New Delhi, May 26: The Hindu Responding to Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh’s views on IIT faculty, Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal said IITs were aimed to produce engineering graduates initially and it is just lately that focus has shifted to research.
Reposing “complete trust” in the creative potential of the faculty at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal on Thursday said if the IITs had not gained the critical mass to change the global scientific discourse, it is because of the “ecosystem,” including lack of infrastructure and investment, and not because of the faculty.
Without naming his Cabinet colleague Jairam Ramesh, Minister of State for Environment and Forests who had earlier this week said that the IITs and IIM faculty was not “world class” and paid little attention to research, Mr Sibal said: “We are in a democracy and my colleagues are entitled to give their opinion but the opinion should be based on facts and not perception.”
Seeking to give the HRD Ministry’s opinion on Mr. Ramesh’s statement that has snowballed into a major controversy now, Mr. Sibal said the reality was that the IITs had not gained the critical mass to change the global scientific discourse as these were not aimed to produce researchers. These were aimed to produces engineering graduates initially and it is just lately that focus has shifted to research. “Of the 1,400 research papers produced in India annually, 1,000 are produced from the IITs. And this has happened only in the past 5 to 6 years,” he said while adding that some path-breaking research had been done in these institutions. Importantly, he said, 25 per cent of the faculty was from the IITs system itself.
He said the Ministry is already embarking on the reforms process including initiation of “enormous” changes in the administrative structure within the IIT system which will allow the faculty to do the kind of critical mass research and empower the scientific community.
“In 7-10 years our R&D institutions would have gained that global eminence for which they could not have been faulted in the past,” he said, adding most of solutions for research are going to emerge from India even for management in the coming years.
He said the Government was in the process of adding more institutions to the system and said that “shift of research is taking place looking at Indian problems and solutions which will be global.”
-Agencies