Dalit IIM Graduates are paid less

Dalit IIM grads are paid less
MATHANG SESHAGIRI

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2006 10:45:34 AM]
BANGALORE: Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) may have boycotted B-school surveys , but business magazines and research organisations have used the Right to Information Act to come up with embarrassing disclosures : Dalit pass-outs get less money than general category students and the B-schools have carried out little research given the kind of money invested in them.

New Delhi-based research organisation Cfore, which conducts an annual B-school survey for a national weekly, used the RTI Act to expose the fact that SC/ST students are paid way below general category students during placements and also that the recipient of lowest salary offer is usually a Dalit. The survey found that the average salary for a Dalit is at least Rs 2 lakh less than the average salary at IIMs.

At IIM-A , while the average salary was Rs 9.6 lakh per annum , Dalit students were offered Rs 7.8 lakh. IIMs reserve 22.5% seats for SC/ST students.

“During the survey, we found that SC/ST students were mostly recruited by PSUs. These students have lesser work experience and they are usually slow-track and take three years to complete the course instead of two,’’ Premchand Palety, director , Cfore, told TOI.

G K Nagaraj, placement officer at IIM-B , disagreed. “You need to have a microscopic view, not macroscopic. I would say even among general students about 40% do not come into the bracket of average salary offered to SC/ST students . Last year, a Dalit student at IIM-B was offered $58,000 by McKinsey.’’

Though all six IIMs had decided to boycott B-school surveys saying they were unscientific and did little service to society, IIM-A volunteered to offer information. In case of other IIMs, RTI was used.

“Using the RTI Act we sought information about research carried out by IIM faculty and the results aren’t encouraging . Given the kind of investment made, there isn’t any path-breaking research. Newer IIMs like Indore and Kozhikode do not event figure among the top 10 B-schools in terms of intellectual capital. IIM Kozhikode, for instance, has just 17 faculty, and five of them are not on campus. This is a really poor number for any IIM,’’ Palety said.

UNEASY TRUTH

Average yearly salary of Dalit students is Rs 2 lakh less than general category students. These students have lesser work experience, are slowtrack and usually take three years to complete the two-year course IIMs have not carried out any path-breaking research despite the kind of money that is pumped into them


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