Quota for economically weaker sections puts IIMs in a bind

NEW DELHI: The NDA government’s signature social welfare push via a 10% quota for students from economically weaker sections (EWS) has put IIMs in a bind. IIMs want to implement the new quota for general category. But this will lead to a bigger student intake as the EWS Act requires that neither admissions under existing reserved categories (SC/ST/OBC) nor admissions under the general category be reduced while implementing the EWS quota.

Institutes will have to admit 25% more students to comply with the law. A larger intake will throw faculty-student ratios out of kilter and strain infrastructure, IIMs feel.

IIM Ahmedabad and IIM Lucknow have yet to admit any student from the EWS general category this year while others including IIMs Calcutta, Udaipur, Nagpur and Kozhikode are also in a fix. They are unsure of being able to meet the 2020 deadline to increase the student intake under this category.



“The institute has decided not to implement 10% EWS reservation for the academic period 2019-21 due to infrastructure restrictions. We will need to add more classrooms and dorms to the campus to accommodate these additional students before even initiating the plan. Besides infrastructural hurdle, we also have to think about the student-faculty ratio,” said a spokesperson at IIM Ahmedabad. The IIM has admitted 385 students this year.

“It is a big challenge for institutes as the overall increase would be 25% in order to accommodate 10% EWS general category students. This means we would have to ramp up hostel facilities and recruit more teachers,” said Himanshu Rai, director, IIM Indore.

This year IIM Kozhikode has been able to admit just three students in the EWS category in a batch of 480 students, not even 1% of the total.

“Next year when we implement the full 10% EWS reservation…it will be a bit of a challenge,” said Shubhasis Dey, Chairperson, Admissions Committee at IIM Kozhikode. IIM Nagpur has managed to admit four students from this category in the 122-student strong incoming batch of 2019-21 (3% EWS).

Like other IIMs, Nagpur too is aiming to implement the full 10% quota by the 2020-21 academic year by making necessary arrangement for infrastructure. IIM Calcutta has been able to admit 18 students from this category this year in the batch of 480 (EWS less than 4%) and is planning to increase the intake over coming years.

“Infrastructure is certainly an issue to meet the 10% target,” said the media spokesperson at IIM Calcutta. “Next year IIM U will be able to meet the 10% target but are hoping to get government support for infrastructure,” said N Viswanathan, Member, Programs Committee at IIM Udaipur.