IIMB faculty, fellow demand 'social inclusion' at premier B-schools

'Only 2 out of over 500 IIM faculty members are from reserved categories'

 A doctoral student and a faculty of the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB) have raised the issue of “utter lack of diversity and social inclusion” in the admissions to doctoral programmes and appointment of faculty at premier B-schools.

They have asked the heads of the institutions to “introspect” as to why just two out of over 500 faculty members have been recruited under the reserved categories.

“We want to bring to your attention years of willful circumvention of constitutional mandates and statutory provisions governing admissions at public institutions such as the IIMs,” Siddharth Joshi and Deepak Malgha said in an open letter to the heads of all IIMs, ahead of the meeting of their directors on August 28.

 They, however, declared at the outset that they were writing the open letter to heads of the IIMs in their “personal capacity.”

While Joshi is a fellow at the IIMB, Malgha is a faculty at the elite management school.

“Of the over 500 faculty members at IIMs where data is available, only two are from the SC (Scheduled Castes) group, and reportedly IIMs currently do not have any representation from the STs (scheduled Tribes) group on its faculty,” they noted.

Joshi and Malgha said one of the reasons for the dismal representation of the faculty from the reserved categories is the IIMs policy for admissions to their Fellow Program in Management (FPM).

“The FPM admissions have for a number of years turned a blind eye to the questions of diversity and social inclusion. One direct consequence of the IIM-FPM programmes not making a concerted effort to recruit a socially diverse doctoral student body is the utter lack of diversity on the faculty bodies at various IIMs,” they said.

In order to break decades of deafening silence on diversity and inclusion within the IIM-FPM programmes, the collective leadership at IIMs must initiate “a serious introspective dialogue,” they demanded.

“A continued silence on diversity and inclusion will constitute a direct betrayal of this trust reposed in IIMs by the Indian society,” they added.