IIM Bangalore makes do with less

However, since the funding will come to the institute in phases over a period of five years, this is feared to seriously affect the plans put in place by IIMB for building up more classrooms, hostels and upgrade IT infrastructure, IIMB director Pankaj Chandra said.

"For the last three years, we had not asked the government for a single paise. This time, in order to lessen the pressure on the current infrastructure which is inadequate to accommodate so many students we had asked for a funding of Rs 114 crore. However, the government has promised just Rs 33 crore, and we don't know when this will materialise. Since we can't wait for government funds to reach us, we are initiating expansion plans from our internal funds earmarked in the annual budget," Chandra told Business Standard.

Like its peers, IIMB is rolling out the OBC quota in phases. Chandra said the implementation of 27 per cent OBC quota would result in 54 per cent increase in the number of seats for the flagship two-year Post Graduate Programme in Management (PGP). The number of seats will increase by 130 over the next three years to reach 340 seats.

In the 2008-09 academic session, IIMB has admitted 273 students consisting of 242 students from engineering backgrounds and 23 students from non-science background.

IIMB is planning to open one more section for the PGP programme in the next academic session since the existing four sections would be inadequate to accommodate the additional students. This will create demand for additional class rooms as well as faculties, said Chandra. IIMB is already battling with the shortage of faculty, the number of which currently stands at 85 as against the requirement of about 120. The IIMB director said the vacancies for the post of additional faculties would be filled in over the next three years.

"We have already sent some offer letters, and one new faculty has just joined in. We are expecting some more to join us during the ongoing academic session," said Chandra.