The new IITs have little time on their hands to catch up with their predecessors. But they are determined to live up to the IIT brand
Aakash — the sky — is literally the limit for the new IITs. Aakash may be the poor man’s Tablet, but it is symbolic of paradigmatic changes that the new institutions of higher learning are capable of bringing about in engineering education. It is not just a coincidence that IIT Rajasthan was a chief collaborator along with UK-based Datawind to launch this revolutionary Tablet that is aimed at revolutionising education across India.
Launched amid criticism and surrounded with scepticism, the eight new IITs had before them a tough task. They had to measure up to the existing IITs and, at the same time, be a step ahead. The older IITs had their share of problems, and there were lessons to be learnt from them. The newer IITs could do it, and do it better. There was no complacency, only a will to do. They are fast shrugging off the bad publicity they were receiving since coming into existence three years ago — delays in allocation of land, faculty deficiency, inadequate infrastructure and so on. They had first made headlines for all the wrong reasons. But that’s all history.
Innovative Approaches
The new IITs are making waves, turning around so-called disadvantage — their late Enhancing Brand IIT’s Value They have the hindsight of their mentors and a foresight of their own…the new IITs take wings into a new dawn entry to the club — into a plus point. They are jumpstarting their learning curve — distilling lessons from half-a-century of operations of the older IITs, as a base to grow from, all the more faster. Talking about this subtle edge, Prof Sudhir K Jain, Director, IIT Gandhinagar, says “A new IIT has more opportunities to do things right, if you think about it. It can improvise on the model of the older institutes,” he adds.
For Prof Madhusudan Chakraborty, Director, IIT Bhubaneswar, newness comes from not being compelled to follow in the footsteps of the mentor. “Rather,” he says, “we are trying to be different.” In a radical departure from the model followed by its mentor institute, IIT Kharagpur, it has worked innovation into the very structure of the academic set-up. It has done away with the concept of departments. A number of interdisciplinary schools have been introduced instead. For instance, the School of Basic Sciences includes physics, chemistry, mathematics, bioscience, etc.
“This different classification is driven by our desire to bring together faculty and students from various disciplines and facilitate their working in interdisciplinary areas. The emphasis is on product creation and product design,” continues the director. And with this, the institute has raised the bar for inter-departmental cooperation. This has also created an environment in which departments don’t compete with each other at the cost of research or where project funding is stalled because of an unhealthy atmosphere.
Prof VR Peddireddi, Head, School of Basic Sciences at the IIT Bhubanewar, shedding light on the relevance of this alternate set-up says, “We grouped clusters of departments under the umbrella of a school. This approach helps foster an environment for research. Research is interdisciplinary in nature and borders between different fields either overlap or are slowly disappearing .” For instance, nanotechnology is primarily a subject dealing with chemistry. But in research, it’s mostly applied to biology, taking it beyond the traditional.
Conceptualising Newness
Prior to joining IIT Bhubaneswar, Prof Pedireddi worked at the National Chemical Laboratory in Pune, which is also well known for interdisciplinary research. In his opinion, this approach is preferable as it gives uniform importance to all the sciences. So, in a twist of sorts, IIT Bhubaneswar is setting a benchmark in the field of interdisciplinary research, which the older IITs can benefit by adopting.
Prof Pedireddi believes that the initial skepticism towards the new approach is fast-dying as dissenting voices observe how well the new set-up is being managed. “We appoint faculty as professors in their respective field of specialisation, such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc. This simplifies administrative purposes and also allows faculty to retain an identity representative of their speciality. But they are part of a school and not a single department.”
“The future of technology education lies in creating a new ecosystem and culture and introducing innovations in the academic system,” says Prof Uday Desai, Director, IIT Hyderabad. A new fractional credit course system introduced by IIT Hyderabad exemplifies such innovation. The initiative is aimed at furthering faculty interactions and collaborations with the industry; promoting hiring avenues for graduates and postgraduates from the institute; and keeping the course content relevant to fast-changing industry needs.
The endeavour aims to take the institute to the next level of competitiveness as seen from the perspective of the industry. Two such early courses launched are on Trends in Storage Systems and on Cloud Computing. Next year, the alumni of IIM Bangalore based in Hyderabad will be offering more fractional credit courses.
