Issues of Vacancies in IIMs For Reserved Faculty Positions

Synopsis: There are larger vacancies in IIMs for reserved faculty positions from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, and the Other Backward Classes communities. The unavailability of deserving candidates is one of the reasons for that.

Introduction:

According to an RTI, older Indian Institutes of Management(IIMs) are lagging behind the newer IIMs in enforcing the quota rule. For example, IIM-Kolkata has no SC or ST faculty member and only two OBC faculty members.

Does IIMs oppose equality?

It is not like IIMs are not trying to fill the vacancies, there are many reasons behind that. Also, IIMs have taken many steps towards ensuring equality, such as,

1. The IIMs fulfill the government-mandated admission quotas for SC, ST, and OBC candidates.
2. Apart from that they also implement certain own inventions towards inclusion. For example, IIM-Banglore has taken the following measures towards inclusion. Such as:
   • The IIM-B provided reservations to the students with a disability even before the Persons with Disabilities Act, 1995.
   • IIM-B set up a dedicated Office of Disability Services in 2009. This functions as a nodal support point for students with disability. This helps in studying the needs of each student and proactive recommendation for disabled students.
   • All these steps resulted in global recognition with the NCPEDP-Mphasis Universal Design Award. The award for IIM-B highlighted the pioneering work in promoting accessibility and ensuring a life of equality and dignity.

Then, why there are large no. of vacancies on reserved positions in IIMs?

But according to the recent report the IIMs are also facing certain challenges. Such as shortage of qualified candidates from reserved categories. But this is not a simple thing to fill up. This is due to the following reasons.

• IIMs need to balance between the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act 2019 and the Indian Institutes of Management Act, 2017.
  (The IIM Act recognizes IIMs as Institutions of National Importance and demands their fulfilment to global standards.)
• Admitting potential students to doctoral programmes is a challenge. The alumni discussion reveals that the reserved category students pursue MBA programmes to employ themselves in a good job. So that, they can move up the societal ladder quickly. But they don’t want to pursue the Research and not showing interest in the faculty postings.

How the IIMs can tackle the challenge?

The IIMs have to launch a specific pre-doctoral programme to fulfil the following objectives.

1. Encourage under-privileged category students to take up research and Faculty positions.
2. Encourage them to do research by offering financial incentives.

This can improve the necessary talents in the long run. Further, It will also improve the social positions of the under-privileged persons. For example, IIMB in 2019 launched the N.S. Ramaswamy Pre-doctoral Programme. It is a self-funded academic and mentoring initiative.

The other Higher Educational Institutions(HEI) in India have to follow the path of IIMB. It will fulfil the large vacancies in the HEI’s.

Source: The Hindu