Another story to add fire to India's anti reservation row. Scheduled caste and scheduled tribes graduates of premier Indian institutes of management get salaries that are 15-22% lower than their general category peers. While SC/ST students of the class of 2006 at IIM-Ahmedabad were offered an average of Rs 8.2 lakh in annual salary, general candidates were offered Rs 9.7 lakh, according to 2006 salary and performance data of IIM-A. The institute had 55 SC/ST students in a batch of 235.
At IIM-Kozikode, SC/ST students got an average annual package of Rs 7.06 lakh, 21.72% lower than Rs 9.02 lakh offered on an average to general candidates. IIM-Lucknow and IIM-Indore also showed a similar trend. IIM-Bangalore and IIM-Calcutta do not conduct such surveys though IIM-Calcutta director Shekhar Choudhary confirmed the salary gap, saying, “What can you expect of a student with a score of 160 compared with a score of 198?”
Interestingly, the SC/ST students’ average score at the Common Admission Test stands at 64 percentile opposed to general category students’ 98 percentile, according to Centre for Forecasting & Research, a market research firm that conducts annual B-school surveys.
The findings will be cannon fodder for the anti-quota lobby which fears the proposed 54% reservation will lead to a fall in the quality of graduates and the brand image of premier educational institutes.
When the 54% reservation kicks in, IIM-A will add 151 students to its existing batch size of 250, while IIM-C will be adding 142 more seats.
Pro-quota lobbyist BL Mungekar, member of the Moily Committee (formed to suggest measures to implement quota) and the Planning commission, says, “It’s the job of IIM directors to narrow the salary gap. IIMs are raising more questions than IITs on this (quota) issue.”
Today, it is more difficult to get into an IIM than into Harvard or Stanford. “About 98 percentile GMAT score (like CAT) are needed to get into an IIM. That kind of score can get a seat in any top global institute,” says IIM-A director Bakul Dholakia.