To take up another example, IIT Gandhinagar, also offers short-term courses conducted by guests faculty, each of which earns students one credit. This approach has allowed students to take up diverse courses: Indian Democracy, Entrepreneurship, Energy Efficiency, Literature and Cosmology. Whoever said that the IITs are only about technology education? Going a step further, the institute has opened these courses to students and faculty of other colleges in the city, so as to develop better academic links and contribute to the community.
Aakash — the sky — is literally the limit for the new IITs. Aakash may be the poor man’s Tablet, but it is symbolic of paradigmatic changes that the new institutions of higher learning are capable of bringing about in engineering education. It is not just a coincidence that IIT Rajasthan was a chief collaborator along with UK-based Datawind to launch this revolutionary Tablet that is aimed at revolutionising education across India.
Launched amid criticism and surrounded with scepticism, the eight new IITs had before them a tough task. They had to measure up to the existing IITs and, at the same time, be a step ahead. The older IITs had their share of problems, and there were lessons to be learnt from them. The newer IITs could do it, and do it better. There was no complacency, only a will to do. They are fast shrugging off the bad publicity they were receiving since coming into existence three years ago — delays in allocation of land, faculty deficiency, inadequate infrastructure and so on. They had first made headlines for all the wrong reasons. But that’s all history.
Innovative Approaches
The new IITs are making waves, turning around so-called disadvantage — their late entry to the club — into a plus point. They are jumpstarting their learning curve — distilling lessons from half-a-century of operations of the older IITs, as a base to grow from, all the more faster. Talking about this subtle edge, Prof Sudhir K Jain, Director, IIT Gandhinagar, says “A new IIT has more opportunities to do things right, if you think about it. It can improvise on the model of the older institutes,” he adds.
For Prof Madhusudan Chakraborty, Director, IIT Bhubaneswar, newness comes from not being compelled to follow in the footsteps of the mentor. “Rather,” he says, “we are trying to be different.”
In a radical departure from the model followed by its mentor institute, IIT Kharagpur, it has worked innovation into the very structure of the academic set-up. It has done away with the concept of departments. A number of interdisciplinary schools have been introduced instead. For instance, the School of Basic Sciences includes physics, chemistry, mathematics, bioscience, etc.“
This different classification is driven by our desire to bring together faculty and students from various disciplines and facilitate their working in interdisciplinary areas. The emphasis is on product creation and product design,” continues the director. And with this, the institute has raised the bar for inter-departmental cooperation. This has also created an environment in which departments don’t compete with each other at the cost of research or where project funding is stalled because of an unhealthy atmosphere.
Prof VR Peddireddi, Head, School of Basic Sciences at the IIT Bhubanewar, shedding light on the relevance of this alternate set-up says, “We grouped clusters of departments under the umbrella of a school. This approach helps foster an environment for research.
Research is interdisciplinary in nature and borders between different fields either overlap or are slowly disappearing .” For instance, nanotechnology is primarily a subject dealing with chemistry. But in research, it’s mostly applied to biology, taking it beyond the traditional.
Conceptualising Newness
Prior to joining IIT Bhubaneswar, Prof Pedireddi worked at the National Chemical Laboratory in Pune, which is also well known for interdisciplinary research. In his opinion, this approach is preferable as it gives uniform importance to all the sciences. So, in a twist of sorts, IIT Bhubaneswar is setting a benchmark in the field of interdisciplinary research, which the older IITs can benefit by adopting.
Prof Pedireddi believes that the initial skepticism towards the new approach is fast-dying as dissenting voices observe how well the new set-up is being managed. “We appoint faculty as professors in their respective field of specialisation, such as chemistry, physics, mathematics, etc. This simplifies administrative purposes and also allows faculty to retain an identity representative of their speciality. But they are part of a school and not a single department.”
“The future of technology education lies in creating a new ecosystem and culture and introducing innovations in the academic system,” says Prof Uday Desai, Director, IIT Hyderabad. A new fractional credit course system introduced by IIT Hyderabad exemplifies such innovation. The initiative is aimed at furthering faculty interactions and collaborations with the industry; promoting hiring avenues for graduates and postgraduates from the institute; and keeping the course content relevant to fast-changing industry needs.
