Edu-leaders

Anonymous Fri, 2011-04-01 16:07

The IIT Act and the Statutes framed under the same grant the autonomy. The learned HRD Minister, being a lawyer by profession, would certainly know it. We will help the IITs if our Government ensures that, 1) The IIT Council is to comprise only of Eminent Persons, and meets at least four times a year and helps the IITs to perform better by counselling; 2) the eminent persons chose another eminent person as the Director rather than a small standing committee of the IIT Council, which has often been the case. the appointment has by and large been reported to the Council than the Council making the decision; 3) no Director gets more than a term of five years and if they perform well, appoint them else where to help other IITs/Institutes than stay in the same place; 4) it follows what the Parliament and grant the funds as approved by the Finance Committee of the respective Institutes, which are required to come up with their yearly plan and get the concurrence of the Council. The MHRD must be complimented for not interfering by and large. The occasions it interferes are generally due to the pressure situations that arise due to restricted understanding that "Government funding means, IITs must function like any other Government organization". The Directors in fact enjoy enormous autonomy and whenever they have acted over and above their powers, the MHRD has always gone overboard to protect them and the IITs image. If at all they can blamed it is only on the grounds of supporting the appointment of the same person as the Director for the second term in IITB, IITK, IITM and IITG. At least they could have shuffled performers to other IITs with the concurrence of the IIT Council. A simplified understanding of the IITs and their functioning is given below using the terminology used in agriculture. People of India - Masters Master's representative - Parliament Desire of the Parliament - Fruit of Technology Method of Control - Parliament enacts the IIT Act Overseeing Body of the IIT Act - IIT Council chaired by the Minister of HRD and eminent persons as defined in the IIT Act Coordinating Body - One per every IIT and this is called the Board of Governors the Chairman of who is appointed by the IIT Council with the approval of the President of India Supervisor - Director of every IIT Farmer/Farm Labourers - Faculty and Staff of IITs Farmland - Each IIT Seed - Student The IITs as farming fields are owned by the People of India. The "faculty and staff" work as "tillers/farmers" and the "students" constitute various "seeds". The fruits of the labour are expected to serve the interests of the Indian nation. The Parliament, through the IIT Act, had constituted a powerful "overseeing"/Governing body for each one of the farm land. A coordinating body or "Council" was also designed to bring together the overseeing bodies of all the farmlands. The "overseeing" body is to take policy decisions on what to sow, good farming practices, how to hire farmers and farm labourers, what to pay them, etc., for the piece of land that they are in-charge of. This is to enable quick decisions based on prevailing local conditions that are expected to nourish certain activities such as Automobiles/Agriculture/Space/Electronics. The coordinating body is to appoint a "Supervisor" or Director for each one of the lands but the "Supervisor" or Director signs a contract with the "overseeing" body or the Board of Governors. The catch is that the funds, as required by the "overseeing" body for carrying out the functions locally in any field are to be arranged by the government (executive and legislative) based on their plans with the power to audit the same. It appears that each one of the fields or farm lands came up with their own ambitious plan and ate away a lot of government money and did not deliver as promised in their plan? Therefore the Parliament started questioning the usefulness of the fields to the people and therefore a variety of checks were introduced. One such is that ensure that at least the students from the weaker section and the OBCs get their share of this Government "pie" spent on education. It appears that in practice, the Supervisor (Director), the Chairman of the Coordinating body (Minister of HRD) and the executives (Officials of MHRD) are deciding on the qualifications for the "tillers/farmers", type of seeds and variety of crops to be grown, farming practices, what to sow, etc., for various reasons. It is but natural for the "tiller" to react when he is told that he has autonomy to water the plants, apply manure, pesticides, insecticides, prune it, collect all the fruits, help in its processing, take it to the market, etc., but his local "overseeing" body does not have much of a role other than blindly ratifying every decision of the Chairman of the Coordinating body (Minister of HRD). It was doubly painful when the farmers are accused of not planting teak, sandal wood, pacific yew tree, oak tree, etc., uniformly in all the lands independent of soil conditions, about fifty years after the fruits of the seeds sown has been eaten. The farmer is pained when he is asked to justify what he has done over the past fifty years? The farmer is pained when he is labeled "greedy". To sum up, it would be ideal if the coordinating body (IIT Council) and the overseeing body (Board of Governors) talk to each other without assigning too much power and responsibility to the Supervisor (Director) and the Executive so that good agricultural practices based on good soil conditions, good seeds and good farmers produces the fruits of labour for the owners of the land. This is possible if eminent farmers intervene through the powerful legislators. After all, this idea is that of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru! and who else can do it as per law than our highly intelligent and capable, Minister Mr. Sibal.