January 22, 2025

Despite raising the hope that it will be different, Narendra Modi’s government is increasingly acting to maintain the status quo in some areas and continue with regressive thinking in others. Its latest order of asking the IIM’s to apply the policy of reservation in faculty recruitment is regressive. It will mean that the management learning institutes will no longer be able to hire the best talent.

If one recognizes the fact that an institute can be as good as its faculty, forcing any institute to hire anyone but the best is like asking it not to be good. Is the government trying to dilute the high standard that the IIM’s have maintained since inception? The IIT’s and the Central universities have already been arm twisted into toeing this line. The IIM’s should be spared this in the interests of world class learning.

Although HRD minister Prakash Javadekar had modified the draconian clauses in the draft IIM Act proposed by his predecessor Smriti Irani, the reservation clause has remained and is now being enforced. The government is not realizing that if a person deserving affirmative action cannot bring himself up to freely compete with his peers till such a high level, than he does not deserve to be held by hand any longer.

The reservation policy in India can be grudgingly justified till the graduation level. But in higher education and faculty recruitment it has the potential of saddling the country with undeserving and mediocre talent. Faculty recruitment by reservations will put mediocre teachers in charge which in turn will produce mediocre pupils. That is not the situation India wants 10 years from now.You cannot have mediocre teachers appointed through reservation and world class institutes at the same time. World class institutes need world class teachers and they can only be recruited through merit based selection procedure.

If a person who has used the quota system to reach a position where he can apply to be a professor in any higher education institute, he should always compete on merit. Otherwise, he is himself admitting that the quota has not helped him make a better person in all these years. In that case, there is no merit in the argument that he be allowed the job as he is ST/SC, OBC, or any of the other categories. Our future generations should not be subjected to half-baked learning from undeserving people. They deserve the best teachers and those cannot be appointed through reservation.