The endeavour aims to take the institute to the next level of competitiveness as seen from the perspective of the industry. Two such early courses launched are on Trends in Storage Systems and on Cloud Computing. Next year, the alumni of IIM Bangalore based in Hyderabad will be offering more fractional credit courses.
To take up another example, IIT Gandhinagar, also offers short-term courses conducted by guests faculty, each of which earns students one credit. This approach has allowed students to take up diverse courses: Indian Democracy, Entrepreneurship, Energy Efficiency, Literature and Cosmology. Whoever said that the IITs are only about technology education? Going a step further, the institute has opened these courses to students and faculty of other colleges in the city, so as to develop better academic links and contribute to the community.
Industry Linkages
Innovations in the curriculum and academic set-up are not the only good things happening in the new IITs. Research is another focus area for them. In fact, aware that linkages with industries and reputed universities or institutions abroad is the key to collaborative research, Prof Chakraborty of IIT Bhubaneswar is reaching out to industries through continuing education and collaborative research programmes. “Our faculty members are working on short courses or workshops for the benefit of practicing engineers or professionals. We propose to set up Collaborative Research Laboratories (CRLs) in our Science Park that would be accessible to our faculty and students as well as scientists and engineers from industries attached to the laboratories.”
IIT Ropar emphasises collaborative research ventures with other research labs as well. It provides faculty members an initiation grant and basic facilities to start research work and also encourages them to continue their existing industry linkages. Building international relations is also a top priority. This is vital to launch joint multidisciplinary research work. For instance, a faculty member in the Department of Electrical Engineering was previously engaged with Optical Network industries near Delhi. Prof Surappa, Director, IIT Ropar, permitted him to continue as a consultant with the industry even after he joined as a faculty, aware that the pay-off would be beneficial. True enough, he says, “It has proved to be winwin situation. Industry contacts of faculty
members help us further such linkages.”Research is an area wherein the newer institutes are not only holding their own, but are also making waves across the globe. Aakash, the world’s cheapest Tablet developed over 18 months by a 170-member team of professors and students at IIT Jodhpur, was just the beginning.
At IIT Hyderabad, a sizeable number of faculty members are presently engaged in research projects. Professor and Head of the Electrical Engineering Department and Director Prof Desai is the Principal Investigator of Pervasive Sensor Environment, a Rs 41-lakh project sponsored by the Depart-ment of Science Technology and the IndiaUK Advanced Technology Centre (IUATC). Dr Mohammed Zafar Ali Khan, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, is leading a mega project with an outlay of Rs 167.7 lakh on High Performance Cognitive Radio Networks. This is being sponsored by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. There is another major project on Information Networks for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery led by IITH involving several Indian Institutes and research labs (IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, NGRI, IMD, and IIIT Hyderabad), and Keio University, Japan. This is part of the IITH Japan collaboration. And the list goes on.
According to Prof Uday B Desai, “There are plenty of research opportunities waiting to be tapped. It is just a question of submitting good research proposals and defending these well during the presentation-evaluation rounds.
“Most of our 76-strong faculty are keen on research. They actively pursue opportunities and present proposals before us all the time. While a majority of these proposals are presently being made to government agencies, such as the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Information Technology and Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, the institute is also working on research and collaboration with private companies. KDDI Corporation of Japan, Infotech and Dr Reddy’s Labs are a few companies with whom we are signing agreements.”
Research Matters
At IIT Gandhinagar about 15 projects with a total sanctioned budget of about Rs three crore, are on. The projects are funded by agencies like the Department of Biotechnology, Department of Science and Technology, Atomic Energy Regulation Board, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Underwriters Laboratory, Ricoh Innovations Inc. Focus areas for research are Biotechnology, Biomedical Instrumentation, and Drug Delivery, Earthquake Engineering and Geotechnical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering.
