[Assam] Right Move on New IITs(EDITORIAL,The Sentinel,19.07.2008)

[Buljit Buragohain]

Right Move on New IITs

The Union government has done well to decide on setting up eight more Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) in the States of Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa, Gujarat, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. This is a very belated acknowledgement of the facts that the population of India is now over 1.1 billion and that only about two per cent of about three lakh applicants get admitted to the existing IITs. In other words, only about 6,000 meritorious students from the entire country get the quality of technical education they deserve. The new IITs are expected to more than double the number of IIT students who graduate every year. This is all to the good, since the new IITs will reduce the huge number of deserving students who get left out every year. One of the major tragedies of higher technical education in India is that many thousands of highly meritorious students who deserve places in the IITs get left out mainly because of the
 reserved quotas and the very high cut-off marks for the general category of students. With the opening of the eight new IITs, the enrolment of many more bright students in the IITs will be ensured even though the quotas will remain. What is very encouraging is that the supervision of the proposed IITs has been entrusted to the existing ones until they can stand on their own feet. What is rather amusing, however, is that the grade of IIT directors has been raised by a mere Rs 1,000 from Rs 25,000 to Rs 26,000 in an age when the inflation rate is nudging 12 per cent and when legislators with no qualifications vote themselves salary hikes of 25 to 30 per cent without batting an eyelid. 
However, there are other more important issues relating to the IITs that deserve our attention. As institutions of higher technical education the IITs are about as good as any in the world. The cost of turning out a single graduate runs into a few lakhs of rupees. But compare this to the education in similar institutions of technical education in the United States. The expenses run up to around $40,000 to $50,000 a year — a minimum of about Rs 16.8 lakh a year. No wonder, IITs are very popular recruiting grounds for American companies and universities. However, it cannot be the objective of our government to train competent technical manpower for the US at a fraction of their cost, considering that the state pays the bulk of the expenses incurred on putting someone through an IIT. However, that has been the general trend, and there is every reason to fear that the motivation for setting up eight new IITs all at once after all these years is not so much
 the interest of our meritorious students as the urging of the United States government. After all, there is no dearth of politicians and bureaucrats in New Delhi who are subservient to American interests and American directives. We have to find ways of preventing the US from using our IITs as low-cost training centres (where the cost is paid by the Indian government) for technocrats to be employed in American firms.
 
(The Sentinel,19.07.2008)



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