Missing scholars: social exclusion at the Indian institutes of management

Abstract

The Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) suffer from an acute social diversity deficit in the composition of their faculty bodies. Using administrative data obtained under Right to Information Act (RTI), we show that one of the central drivers of this diversity deficit is the IIMs failure to pay attention to questions of diversity and inclusion in their doctoral programmes that account for a third of all current faculty members across IIMs. We document the omissions and commissions of IIM doctoral programmes across four decades and conclude that IIMs are responsible for a phenomenon we describe as missing scholars. A conservative estimate of missing scholars suggests that this phenomenon accounts for at least 130% of IIM-trained scholars currently on the faculty of IIMs. We argue that IIMs must take immediate ameliorative actions as part of a programme of restorative, rather than retributive reparation.