The institute is also fostering ties with Indian and overseas institutes so that undergraduate students can take up short research stints in summer, with the possibility of being engaged in them for longterm as well. Some of these prestigious institutes abroad are California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Washington University, University of Notre Dame, Nanyang Technological University, University of Houston, University of Rhode Island, Johns Hopkins University, and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
IIT Ropar has been quick to start cutting-edge research and launch PhD programmes in a variety of areas. According to Professor Surappa, “Being exposed to ongoing research helps students familiarise themselves with the latest developments in different fields and encourages them to pursue their own research interests. Research also tends to result in a constant revision of the course content.”
A faculty member in the Chemistry Department at IIT Ropar is already in the process of filing for a patent-based on research work done in the institute.
Challenging Times
Apart from teething troubles, challenges were bound to surface given the speed at which the brand is being expanded. As Director of IIT Kharagpur Prof Damodar Acharya observes, “Although the demand for high-quality technical education has been steadily rising in the last decades, there have not been many quality institutes coming up after the 1960s (with the exception of IIT Guwahati in 1994, and the last of the IITs, the University of Roorkee which was conferred IIT status in 2001). Even the 14 old NITs were all established before the mid 60s. Many institutes came up in the
1980s and thereafter, but they are no substitute for the IITs and NITs. The new IITs
aim to partially fulfil the vacuum. While it would have been a good strategy to expand
the new IITs at a slower pace, perhaps by adding one institute every third year, 50
years of no action necessitated the sudden expansion. Of course, this brought associated problems.”
While the new institutes have half a century of learning to jump-start their journey, the general perception is that they are no match for their older siblings. Though directors of the new institutes are adamant that this is not true, it will take some time for positive perception to take root in the minds of academicians and the public.
Recruitment is one of the biggest challenges for the new IITs given the less than
positive impression. The significance of this is best brought out by Prof Chakraborty’s description of what makes the IITs special: “These are teacher-based institutes”; meaning that the brand is built by its outstanding faculty.
Industry Linkages
Innovations in the curriculum and academic set-up are not the only good things happening in the new IITs. Research is another focus area for them. In fact, aware that linkages with industries and reputed universities or institutions abroad is the key to collaborative research, Prof Chakraborty of IIT Bhubaneswar is reaching out to industries through continuing education and collaborative research programmes. “Our faculty members are working on short courses or workshops for the benefit of practicing engineers or professionals. We propose to set up Collaborative Research Laboratories (CRLs) in our Science Park that would be accessible to our faculty and students as well as scientists and engineers from industries attached to the laboratories.”
IIT Ropar emphasises collaborative research ventures with other research labs as well. It provides faculty members an initiation grant and basic facilities to start research work and also encourages them to continue their existing industry linkages. Building international relations is also a top priority. This is vital to launch joint multidisciplinary research work. For instance, a faculty member in the Department of Electrical Engineering was previously engaged with Optical Network industries near Delhi. Prof Surappa, Director, IIT Ropar, permitted him to continue as a consultant with the industry even after he joined as a faculty, aware that the pay-off would be beneficial. True enough, he says, “It has proved to be winwin situation. Industry contacts of faculty
members help us further such linkages.”Research is an area wherein the newer institutes are not only holding their own, but are also making waves across the globe. Aakash, the world’s cheapest Tablet developed over 18 months by a 170-member team of professors and students at IIT Jodhpur, was just the beginning.
At IIT Hyderabad, a sizeable number of faculty members are presently engaged in research projects. Professor and Head of the Electrical Engineering Department and Director Prof Desai is the Principal Investigator of Pervasive Sensor Environment, a Rs 41-lakh project sponsored by the Depart-ment of Science Technology and the IndiaUK Advanced Technology Centre (IUATC). Dr Mohammed Zafar Ali Khan, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering, is leading a mega project with an outlay of Rs 167.7 lakh on High Performance Cognitive Radio Networks. This is being sponsored by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology. There is another major project on Information Networks for Disaster Mitigation and Recovery led by IITH involving several Indian Institutes and research labs (IIT Kanpur, IIT Madras, NGRI, IMD, and IIIT Hyderabad), and Keio University, Japan. This is part of the IITH Japan collaboration. And the list goes on.
According to Prof Uday B Desai, “There are plenty of research opportunities waiting to be tapped. It is just a question of submitting good research proposals and defending these well during the presentation-evaluation rounds.
