Former IIT Deputy Director questions functioning of new IITs

The former Deputy Director of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Indore has questioned the decision of opening eight new IITs simultaneously. The eight new IITs, which have come up in the last three years, were established on the model on which the previous IITs were constructed, 50 years ago.
IIT Indore is one of the eight new IITs, where Prof. Khanna first served 18 months as a mentor for Resource Mobilization before taking over as Deputy Director for the next six months. Prof. Khanna is presently associated with IIT Bombay.
Talking exclusively to India Education Review, he raised several questions related to opening of eight new IITs.
“There definitely was no need to open all IITs simultaneously because it is difficult to find the right faculty so quickly. There is always resource crunch to efficiently fund eight IITs in addition to seven older ones,” he said.
Calling the decision of opening the new IITs a political one, he said, “If memory serves me right, the general public had not made any recommendations or carried out agitations to open more IITs. This was basically the decision of the then minister of MHRD and was politically-influenced. The decision definitely was a hasty one – ill-conceived and unplanned.”
Prof. Khanna opined that the government opened the new IITs without making a suitable committee of intellectuals, past directors, educationists and industrialists to suggest a model. Instead the government chose 1958 model on which the former IITs were based.
“They just opened 1958 file and started the IIT’s. In this model, the most available item was student. There was nothing else – place, director, faculty etc. Logically, the director should have been chosen first, who would then work with the MHRD and state government to choose land, start construction and appoint faculty. Instead, a care taker was appointed first to locate a temporary place, and then basic facilities were acquired before the Director was chosen. In many cases, a large damage was already done by the adhoc team,” Prof Khanna said.
“The new director, once chosen, had several responsibilities - taking care of course curriculum, basic facilities, appointment of faculty, staff, trouble-shooting accommodation and academic space requirements. In addition to all this, he also had to take care of the procedure for development of new campus, of which, the biggest issue was the clearance of land from states. The result was a mess.”
Lamenting the absence of a master plan in the construction of eight new IITs, Prof. Khanna alleged that crores of rupees is being wasted to prepare different master plans.
“In the last five years only one IIT has able to start the constructions. Some are tangled with land clearance issues and for some others, the construction of campus is still a dream. As with the case of IIT – Indore, Roper and Patna – consultants created problems and canceled contracts in the last minute due to the absence of a master plan,” he added.
Talking about the selection of Directors for the new IITs, Prof. Khanna alleged, “Was the choice of Directors right? This is a very serious issue. Nobody looks whether the person has any qualities such as administration handling, management, Public Relation, technique to deal with state and central administration.”
Also terming the selection of a “scientist” for the post of Director of an engineering institute a wrong decision, he said, “There cannot be a bigger blunder than that. The result today is that at IIT Indore, the Director is converting Institute of Technology into an Institute of Science by neglecting engineering requirements. Today, there are 35 engineering faculties out of 86 and yet, more than 65 per cent of budget has been spent on Sciences, Bio-sciences and Astrophysics rather than on Civil engineering.”
“Surface Engineering Centre, which was a new concept, closed down even when a large amount of funds and international collaborations were pouring. Even the Mechanical Engineering Department, which appears to be one of the best, faced the risk of being shut down,” he added.
Talking about the functioning of these IITs, Prof. Khanna said, “In my six month stay at IIT Indore as deputy Director, I was exposed to real situation of IIT. I witnessed rules and regulations being butchered on many fronts: appointments in faculty and staff, buying costly equipments, computers and furniture being bought in a highly arbitrary manner, etc.”
Prof. Khanna also expressed disappointment in the faculty at IIT-Indore.
“Faculty selection at the new IITs is a serious issue. In my six months as Deputy Director, I took several meetings with the new faculty at IIT-Indore. I was highly disappointed in the work the faculty carried out,” he alleged.
“The faculty is concentrating more on buying equipments, rather than what they are appointed to do – teaching. Their output is more of a technician rather than an academician,” he added.