/ST reservations in the postgraduate Fellow Programme in Management. The director of the institute, Errol D'Souza, will meet teachers on Tuesday to discuss the demand, according to The Telegraph.
Quotas in the FPM admissions – or lack thereof – across IIMs became an issue of public debate after researchers pointed out the dismal diversity record at the faculty level in the institutes. In their research, Deepak Malghan and Siddharth Joshi pointed out that of the 642 IIM faculty members they could gather information on, only four were from the SC category and there was not even a single ST. They trace this lack of diversity back to the post-graduate programmes at the IIMs – most faculty members have done the postgraduate from an IIM.
Other IIMs, including in Tiruchirappali, Shillong, Rohtak and others, have implemented reservations in the FPM after alumni raised the issue with them. However, IIM Ahmedabad has not yet complied. All IIMs implement the constitutional reservation policy in the postgraduate diploma or master’s courses, but did not do so in the FPM until the diversity problem was raised.
“Admitting students from varying social backgrounds will bring diversity to the campus. It’s in the institute’s own interest to implement reservation,” a teacher at IIM Ahmedabad told The Telegraph.
Also read: Despite Internal and External Pressure, IIM Ahmedabad Is Ignoring Its Social Diversity Problem
Last week, alumni from the reputed institute had written to D'Souza, asking that he implement the reservations immediately.
"World over, great institutions of higher learning recognize the value of social diversity in improving the learning experience for all students. Indeed, in your own memorable convocation address in 2018, you had declared that the “diversity fairy” has landed on our IIMA campus. Alas, the fairy seems to have missed the most gaping diversity hole on campus. In 2019, it is unconscionable that IIMA continues to defy constitutional and statutory mandates in its doctoral admissions. As you know, graduates of IIMA doctoral programmes not only teach at IIMA but also in several other leading management schools in the country," their letter said.
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