IIM-A dons want Harvard-like status

AHMEDABAD: Quality comes at a cost and the faculty of Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad has made that very clear in a memorandum sent to ministry of human resource development (MHRD) on Friday.

This is in response to a notification sent by MHRD on August 20 detailing their salary structure as per the Sixth Pay Commission which took the wind out of their sails.

The four-member committee that framed the memorandum has quoted Harvard salaries to justify their demand.

Designed on lines of Harvard Business School, IIM-A is upset that the Sixth Pay Commission has wrested this ‘special status’ from it, so they are demanding bigger pay packets.

The memorandum says an assistant professor (AP) at Harvard gets $140,000 as annual starting pay, equivalent to Rs 23 lakh and Indian School of Business (ISB) pays over Rs 20 lakh to its APs. Against this, an IIM-A AP gets only Rs 5.5 lakh as starting pay annually.

A major concern of the faculty council of IIM-A is that if institutes of excellence are not given special status, the faculty-student ratio in these institutes could suffer. To retain the ‘top notch’ faculty in the institute they have to be given enough reason to stay.

“Till the sixth Pay Commission, even though we did not have salaries, we were given the status of being premier.
But now there is neither,” said a faculty of the institute. One of the recommendations is that the faculties, should also get a scholastic pay of Rs 15,000 per month over and above their pay band and grade pay. Faculty councils of Indian Institute of Technology and IIM-Calcutta have already sent a memorandum to MHRD.

IIM-A is self sustaining and has not been taking any government grants for its functioning or even expansion. In the memorandum, the faculty has said that present notification is much below what is required and has requested MHRD to reconsider.

The memorandum sent to MHRD on Friday was prepared in the backdrop of a draft memorandum framed by IIM-Calcutta (IIM-C) on pay structure disparities. It was the first to submit a draft highlighting disparities in pay structure to the ministry.

IIM-C is going to have another meeting on Monday and IIM-Bangalore has shown its support too.

IIT-Gandhinagar joins the chorus

Indian Institute of Technology-Gandhinagar faculty also joined in the agitation for better pay packets. The deadline that IITs had given to MHRD to take up the matter ended on Friday, and the ministry has not responded. The IITs had demanded that assistant professor should have a starting salary of Rs 30,000 per month with a grade pay of Rs 8,000, associate professor be given grade pay of Rs 10,000 and professor a grade of Rs 12,000. The faculty association has also demanded a professional development allowance of Rs 5 lakh for a block of three years and a scholastic allowance of Rs 15,000.