Modi govt gives Jio Institute ‘eminent’ status, Congress accuses BJP of ‘favouring’ Ambanis

On Monday, the Congress accused the BJP of ‘favouring’ Mukesh and Nita Ambani. They wrote on Twitter: “The BJP Govt favours Mukesh & Nita Ambani yet again. The illusionary JIO Institute which is yet to see the light of day has been declared as an 'eminent' institute. The Govt needs to clarify the basis of classification for granting such a status.”

The HRD Ministry today granted "Institutions of Eminence" status to three public and three private institutes, enabling them to get full autonomy and special incentives to project them as "world class universities".

The BJP Govt favours Mukesh & Nita Ambani yet again. The illusionary JIO Institute which is yet to see the light of day has been declared as an 'eminent' institute. The Govt needs to clarify the basis of classification for granting such a status.#SuitBootSarkar https://t.co/owxlh7Kgev

— Congress (@INCIndia) July 9, 2018

While the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry will grant Rs 1,000 crore funds to the three public institutions in the next five years, the private institutes will not be eligible for government funding.

The HRD Ministry clarified that Jio was granted the Greenfield status - for new institutes - since it fulfilled all parameters. 

The government granted "Institutions of Eminence" (IoEs) status to IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay and the Bengaluru-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in the public sector, and Manipal Academy of Higher Education, BITS Pilani and Jio Institute by Reliance Foundation in the private sector.

How was Jio Institute selected?

Jio Institute has been selected under the Greenfield Category – pertaining to new institutes – and according to officials, 11 other institutes had applied for it.

These included Airtel for Bharti Univeristy, Anil Agarwal’s Vedanta for a university in Odisha and KREA university (which has former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan as an advisor), Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, Indus Tech Univeristy in Delhi and Acharya Institutes of Bangalore.

According to the proposal submitted to the Ministry of HRD about the institute, it pointed out that sponsoring organisation was India’s largest private sector company and the largest corporate spender on social initiatives. It said it had a deep relationship with 50 top universities and had experience of running top educational institutes including Dhirubhai Ambani Foundation Schools and other institutes in which the foundation was involved like the  Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Pandit Deen Dayal Petroleum University and IIM Bangalore.

The institute would get eminent educators and global thoughts leaders including Nobel Laureates. It said that it would get top faculty members from top 500 global universities, autonomy in teaching and research, a fully residential university city for faculty and their families.

What the HRD Ministry said? 

Clarifying that they assessed 11 institutions the EEC said they have taken the following paramenters into consideration

1) Availability of land for construction of the institution 
2) Putting in place a core team with very high qualification and wide experience
3) Making available funding for setting up the intitution
4) A stratetigic vision plan with clear annual milesones

The committee said only Jio Institute satisfied all four parameters

What is this move?

The move is part of a scheme of the HRD Ministry to select 20 IoEs 10 public and 10 private that will enjoy complete academic and administrative autonomy. However, the Empowered Expert Committee (EEC) headed by former chief election commissioner N Gopalaswami picked six institutions that, according to the panel, showed the potential to find a place among top 500 of global rankings.

Unlike other institutions, IoEs will get greater autonomy to start new courses, admit foreign students, hire foreign faculty, and collaborate with foreign educational institutions without the need for government approval.

"The #InstituteofEminence are important for the country. We have 800 univ, but not a single university in top 100 or even 200 in the world ranking. Today's decision will help achieve this. Improving ranking needs sustained planning, complete freedom & public institutes getting public funding (sic)," Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar tweeted.

"This decision is a landmark decision for following reasons -This was never thought off & tried; it is more than a graded autonomy, it is really a full autonomy to the institutes; the institutes can take their own decisions (sic)," he added.