New Delhi, May 23
Environment Minister and IIT alumnus Jairam Ramesh today kicked up a controversy claiming the faculty of the premier IITs and IIMs is “not world class” but the institutions are “excellent” because of their quality of students.

“There is hardly any worthwhile research from our IITs. The faculty in the IIT is not world class. It is the students who are world class. So, the IITs (Indian Institute of Technology) and IIMs (Indian Institute of Management (IIM) are excellent because of the quality of students not because of quality of research or faculty,” Ramesh told reporters on the sidelines of a function here.

The outspoken minister is an alumnus of IIT-Mumbai from where he obtained his BTech in Mechanical Engineering in 1975.

On his Ministry's decision to have a joint venture with Reliance Industries Limited to set up a National Centre for Marine Biodiversity in Jamnagar, he said the decision was taken as a world-class research centre cannot be built in a “governmental set-up” and can never attract young people.

Asked whether there was any conflict of interest in collaborating with Reliance, the Minister said, “Life is one large conflict of interest. We cannot build a world-class research centre in a governmental set-up. The governmental set up can never attract young people. Never. Let us understand our experience in the last 60 years. Government research institutions can never attract young talent. So we want to think differently. We have to think differently, how we are going to organise our research institutions. And this is one way of building public-private partnership (PPP),” Ramesh said.

“So I have been to Jamnagar and we are in a PPP mode. We are having a joint venture with Reliance to establish a world class national centre for marine biodiversity,” he said.