Saturday, May 27, 2006
A letter to SAC-PM, Knowledge commission and planning commission of India
| From: Chitta Baral | Mailed-By: gmail.com |
To: chairman@icssr.org, jayati@mail.jnu.ac.in, president_cpr@vsnl.com, sam.pitroda@c-sam.com, vcdu@del3.vsnl.net.in, abhijit.sen@yojana.nic.in, anwarul.hoda@yojana.nic.in, b.mungekar@yojana.nic.in, dch@yojana.nic.in, kirit.parikh@yojana.nic.in, manmohan@sansad.nic.in, mvraja@yojana.nic.in, s.hameed@yojana.nic.in, vl.chopra@yojana.nic.in, yugandhar.bn@nic.in, ashok@tenet.res.in, bikash@meghdoot.saha.ernet.in, bikash@veccal.ernet.in, chairman@isro.org, chairman@tifac.org.in, chmn@dae.gov.in, cnrrao@jncasr.ac.in, dgcsir@csir.res.in, dir@igcar.ernet.in, director@cdfd.org.in, director@iitk.ac.in, diroff@admin.iisc.ernet.in, dmg@igcar.ernet.in, dodsec@dod.delhi.nic.in, dstsec@nic.in, easiddiq@rediffmail.com, gangulynk@icmr.delhi.nic.in, gangulynk@icmr.org.in, gm@orgchem.iisc.ernet.in, kkarnik@nasscom.org, Milind@nic.in, mkbhan@dbt.nic.in, mmsharma@bom3.vsnl.net.in, mrai@icar.delhi.nic.in, natarajan_drdo@hotmail.com, pallerama_rao@yahoo.co.in, pb@mbu.iisc.ernet.in, rc@magnum.barc.ernet.in, rchandra@nic.in, roddam@caos.iisc.ernet.in, sapiramal@nicholaspiramal.co.in, sgd@iitk.ac.in, skkaura@samtelgroup.com, tvrama@bhu.ac.in, tvrama@physics.iisc.ernet.in, vc@uohyd.ernet.in, vsumantran@gmail.com, "K. VijayRaghavan"
Cc: cmo@ori.nic.in, csori@ori.nic.in, subas@nic.in, director@nitrkl.ac.in
Date: May 27, 2006 7:42 AM
Subject: Correcting flaws in the list of proposed Indian Institute of Engineering Sc and Technology -- combining quality with regional balance please
Dear Esteemed Planning commission, Knowledge commission and SAC-PM members:
Recently there has been thoughts about establishing several
IIEST (Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technologies) as IIT couisins.
The article at http://www.hindustantimes.com
mentions that the five institute that were chosen were
1. Bengal Engineering and Science University,
2. Institute of Technology, Beneras Hindu University,
3. Cochin University of Science and Technology,
4. Andhra University, College of Engineering and
5. Osmania University College of Engineering and University College of Technology.
The article says that these institutes were chosen based on recommendations of a
Professor M. Anandakrishnan committee. I applaud that this time there was
a formal evaluation on merit and quality to decide which institutes were
to be upgraded. However there are some big omissions.
(a) The committee did not take NITs into account during their evaluation
process. Thus if the above five institutes are promoted to IIEST and are given
more funding and prestige than the NITs then that would be unfair to the hard
workd done by the NITs.
(b) Worse, if NITs were taken into account then there could have been
more regional balance. For example, NIT Rourkela is ranked
better than 4 of the above five institutes. Please
see http://www.nsitlounge.in/NSIT
Thus a proper evaluation taking into account NITs and regional balance could
have provided more opportunity to backward states like Orissa.
Considering that there is gross inequity across states in higher education
spending by the central government (please see http://equitableindia.org for the numbers)
and the central government is aiming for more equality, I sincerely
request that you influence the concerned decision makers to take a quick
and fresh look and add some of the top NITs (especially in states
without IITs) to the list of institutions to be upgraded to an IIEST . (The next best institutions
in those states can then be upgraded to NITs.)
sincerely,
Chitta Baral
Professor, Department of Computer Science & Eng.
Arizona State University
