I’ll fast if IIT faculty takes 'moksha': Kapil Sibal

Elite educational institutes like the IITs and the IIMs should come up with a vision to achieve excellence and generate their own funds to break free from the government’s control, human resource development minister Kapil Sibal said on Wednesday.

Sibal offered to “fast” for the prosperity of the IITs, provided the faculty gives up its demands and drafts a roadmap to take the institutes ahead so that they could “produce Nobel Laureates”

“I am willing to fast for them. But they (the faculty) need to take moksha (salvation) from PB-4 (pay band 4) and talk about vision 2024,” he said.

But the faculty has decided to go ahead with its hunger strike over salary revision and promotions. “We will take classes and won’t let students suffer. But we have decided to stay hungry from 9am to 9pm [on Thursday],” said professor SS Murthy, IIT-Delhi.

Sibal said the IITs can’t expect to be out of the government’s control till they get funds from it. “It cannot be that the government, which gives 100% funding, will have no regulation and fix no eligibility conditions (for entry and promotion of teachers),” he said.

The faculty’s demands include withdrawal of 40% cap on promotion of professors to senior grade.

“The IITs are brand institutes. We respect them,” the minister said, adding that the government wants to give them more freedom.

“If they [the faculty] give us five years vision or a goal post and achieve [the goals], the government would give them more freedom. I promise that the government would incrementally let them [IITs] go,” he said.

India gets Unesco’s category-I institute
Unesco’s executive board has approved India’s proposal to set up Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development as the global organisation’s category-I institute. This will make India the first country in Asia to have a Unesco category-I institute. At present, there are 11 category-I institutes, and all but three are located in the developed countries.