WE SHOULD DO AWAY WITH THE FEELING OF BEING SUPERIOR

‘VS Raju, the new Director of IIT, Delhi in conversation with Osama Manzar
Manzar: Can you define the exact role of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)?
Raju: IITs have been started with the vision of being leading institutions in the field of technology and science, so that they could compete in the international level, and with excellence as a criterion. Under our three programmes—undergraduation. post-graduation and doctorate we have always attracted the best candidates, besides extremely good faculties. It has provided windows which automatically attracted our students to go in for higher studies in the same institute. Arid we wish continue as an institute of excellence.
M: As the Director of UT Delhi, what are your responsibilities?
H: The Director is the chief executive of the institute, both in academic and administrative matters, striving to maintain the prevailing excellence in both sectors. Essentially, the role of the Director is to create an atmosphere in which everyone will be able to give their best.
M: What are your plans in your new office and how are you going to carry them out?
H: In the light of the new economic policy, we are supposed to generate our own grant besides the grants given by the Ministry of Human Resource and Development, which according to new funding policy is frozen to a pre-determined level. While we have academic excellence as the criterion, our faculty has a lot of time left with them, after the routine work. This time is being used on sponsor researches, consultancy and institution building. I basically believe that every individual faculty member should have the freedom to do what he likes the most—it is part of the very nature of his responsibility. First responsibility, of course, is teaching.
Under sponsor research, last year, we earned an amount worth Rs 6 crore, whereas our budget plan was only Rs 3 crore. So, in five years time from now, we want to earn two and a half times more of the cur rent income. Through consultancy services, last year’s revenue was Rs 1.5 crore. Most of the sponsor research assignments, however, came from the Government department s—we hope to get more assignments this year from industries. When we do sponsor research we are not only developing technologies and finding long-term solutions to problems, we are also training the people as a part of career building. Similarly, in consul ting, though we have been earning, what we are giving to our industry clients is automatically contributing the our nation building. By consulting, of course, teaching becomes more relevant. Thus, consulting is gradually becoming essential.
Also, we have planned to multiply consulting five-fold in five years’ time and hope to get a revenue of Us 7.5 crore. We are planning that all our 500 faculties should have Us I lakh worth consulting per year and Rs 2.5 lath worth sponsor research per year, on an average. That is, you spend one-third of your time on teaching, one-third on sponsor research and one- third time on consulting. Eventually, the teachers become more outstanding, because, consulting is confidence building. . If everything materialises we can raise Rs S crore from consul ting and Us 12.5 crore from sponsor research per year out of our total faculty members.
However none of these revenue will go directly to the faculty. We have a board of Research and Consulting with some guidelines, under which part of the revenue goes to the concern faculty and part of the revenue goes to the institute’s Research and Development Centre. We have a provision that an IIT faculty can earn more than their salary in a year through consultancy.
Therefore, I have a definite plan to market the whole institute.
M: Can you explain why so much of brain-drain is taking place from the IITs?
H: According to me, it is good to see and experience different systems. In India, basically, we grow-up in a very protected environment, and you do not get much freedom. And the systems prevailing abroad are more free and independent. So, every student who goes abroad gets benefitted by that system and works very bard. And he or she also develops certain attitude in the backdrop of cultural differences, in which there is more freedom than what our system so far permits. I find no reason why we should prevent them from going them abroad.
The only ‘way we can get these people back, is by making them aware of what is happening in our country. Unfortunately, in an IIT, a student lives in an education system of const ant competition and rarely finds chance to know what is happening in Indian industries. All that they see is traffic, misery and slums, that we have in cities. And in these young minds, there is a picture of everything wrong.
As a corrective measure, now we have started consulting Indian industries to come to the institute and make the students aware of the industries. Meanwhile, the situation in India is improving. Incidentally, our boys are more suited for R&D jobs and not for the maintenance jobs or routine jobs. Virtually, in my opinion, in India, manpower is under utilised; we are overmanned; as a result there are lot of people with routine jobs and our guys are not interested in routine jobs. My own perception is that we should inform our students more and more about our own country and create more opportunities here.
M: What is the investment per year per student in IIT?
H: It is approximately 60 to 70 grands per student per year, which is between 2.4 and 2.8 lakh per student for a four-year course.
M: Lastly, what is your message to students?
H: I think, we should convey the message very effectively, that we are not permanent. We have to keep our reputation up. Unless we keep ourselves fit, I find no reason why other institutions cannot overtake us. And we should do away with the feeling of being superior than others.