Experts back Ramesh’s IIT-IIM remark

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh has received flak from BJP and academicians regarding his comments on IITs and IIMs but has got support of some scientists.

Updated on: May 25, 2011, 23:58:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Environment minister Jairam Ramesh has received flak from BJP and academicians regarding his comments on IITs and IIMs but has got support of some scientists.

Anil K Rajvanshi, Director of Maharashtra based Nimbkar Agriculture Research Institute questioned the rationale behind just one percent of IIT students, doing Bachelors of Technology, doing for research and development and said it showed that IITs does not have temperament for research.

“The biggest tragedy is that the administrators of IITs and the HRD ministry think that if you keep on increasing the pay then you will get first class researchers and teachers. This is the biggest myth perpetuated by Harvard MBA types,” he said, while pointing out that people opt for research not for money but for passion.

Ramesh on Monday had said that IITs and IIMs were world class institutions not because of their faculty but their students. On Tuesday, BJP and IIT, IIM faculty members lambasted Ramesh for his comments.

Not only Rajvanshi had supported Ramesh. Some experts in country’s top planning body, the planning commission, have backed the environment minister’s view. “Most of the public sector institutes like IITs were not delivering high quality research and is doing most of the consultancy job for the private sector,” a senior advisory at the plan panel, who was not willing to be quoted, said.

His view is backed by the fact that the government spending on scientific research and development had fallen since 1990s. The government spends less than one percent of the GDP on science and technology as compared to about 1.5 % in mid 1970s.

Minister of state for Planning Ashwini Kumar admitted that the spending was going down and said he will try to increase the spending to 1.5-2 % of the Gross Domestic Product in the 12th five year plan start from next financial year.

Kumar, who is also junior science minister, admitted that India has a poor record in registering patents globally and India lowest number of scientists as compared to United States and China.

China had increased its scientific manpower to almost three times in the last decade whereas for India it has remained stagnant at 1.75 lakh scientists.

Rajvanshi told Ramesh, a passout of IIT Bombay, that the students in IITs are smart where the faculty is mediocre and many B grade universities in United States may have better faculty.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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