In intelligent, rational societies when an academic institution is successful in attaining the aims and objectives for which it was promoted, the powers that be in the education (aka human resource development) ministry and other organisations involved with education quality and development, study the successful institution, distill its culture and essence and replicate it to rigorously educate the nation’s youth to transform them into innovative and productive citizens. But in the society shaped by the self-serving Dynasty and complicit intelligentsia and middle class of post-independence India, this institution development formula has been discarded in favour of a licence-permit-quota regime under which the replication process is strictly controlled. The result is chronic demand-supply imbalances and rationing of scarce capacity through complex quota systems. This is the story of India’s Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), arguably the country’s most globally renowned academic brand. Since the first IIT was promoted in Kharagpur, West Bengal in 1951, their number has grown to a mere eight in the past 65 years, although recently another eight have been hastily promoted about whom little is known. Nevertheless despite constant government interference, brand IIT has established an excellent global reputation for the high quality of school-leavers selected for admission through a rigorous and miraculously fair and uncorrupted IIT-JEE (joint entrance examination) system and training within well-equipped campuses. But over 500,000 higher secondary school-leavers write IIT-JEE, of whom a mere 9,500 are selected for admission into IITs countrywide. With capacity so constricted, the law of unintended consequences has kicked in for these too-few institutes of high quality technology education. For one, a huge IIT-JEE (and other entrance exams) coaching industry comprising an estimated 10,000 preparatory centres has mushroomed countrywide. Moreover with an IIT degree the passport to well-paid employment, quotas have had to be reserved for historically neglected SC and ST (scheduled castes and scheduled tribes), and latterly for OBCs (other backward castes/classes). And in end May, Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal somewhat hastily abolished IIT-JEE and decreed a new common entrance test for admission into all Central government-funded institutions of engineering and technology, including the IITs. The abolition of IIT-JEE and in particular the equal weightage proposed to be given to class XII exam results of the country’s 42 disparate school boards for admission proved unacceptable to the IIT faculty, fearing a sea change in the profile of students admitted into these institutes of proven excellence. This month’s cover story — which had to be updated at the eleventh hour after a compromise was struck between the IITs and HRD ministry — examines this and other larger issues which prompt politicians to periodically threaten the autonomy of India’s showpiece institutions of engineering and technology. Our equally important special report feature is also connected with technology. It provides a comprehensive picture of the potential of new ICT (information and communications technology) to make up for several lost decades, and leapfrog India’s primary, secondary and higher education into the 21st century. Highly recommended to all stakeholders in education.
