For the past two days, IIM Ahmedabad has been in the news. In the news for the reason that they have chosen to ignore the constitutional provisions of reservation in their PhD admission process of 2020, which are mandated by the Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Admissions) Act, 2006. It has not only triggered anger among the prospective scholars of the ST, SC and OBC communities, but also among scholars who consistently say that social diversity necessarily doesn’t lead to inefficiency.
Having known all these facts and the constitutional norms of the Government of India, IIM Ahmedabad has not yet notified the Reservation Policy Norms in its PhD admission process of 2020 through their website, which resealed last week.
In fact, IIM Ahmedabad is the only institution out of all 20 IIMs, that has ignored to notify about the government of India’s reservation norms on the website for PhD admissions. The information provided in the table gives the exact situation of other IIMs with regard to the affirmative action policy implementation in its PhD admissions collected through respective IIM websites.
Out of all 20 IIMs, the 6 IIMs which opened PhD admissions for 2020 mention (5 IIMs) the GoI reservation norms, but not the IIM Ahmedabad in their website. Out of the other 14 IIMs, 12 IIMs have not yet released their admission processes for the 2020 programs and the remaining 2 IIMs have no PhD programs in their institutions.
| S. No. | Institution | GoI Reservation notification in FPM/PhD admission process for 2020 through respective institute’s portal | |
| 1 | IIM – Indore | Not yet released | |
| 2 | IIM – Kozhikode | Not yet released | |
| 3 | IIM – Rohtak | Not yet released | |
| 4 | IIM – Raipur | Notified | |
| 5 | IIM – Ranchi | Not yet released | |
| 6 | IIM – Kashipur | Not yet released | |
| 7 | IIM – Ahmedabad | Not Notified | |
| 8 | IIM – Lucknow | Not yet released | |
| 9 | IIM – Tiruchirapalli | Notified | |
| 10 | IIM – Bangalore | Notified | |
| 11 | IIM – Udaipur | Not yet released | |
| 12 | IIM – Calcutta | Notified | |
| 13 | IIM – Shillong | Not yet released | |
| 14 | IIM – Nagpur | No FPM/PhD Program | |
| 15 | IIM – Visakhapatnam | Not yet released | |
| 16 | IIM – Bodh Gaya | Notified | |
| 17 | IIIM – Amritsar | No FPM/PhD Program | |
| 18 | IIM – Sambalpur | Not yet released | |
| 19 | IIM – Sirmaur | Not yet released | |
| 20 | IIM – Jammu | Not yet released |
It’s not the first time IIM Ahmedabad has done this. There have been so many instances in which it has deliberately ignored affirmative action policies both in the admission of students and faculty recruitment.
With this above information, I would conclude by saying that there are larger problems of class and caste identities, social diversity and the representation that are largely becoming evident in our academic spaces.