IITs feel the pinch

Want Rs 160 crore for expansion of infrastructure, supporting research initiatives and to train new faculty.

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have a 2008 budget wishlist. They want the government to grant them more funds to support their infrastructure expansions and research initiatives

The IIT academic advisory council's standing committee will shortly make a presentation to the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry on the financial needs of the seven IITs, where it will ask the government for over Rs 160 crore (around 20 crore for each IIT) to facilitate the expansion and research programmes at the seven IITs.

M S Ananth, director IIT-Madras, says: "We are running in the red and need funds to facilitate our expansion and sponsor research activities at our institute. We have been using our corpus money towards this end and will request for at least Rs 20 crore from the government."

Ananth spoke to Business Standard on the sidelines of three-day International Vice Chancellors Conclave hosted by IIT Bombay as part of its Golden Jubilee celebrations.

Corpus funds in the IITs (other than Guwahati and Roorkee) are between Rs 60 and Rs 120 crore. The IITs want to recruit more faculty, launch new courses and increase the pool of students.

In fact, IIT Madras, is examining distance education because of the shortage of teachers. It has a huge project called the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), where it has completed phase-I.

It has created 240 courses "" 120 by video and 120 by web. The institute plans to launch phase-II on the web where 500 courses will be put online for free.

At IIT Kharagpur, the institute has recently got approval from the MHRD for a Rs 400-crore expansion plan.

Said D Acharya, director, IIT Kharagpur, "We have lined up huge expansion plans. Being the oldest IIT, our infrastructure is old. We plan to increase the strength of students from the present 7,000 to 20,000. We also want to increase the pool of faculty from 600 at present to 2,000 in the next 10 years. We plan to launch free engineering courses for students and also devise a programme for the training of teachers."

Besides these measure, the IITs are awaiting autonomy from the government to allow them to charge fee as they wish.

Says a professor from IIT Roorkeet, "The institute still charges a hostel fee of Rs 100 per semester per student. We would like to charge more fee and bring in more money to support a whole lot of activities on the campus."

IIT Roorkee has increased the number of seats in its hostel by 800 seats. It is also making some contingency plans to enhance its laboratories and classrooms and hostel.

A major concern for the IITs, or for that matter most Indian quality institutes, is taking up quality research.

Says IIT Bombay director, Ashok Mishra, "We need ample funding for our research and development activities. More tech incubation centres are needed. Financial resources will give us the support that we need to spread our wings."

India's education system which is often compared to China's education system, lags behind significantly in research and development. Today, while China spends $ 7,300 million on R&D, India spends a mere $ 560 million. In China, the R&D share done in universities has also more than doubled.