Govt may cut IIT grant by Rs 300 cr

In a bid to give school education and the expansion of higher education a boost, the government is expected to reduce the plan budget allocation for the IIT by around 29 per cent in fiscal 2009-10, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 15, 2009, 14:23:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a bid to give school education and the expansion of higher education a boost, the government is expected to reduce the plan budget allocation for the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) by around 29 per cent in fiscal 2009-10.

The government is likely to allocate Rs 850 crore to the seven existing IITs — in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Roorkee, Kharagpur, Guwahati and Kanpur — as against Rs 1,171 crore allocated this financial year. A Planning Commission official, who requested anonymity, however, explained “there is no reduction in regular plan funds” and the proposed cut is on account of reduction in the allocation for implementation of 27 per cent OBC quota.

The quota is being implemented in the IITs in three phases, starting 2008, with the Oversight Committee — tasked with preparing a roadmap for the implementation — recommending an additional grant of Rs 3,334 crore for the premier institutes. “Last year, Rs 771 crore was given to implement the recommendations of the committee. For next year, we have proposed to allocate Rs 400-450 crore,” he said.

The IIT directors said it would be difficult to examine the impact of the fund reduction till they have all the details. “It would be difficult for me to comment unless I see it in fine print,” said IIT Delhi director Dr Surender Prasad. “The reduction will impact our development but it can be gauged only after we know under what sectors the grant is being reduced,” said Dr S.C. Saxena, director, IIT Roorkee.

“We have to build hostels, classrooms and infrastructure facilities for additional intake of students. If the plan allocation is reduced, these projects may get hit,” said an IIT director who didn’t want to be named.

The idea behind the cut is to sustain government funding for school education, which saw huge growth with enrolment under the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan crossing 95 per cent in 2007-08. To sustain this, school education is expected to get Rs 26,800 crore the next fiscal, the same as this fiscal. Funds for higher education would also be increased to initiate projects to set up 16 new central universities.

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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