IIT teachers threaten agitation

In a rare move, teachers of all seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have decided to launch an agitation if the government fails to notify new pay scales by March 20. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 17, 2009, 01:17:24 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In a rare move, teachers of all seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have decided to launch an agitation if the government fails to notify new pay scales by March 20.

The last time teachers of all IITs threatened an agitation was 15 years ago — to press for better service conditions. The seven IITs are in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Guwahati and Roorkee.

IIT teachers’ associations have decided to boycott the IIT-Joint Entrance Exam and refused to help set up eight new IITs, resort to mass casual leave and non-participation in recruitment of teachers for existing and new IITs. “We will hold a meeting of representatives of teachers’ councils after March 20 to finalise our course of agitation,” Sunil Pandey, president of the association of all IIT teachers, said.

At an IIT teachers’ forum meeting at IIT-Delhi, participants were unanimous on stopping mentoring of new IITs and participation in selection committees for new recruitment. But there was a division on boycotting the IIT-JEE slated for April. “We will not support anything that can hurt the interest of students unless we are forced to do so,” said a participant.

In a set of resolutions submitted to the human resource development ministry last week, the teachers expressed their anger over the “inordinate” delay in finalising pay scales for teachers in institutes for technical education such as the IITs, IIMs, National Institutes of Technology (NITs), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and institutions affiliated to the All India Council for Technical Education.

But the ministry officials said as an interim measure, it has been decided to release an ad hoc grant for teachers at IITs, IIMs and NIT. A professor would get a lump sum of Rs 2 lakh, an associate professor Rs 1.5 lakh, an assistant professor Rs 1 lakh and a lecturer Rs 75,000.

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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