“Most of our 76-strong faculty are keen on research. They actively pursue opportunities and present proposals before us all the time. While a majority of these proposals are presently being made to government agencies, such as the Department of Science and Technology, Department of Information Technology and Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, the institute is also working on research and collaboration with private companies. KDDI Corporation of Japan, Infotech and Dr Reddy’s Labs are a few companies with whom we are signing agreements.”
Research Matters
At IIT Gandhinagar about 15 projects with a total sanctioned budget of about Rs three crore, are on. The projects are funded by agencies like the Department of Biotechnology, Department of Science and Technology, Atomic Energy Regulation Board, Ministry of Earth Sciences, Ministry of Human Resource Development, Underwriters Laboratory, Ricoh Innovations Inc. Focus areas for research are Biotechnology, Biomedical Instrumentation, and Drug Delivery, Earthquake Engineering and Geotechnical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering.
The institute is also fostering ties with Indian and overseas institutes so that undergraduate students can take up short research stints in summer, with the possibility of being engaged in them for longterm as well. Some of these prestigious institutes abroad are California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Washington University, University of Notre Dame, Nanyang Technological University, University of Houston, University of Rhode Island, Johns Hopkins University, and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
IIT Ropar has been quick to start cutting-edge research and launch PhD programmes in a variety of areas. According to Professor Surappa, “Being exposed to ongoing research helps students familiarise themselves with the latest developments in different fields and encourages them to pursue their own research interests. Research also tends to result in a constant revision of the course content.”
A faculty member in the Chemistry Department at IIT Ropar is already in the process of filing for a patent-based on research work done in the institute.
Challenging Times
Apart from teething troubles, challenges were bound to surface given the speed at which the brand is being expanded. As Director of IIT Kharagpur Prof Damodar Acharya observes, “Although the demand for high-quality technical education has been steadily rising in the last decades, there have not been many quality institutes coming up after the 1960s (with the exception of IIT Guwahati in 1994, and the last of the IITs, the University of Roorkee which was conferred IIT status in 2001). Even the 14 old NITs were all established before the mid 60s. Many institutes came up in the
1980s and thereafter, but they are no substitute for the IITs and NITs. The new IITs aim to partially fulfil the vacuum. While it would have been a good strategy to expand the new IITs at a slower pace, perhaps by adding one institute every third year, 50 years of no action necessitated the sudden expansion. Of course, this brought associated problems.”
While the new institutes have half a century of learning to jump-start their journey, the general perception is that they are no match for their older siblings. Though directors of the new institutes are adamant that this is not true, it will take some time for positive perception to take root in the minds of academicians and the public.
Recruitment is one of the biggest challenges for the new IITs given the less than positive impression. The significance of this is best brought out by Prof Chakraborty’s description of what makes the IITs special: “These are teacher-based institutes”; meaning that the brand is built by its outstanding faculty.
Recruitment Strategies
IIT Gandhinagar is facing a huge shortage of regular faculty, particularly for subjects such as electrical and mechanical engineering and computer science. According to Prof Jain, “The (erroneous) mindset that we lag behind the older IITs has
proved a handicap in recruiting outstanding faculty.” IIT Gandhinagar is working on overcoming this challenge by launching an aggressive campaign to attract the right people. For instance, the quarterly newsletter of the institute elucidates exciting things happening at IIT Gandhinagar and is circulated to over 10,000 academics. Jain adds, “We also visit top universities and engage with the graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. For the time being, we are offering temporary appointments such as part-time or visiting faculty to tide over the crisis.”
Prof Surappa adds, “There are few takers for administrative, engineering and estate management support staff jobs at Ropar, perhaps because it is not a metro.
Finding senior faculty willing to relocate here is also a challenge, as people of the
right calibre and experience are older and hence settled with their families in cities.”
It is hard to attract a strong faculty to nondescript towns. But this difficulty is compounded now since the country’s booming economy is creating plentiful employment opportunities in cities. For these reasons, Prof Surappa feels that some
leeway could be made for new IITs which have nothing much to offer in terms of lifestyle and convenience, “Campuses located in such areas need to be better developed and offer more amenities.”
