After IIM, Ahmedabad now eyes IIT

AHMEDABAD: You read it right. The home to India’s best-known management school (IIM-Ahmedabad) is warming up to house an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT).

The Gujarat government has already written to IIT-Bombay to consider setting up a ‘satellite’ centre in either Ahmedabad or in the Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar knowledge corridor.

If the Gujarat government manages to clinch the deal, Ahmedabad will be the first city in the country to have both an IIM and an IIT. IIT-Bombay’s director, Ashok Misra confirmed having received a request from the Gujarat government.

“We are considering the proposal. We need to see what benefits the state has to offer,” he told ET. The institute has already firmed up plans for a satellite centre in Goa. There is a plan to set up a new campus in Mumbai and another satellite centre in Pune, he added.

At the new campuses, the institute will offer the same courses it offers at its Powai campus. The student intake will also be on par. But the total intake by IIT-Bombay will go up. Sources in the state capital, Gandhinagar, said that the government’s education department wrote to IIT-B in April this year.

The institute was urged to set up a campus in the state. The institute showed willingness, but has asked for certain relief in land costs, among other benefits. Misra will meet state government officials during his visit to Ahmedabad-Gandhinagar next month. He will be here to kick-off the Gujarat chapter of PanIIT India, a global body of IITians.

If the institute agrees, it will come as a shot in the arm for the Modi government’s plans of building Gujarat into a technology hub. The current government believes IT will be the next growth driver for the state which is India’s second most industrialised state. Thousands of IITians already work in its myriad factories.

The expansion plans of the IITs — seven in all — contrary to the IIMs, has the backing of the Union HRD ministry. The HRD ministry’s proposal to implement reservation for other backward classes (OBCs) in higher education has been used by IIT-Bombay to roll out its expansion plans quickly.

The institute has around 500 acres of land in the Powai campus, but there is little room for expansion.

At the same time, land prices in Ahmedabad, already known for top-class institutes of premier education like IIM, National Institute of Design (NID), National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Mudra Institute of Communications (MICA), Centre for Environment Planning and Technology (CEPT) and Physical Research Lab (PRL), is among the lowest among many tier-II cities.