ahmedabad the number of humanities students is increasing at indian institute of managementahmedabad iima which was so far considered the fiefdom of engineering students iima witnessed an impressive rise of 66 in the number of arts students making it to the premiere business school in the past three years the numbers rose from 3 in the academic batch of 201517 to 20 in 201719according to the admission data for the pgp course in iima as many as 20 students 506 out of total 395 had got admission in this academic year it was 9 227 and 3 076 in the academic year of 201618 and 201517 respectivelyaccording to the figures the number of students with engineering background had declined from 361 in 201517 to 265 in 201719 the institute registered a decline of 2407 in the three academic batcheswhats more the institute has the youngest batch ever this academic year with 30 students below 20 years of age enrolling in the institute the average age of the students in postgraduate programme pgp is just 23 this academic year it was 24 in the previous two academic years this is an indication that students across the country are preparing early for entry into iimsprof ashish nanda director of iima attributed the increase of students from different backgrounds to the institutes efforts at inclusive diversityiima has a discussionbased learning environment and a lot of learning derives from shared experiences and insights of the participants our hope is that if we have diverse classrooms people will bring their different life experiences and knowledge into the class and benefit everybody said nandananda stressed that the institute needs to focus more on four aspects of diversity genderdiversity disciplinebased diversity work experiencebased diversity and international diversity for cross cultural exchanges