The Hindu Business Line : <I>An IIT in search of a home in AP </I>

The Centre has sanctioned an IIT for Andhra Pradesh, leaving it to the State government to decide its location. This has set off a noisy debate on whether Visakhapatnam, Vijayawada, Basara (in Adilabad district) or Isanpur in Medak district (on the outskirts of Hyderabad, about an hour's drive along a highway) could be chosen, instead of locating the institute at the `natural centre of gravity' — Hyderabad. The general mood of the polity seems to be that an IIT is an IIT. Locate it where you will, it is bound to sprout and flourish.

This is hardly the case. It is not easy to find good faculty, the kind of people with the drive to continuously upgrade themselves by research and who are sought-after for project work and consultancies. To ensure and improve the quality of their research they need to present their findings for peer review, by participating in international conferences and publishing articles in professionally reputed, refereed journals.

Connectivity vital

It is this interaction with the world outside that helps set a person apart as a good teacher, especially in the cutting-edge field of technical education, in which one breakthrough follows another quite rapidly.

As things stand, faculty positions in many, perhaps most, IITs remain unfilled for years for want of suitable candidates. This problem will assume critical proportions if location decisions are made without regard to even such basic factors as quality health-care, and air, road and rail connectivity, to facilitate two-way traffic between India's technologists and those in other parts of the world.

No less important is the effect of location on the quality of students an IIT is able to attract, in comparision with the more favourably situated IITs.

Let past mistakes not be repeated. If Hyderabad or its outskirts are not politically acceptable, the outskirts of Visakhapatnam or even Vijayawada could be an option. Opting for back-of-beyond places, `in an effort to develop backward areas', will not make those areas `forward'. It will instead make the IIT backward. And this would be an irredeemable blunder.

Teacher-student ratio

It is also worth noting that the decision on reservations for backward classes, `without any reduction in the number of seats for general category students', will increase the intake of first-year IIT students by 54 per cent over three years. This means an additional 2,200 first-year B.Tech seats by 2009-10. The combined increase of first year to fourth year B.Techs will be around 8,800 by 2014.

If the student-teacher ratio is to be maintained, the IITs will need to recruit an additional one thousand technically qualified faculty members. This is as formidable a task as setting up a new IIT that suffers from a locational disadvantage.

(The author, a Professor of Electronics and Communications at IIT Kharagpur, has participated in deliberations of the Engineering and Technology Group of the Veerappa Moily Committee on reservations in higher education.)

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