Making IITs even stronger for a prosperous India

Good education is the foundation on which wellness and prosperity of a society rests. Institutions of learning carry major responsibility for this. While many things have not worked in India, many have gone right and become globally recognized. IITs top that list. Some of us have been privileged to be in an IIT for our education and reap the benefit every day of our lives. I have been in IIT Bombay, an IIT that often leads in many areas. But all privileges come with responsibilities. Challenges have grown significantly for IITs in recent times. Funding from the Government is under stress. One can argue why funding is to bereduced when India is relatively prosperous today than the period when IITs werecreated. Many of us got our education relatively free though the Country was financially poor and suffered severe shortages of essential commodities. The Government needs to think hard before doing a funding haircut. However, even the most willing Government will not have enough resources. The solution requires creative thinking and collaboration. While IIT based entrepreneurs’ incubators have made progress, there is a need to take these to a different orbit if we want to see real impact. In spite of support these days, entrepreneurs suffer seriously in India. There is little understanding of the tough terrain that lies ahead. A plethora of competitions with not so great prizes attract inexperienced entrepreneurs but distract them from real work on their startups. Here, IITBwith SINE for example, can take show the way. I have been involved with SINE entrepreneurs for years as a mentor. It has big potential. Being a top brand worldwide, much is expected from an IIT like IITB in research and taking education to colleges beyond say its own campus. IITs are often called best for bachelors’ degree college but not good enough for research. When I asked Prof Abhay Karandikar, a Professor at IITB then, he shared the number of PhD students just in electrical engineering department, quite contrary to the prevalent impression. Even if one wants to hold say IITB to a higher bar, opportunity lies for alumni to help the institute get there. I have been involved in IITB eYantra program that has helped over 1300 engineering colleges in robotics education and trained over 35000 students over past eight years. The program is now extended to colleges in neighbouring countries and a couple of African nations. eYantra program has decided to make disaster management as its core theme. The idea to do something in disasters came when Professor Kavi Arya of IITB CSE and Founder of eYantra organized a workshop in Bhutan on entrepreneurship in disaste management. I was a co-faculty along with Prof. Vinod Jain (Founder member of NDMA) and Sumit Sen, Senior Scientist in GISE Lab at IITB. These challenges are worth taking head-on given our privileged position. In today’s time, we want our military to be strong and won’t want to cut the Defence budget. If military is security today, education is securing our future. Let’s make our alma mater strong.