New Delhi, May 26
Three days after Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh dismissed the contribution of IIT and IIM faculty to the global standing of these institutes, the government today woke up to distance itself from the remarks, and repose faith in the creative potential of teachers.

Minister of Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal came out in defence of IITs and IIMs, saying the “distinguished minister (Ramesh) was entitled to his opinion but discussions should be based on evidence rather than perception”.

“At least 25 per cent IIT faculty studied at these institutes. If they were world class students, they certainly are world class faculty,” Sibal said, seeking to tame the storm Ramesh raised. That’s not to say the government entirely disagreed with the latter’s concerns of poor research at IITs and IIMs.

Sibal admitted that the IITs didn’t have the critical mass of students and faculty needed to change the global scientific discourse, but blamed the gaps not on faculty but on weak ecosystems. “The US spends $ 250 billion annually on research and development while we spend $ 8 billion. If the kind of research grants the world gives are absent in India, we can’t blame the faculty; if our institutes don’t have the required infrastructure, we can’t blame the faculty,” Sibal said, taking swipes at Ramesh.

Continuing with his defence, the minister said the IITs were world class and IIT Bombay was 21st in global rankings if the medical index was excluded. By this standard, IIT Delhi was 24th and IIT Kanpur and Madras were 37th and 29th respectively. References here were also made to top-class research at IITs like to IIT Kanpur’s Professor Maninder Agarwal who discovered a foolproof method to determine prime numbers error-free and on a large-scale. “The world discovered this system after 2000 years,” Sibal said.

The government further argued that the IITs had not been, in the first place, conceived for research, and were meant for world-class undergraduate teaching. “Yet, the rate of growth of research at the IITs has picked up of late and is about 16 per cent as against the global annual research growth rate of 4 per cent,” Sibal maintained.

Interestingly, pained by the dearth of research potential at the IITs, the ministry earlier constituted a committee headed by Anil Kakodkar, former Atomic Energy Commission head who has since made path-breaking recommendations, including raising the tuition fee at the IITs from Rs 50, 000 per student per year to Rs 2.5 lakh; and payment of 20 per cent overheads by each Government Ministry assigning research project at an IIT (US universities charge 50 per cent overheads).

It remains to be seen whether the government accepts these recommendations, which are critical to IITs’ financial autonomy and further to its research output. At present, our IITs produce 1000 PhDs a year whereas China and US technical institutes together produce 12,000 and 8000, respectively.