Need to bring in students from different backgrounds, different unrepresented communities and include gender equality
India has a rich and vibrant legacy of diversity and inclusion in the education system. One can go back 2500 years when students from different backgrounds and geographies came to great universities like Takshila, which has made a significant contribution to our advanced education system today. However, of late, if we look at some current statistics and especially in B-schools, much can be done to increase diversity and inclusion.
For example, across all IIMs, there has been an 11 percent drop in female students in the 2021-23 MBA batch. Also, there is a tendency towards engineering students in the admission process. About 60 per cent of B-school students in India are engineers. Students from different backgrounds, different unrepresented communities need to be brought in and gender equality should be included. The Government of India and various regulators have emphasized diversity and inclusion as an essential aspect of the ranking of multiple organizations, especially in B-schools and have also made it a part of the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF).
See Ravi Kumar Jain, Symbiosis Hyderabad; Pawan Kumar Singh, Director, IIM Tiruchirappalli; Arun Kumar Singh, Director, GIMS; Debashis Sanyal, Director, Great Lakes, Gurgaon and Neelu Rohmetra, Director, IIM Sirmaur dives deeper into the diversity and inclusion aspects of the MBA classroom, focusing on educational qualifications, gender equality, faculty skills and recruitment.