Inconvenient Truth

Environment minister Jairam Ramesh has kicked off a furore, saying that faculty at the IITs and IIMs are not world class, unlike their students. What, if anything, is wrong with the IITs which were perceived to be among the finest science and engineering institutes anywhere? First, there’s a grain of truth in what Ramesh has said: though there are individual faculty members in the IITs who research and publish in global journals, their numbers are low and likely to be falling.

Professors and researchers at the cutting edge of any field find themselves stifled in most Indian campuses. Funds for primary research are tiny and hard to come by, governments and businesses in India are stingy when it comes to financing fundamental research or hiring PhDs, limiting the scope for research and knowledge creation. Serious scientists lack the environment for research and discussion here, and are forced to travel frequently. Unsurprisingly, many who sample the scholarly environment overseas, decide to stay over permanently. If you’re world class, the rest of the world is ready to welcome you, but not India.

We should be thankful to the existing faculty for staying put in this country and focusing at least on teaching, which, Ramesh would grant, has its uses. Outing the inconvenient truth is not enough. The government and the private sector must work to build and sustain centres of scientific excellence in India. History proves that funding is necessary but not sufficient for this. Other factors also matter.

For example, for science and research to flourish you need a certain number of people working closely to generate and churn new ideas. As happened at the Cavendish labs, Cambridge, which attracted academic stars from all over the world in disciplines as diverse as nuclear physics and genetics in the inter-War years, or in the US, post-War.

In recent years, tiny Singapore is trying, with some success, to nurture a dynamic global academic community. India should liberalise its higher education policies to get similar results. We might not create MITs out of IITs overnight, but unless we make a start now, we’ll never get there.