As it is, the residential education which is arguably the only model suited to creating institutes in smaller places brings with it the responsibility of maintaining a proper campus and support facilities, more like a college town. In contrast, reputed institutes the world over only concentrate on academic infrastructure and facilities with the rest being taken care of by an adjacent township built by private initiative. That might be an idea to consider when the next round of expansion of brand IIT is taken up. Faculty members joining an institute that is still in the process of establishing itself are expected to go beyond the call of duty. Prof Chakraborty cites the need for
them to devote considerable time to building systems, designing laboratories and
classrooms in association with design consultants, and developing the library and
other amenities for students, in addition to their regular teaching and research. Faculty members at IIT Bhubaneswar are helping the purchase section and hired consultants procure appropriate equipment/instruments and other accessories/materials for the laboratories.
Incubators for the ‘Next Best Thing’
It will take time for the new IITs to build their reputation. Until then, the magic seems to be happening through word-ofmouth of the faculty members. Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Gandhinagar, Dr Sameer Dalvi believes working at a new IIT is more rewarding. Prior to joining the institute last year, this postgraduate and doctorate from IIT Bombay was pursuing post-doctoral research at Columbia University, USA. Dr Dalvi could have joined any of the IITs, but is happy to be at Gandhinagar. “I reckoned that a newer establishment would offer more growth avenues. The older IITs are set in their systems, whereas faculty members in a new institute have greater opportunities to contribute to shaping the organisation,” he elucidates.
Despite the fact that IIT Gandhinagar does not even have its own campus, Dr Dalvi is satisfied. “I have set up a state-ofthe-art research facility since I joined. I also have ample professional opportunities and sufficient funding for research in nanotechnology applied to the biomedical and pharmaceutical fields. The institute has set aside some seed money for this research,” he continues. When asked about his future plans, the recipient of the Young Engineers Award 2010, given by the Institution of Engineers (India), says he is committed to growing his association with the institute.
“I will never leave this place,” he states.
Building Infrastructure
“Operating out of temporary premises is a handicap,” observes Prof Jain. “We don’t
have enough space for offices, laboratories and classrooms. We have constructed a
handful of temporary buildings and this is helpful. However, it’s not a permanent solution.”
Like the older IITs that boast of big sprawling campuses, the new IITs are coming up on large tracts of land, on an average spreading across 500 acres. But the All India Council for Technical Education, the governing authority regulating the benchmarks, processes and mechanisms defining the minimum physical, academic and other support infrastructure needed by technical institutes for getting its approval, only mandates land in the range of a few acres.
There is also a view that the newer IITs could have been established on smaller
plots.
Prof Acharya does not think so. IITs offer residential education, to which model he partly attributes the high-quality of graduates, postgraduates and doctorates.
“Residential education provides an ideal learning environment and opportunities to develop. Unlike the IITs, AICTEapproved institutions, most of which are in the private sector, are often not residential in nature. Only a few AICTE-approved institutions have sprawling campuses offering residential education, such as the SSN College of Engineering.
“Also, AICTE-approved institutions have almost zero focus on research and quality postgraduate education. Research and postgraduate education requires extensive laboratory support, along with research space, equipment, faculty and technical manpower support,” adds Prof Acharya.
The Director of India’s oldest IIT, IIT Kharagpur, also points out that at 2,000 acres, it is the largest in terms of land area among the older institutes — including an Agriculture and Food Engineering Department with an associated farm, and Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Park). So, it is not as though the land is unutilised. And some land, be it in the old or the new IITs, must be preserved for future expansion and to create the right ambience. After all, a concrete structure alone does not form an institution — it needs people and infrastructure.
Recruitment Strategies
IIT Gandhinagar is facing a huge shortage of regular faculty, particularly for subjects such as electrical and mechanical engineering and computer science. According to Prof Jain, “The (erroneous) mindset that we lag behind the older IITs has
proved a handicap in recruiting outstanding faculty.” IIT Gandhinagar is working on overcoming this challenge by launching an aggressive campaign to attract the right people. For instance, the quarterly newsletter of the institute elucidates exciting things happening at IIT Gandhinagar and is circulated to over 10,000 academics. Jain adds, “We also visit top universities and engage with the graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. For the time being, we are offering temporary appointments such as part-time or visiting faculty to tide over the crisis.”
