IIMs to Implement up to 50% Faculty Reservation

Soon after the IIM Bill was approved, granting autonomy to IIMs, the union cabinet has asked the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) to reserve almost half the faculty positions for candidates belonging to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

As far as the reservations are concerned, there are no other changes. This step has been taken to avoid hurting the quality of instruction at schools.
The Union Cabinet cleared the IIM Bill, 2022 that aims to grant ‘complete autonomy with adequate accountability’ to the top B-Schools of the country and allow them to grant degrees instead of diplomas. The Bill that has been doing rounds for several years now has finally taken a hold giving IIMs an autonomous status in terms of administration, recruitment and daily functioning.

Earlier, IIMs were not authorized to award degrees so they have been awarding post-graduate diplomas in management instead. While these diploma degrees were treated equivalent to MBAs, the equivalence is not universally recognized.

The HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar considers the approval given by the Union Cabinet is a historic decision. According to him, the bill will ensure IIMs are board driven, with the chairperson and director selected by the board, which further means neither the human resource development (HRD) ministry nor the president of India will have a say in the selection of top executives at any of the IIMs.