INDIA: Technology institutes face uncertain future

The scientific community in India is worried about the global image of Indian institutes of technology after the government created six new IITs earlier this year. Professor CNR Rao, principal scientific adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, expressed surprise and dissent at the decision.

Unlike other universities in South Asia, India's institute of technology have won global recognition for the quality of their education. Their graduates are accepted in top universities, winning scholarships, faculty positions and top jobs in big companies.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of students from all over India seek admission to the IITs. Nearly 300,000 school graduates sat for the institutes' entrance examinations in May but fewer than 4,000 were accepted so coaching for the examination has become a multi-million dollar industry.

Creation of the original institutes was recommended by a committee set up by the colonial government in 1946 to provide relevant technological education for a free India. The committee was dissatisfied with the existing engineering colleges and recommended a new curriculum with a substantial portion of humanities and science courses.

The first IIT was created at Kharagpur in West Bengal in 1954 and, five years later, others were established in Bombay, Madras, Kanpur and New Delhi. Substantial amounts of money were allocated and support also came from developed countries with Germany agreeing to help IIT Madras, the US to aid IIT Kanpur, the UK IIT Delhi and the then Soviet Russia IIT Bombay.

The President of India was made Visitor to these institutions and their boards of governors were headed by industrialists and scientists. The result has been outstanding: no scandals, no mediocrity.

But 30 years later, in the mid-1990s, under pressure from militant students in Assam, a new IIT was created at Guwahati while the oldest engineering college in India, and third oldest in the world, Roorkee Engineering College, was converted to an IIT.

But this was not enough. For some time, many states have been asking for an IIT and the large number of deserving students who have not found a place in an institute has increased pressure. Yet when the Human Resources Development Minister Arjun Singh announced the creation of new IITs in March, many academics were taken by surprise.

There had been no consultation and, on the basis of a note prepared by the ministry, Singh announced the creation of the new IITs. At first only three were mentioned, one each at Hyderabad, Patna and Ahmedabad, but soon, under pressure from other states, four more were added for Rajasthan, Punjab, Orissa and Himachal Pradesh.

All this was done without cabinet approval - which only came after waitlisted students had been selected. Consequently, there was confusion and little uniformity.

Each new IIT has been linked to an existing IIT called a "mentoring IIT". Of the six new IITs, three have found temporary campuses, and their mentors, including faculty from the mentoring institution, commute between their two charges.

Some new institutes are yet to find land for their campuses, some are yet to find a city. But all hope to move to their own campuses before the next academic session in July. By then each will need at least 300 rooms and related amenities for students' residences, 40 residences for the faculty, and equal numbers of faculty rooms in the academic area, besides six lecture halls, laboratories, library, sports, recreation and administrative and visitors' halls, plus power, water, sewerage, telephone and internet links.

Nothing, as Napoleon said, is impossible but, given the work culture in India, what is required seems stupendous. The entire cost is to be borne by the central government while the states will only give land and all else, including power and water, will have to be paid for.

The central government is to provide US$20 million a year for the next four years and one wonders how much of the projected structure can be built in the time. Where will the government get so much money when it already spends more than US$1 million a year on each of the seven existing institutes and has to also provide for 40 fully-funded central universities, 20 national institutes of technology, and pay 20% of the running cost of more than 400 state-run universities?

Even if the government had the money, is it wise to spend so much on creating elite institutions when a third of all primary schools are without buildings, and when a third of all children attend no schools at all?

Academics to staff the institutes will also be difficult to find. The current colleges employ scholars with good academic records and publications in internationally refereed journals. But such graduates are few and they prefer working for top universities in India or abroad so even the existing IITs are under-staffed.

Government rules do not permit the appointment of foreign nationals by universities although, if they were allowed, hardly anyone with the desired qualifications would opt to work for less than US$2,000 a month as a professor, or less than US$1,000 a month as an assistant professor.

Yet each new institute is supposed to have at least 1,000 academics in the next five years and another 1,000 before the end of the decade. Senior academics, however, already have jobs and there is little to induce them to change.

Despite the problems, sessions have begun at all the new institutes as well as at the existing ones. Whether they will produce graduates of the same calibre as the older institutes is anybody's guess.