Prof Surappa adds, “There are few takers for administrative, engineering and estate management support staff jobs at Ropar, perhaps because it is not a metro.
Finding senior faculty willing to relocate here is also a challenge, as people of the right calibre and experience are older and hence settled with their families in cities.”
It is hard to attract a strong faculty to nondescript towns. But this difficulty is compounded now since the country’s booming economy is creating plentiful employment opportunities in cities. For these reasons, Prof Surappa feels that some
leeway could be made for new IITs which have nothing much to offer in terms of lifestyle and convenience, “Campuses located in such areas need to be better developed and offer more amenities.”
As it is, the residential education which is arguably the only model suited to creating institutes in smaller places brings with it the responsibility of maintaining a proper campus and support facilities, more like a college town. In contrast, reputed institutes the world over only concentrate on academic infrastructure and facilities with the rest being taken care of by an adjacent township built by private initiative. That might be an idea to consider when the next round of expansion of brand IIT is taken up. Faculty members joining an institute that is still in the process of establishing itself are expected to go beyond the call of duty. Prof Chakraborty cites the need for
them to devote considerable time to building systems, designing laboratories and classrooms in association with design consultants, and developing the library and other amenities for students, in addition to their regular teaching and research. Faculty members at IIT Bhubaneswar are helping the purchase section and hired consultants procure appropriate equipment/instruments and other accessories/materials for the laboratories.
Incubators for the ‘Next Best Thing’
It will take time for the new IITs to build their reputation. Until then, the magic seems to be happening through word-ofmouth of the faculty members. Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Gandhinagar, Dr Sameer Dalvi believes working at a new IIT is more rewarding. Prior to joining the institute last year, this postgraduate and doctorate from IIT Bombay was pursuing post-doctoral research at Columbia University, USA. Dr Dalvi could have joined any of the IITs, but is happy to be at Gandhinagar. “I reckoned that a newer establishment would offer more growth avenues. The older IITs are set in their systems, whereas faculty members in a new institute have greater opportunities to contribute to shaping the organisation,” he elucidates.
Despite the fact that IIT Gandhinagar does not even have its own campus, Dr Dalvi is satisfied. “I have set up a state-ofthe-art research facility since I joined. I also have ample professional opportunities and sufficient funding for research in nanotechnology applied to the biomedical and pharmaceutical fields. The institute has set aside some seed money for this research,” he continues. When asked about his future plans, the recipient of the Young Engineers Award 2010, given by the Institution of Engineers (India), says he is committed to growing his association with the institute. “I will never leave this place,” he states.
Building Infrastructure
“Operating out of temporary premises is a handicap,” observes Prof Jain. “We don’t have enough space for offices, laboratories and classrooms. We have constructed a handful of temporary buildings and this is helpful. However, it’s not a permanent solution.” Like the older IITs that boast of big sprawling campuses, the new IITs are coming up on large tracts of land, on an average spreading across 500 acres. But the All India Council for Technical Education, the governing authority regulating the benchmarks, processes and mechanisms defining the minimum physical, academic and other support infrastructure needed by technical institutes for getting its approval, only mandates land in the range of a few acres.
There is also a view that the newer IITs could have been established on smaller plots. Prof Acharya does not think so. IITs offer residential education, to which model he partly attributes the high-quality of graduates, postgraduates and doctorates.
“Residential education provides an ideal learning environment and opportunities to develop. Unlike the IITs, AICTEapproved institutions, most of which are in the private sector, are often not residential in nature. Only a few AICTE-approved institutions have sprawling campuses offering residential education, such as the SSN College of Engineering.
“Also, AICTE-approved institutions have almost zero focus on research and quality postgraduate education. Research and postgraduate education requires extensive laboratory support, along with research space, equipment, faculty and technical manpower support,” adds Prof Acharya.
The Director of India’s oldest IIT, IIT Kharagpur, also points out that at 2,000 acres, it is the largest in terms of land area among the older institutes — including an Agriculture and Food Engineering Department with an associated farm, and Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Park). So, it is not as though the land is unutilised. And some land, be it in the old or the new IITs, must be preserved for future expansion and to create the right ambience. After all, a concrete structure alone does not form an institution — it needs people and infrastructure.
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