Renaissance of IITs
Fifty eight years after the first Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) was founded in Kharagpur, the IITs at Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Mumbai, and Roorkee have a lot to be proud of. IIT graduates hold important positions in academia and industry in India and abroad. 60 Minutes, an American TV newsmagazine, focused on undergraduate education at the IITs and hyperbolically described them as "Harvard, MIT, and Princeton" put together, and Business Week ran a cover story on undergraduate education at the IITs. The 50th anniversary of IIT Bombay at Mumbai prompts us to see how well they have met their goals and to discuss the opportunities ahead.
We, the IIT community, have an opportunity – perhaps an obligation – to become the creative minority that can serve as a catalyst in transforming India.
In this greeting on the 50th anniversary of IIT Bombay at Mumbai, I call on the IITs to pursue leading-edge research in sustainability, to develop partnerships with public and private organizations, to expand their constituency to include the entire Indian economy, to pursue initiatives to speed up the social and economic transformation of India, and to lead the world in sustainable development. The IITs can capture the imaginations of the Indian people and take themselves to new heights.
Once the IITs pursue these initiatives, Nehru’s “social, economic and political institutions” will be motivated to address a number of interrelated areas to “ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman”: agriculture and farm insurance, animal energy, child labor, communication infrastructure, cooking gas and electricity, education and the impact of women’s education on family planning and family welfare, employment, finance, healthcare, local governance, nutrition, population growth (reproductive health, maternal mortality, and child mortality), poverty, and transportation. I plan to discuss these issues in a follow-up work.
In this article, I have humbly proposed just one possible plan that can serve as a starting point for debate. I respectfully invite you to participate.
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