Odisha HRD

Orissa to push for the centrally funded IIIT to be in Berhampur: Dharitri

This is a very good and sensible decision by the state; hopefully the central govt. will not create issues with it.

July 12th, 2008

IIIT in Berhampur and NID in Orissa back in the radar

Following is an excerpt from a report in tathya.in.

The chances of a National Institute of Design (NID) in Orissa seems bright, thanks to the initiative of Subas Pani.

… During his recent visit to the state he advised the officials of the Government of Orissa to allot land free of cost for a NID at Bhubaneswar.

And accordingly intimate the Government of India to set up the NID in Orissa, advised he.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission is favoring the idea of another NID in the country.

Dr.Ahluwalia has also responded positively, when Naveen Patnaik raised the matter with him on the event of proposed NID being shifted to Bhopal. …

While Orissa Government along with leading IT companies has set up an Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Bhubaneswar, another IIIT offered by the Government of India may be set up at Berhampur, Dr.Pani suggested.

Accordingly a piece of land may be acquired there and intimated to the Centre as soon as possible, said Dr.Pani.

9 comments July 9th, 2008

Centrally funded IIIT for Chhatisgrah; Orissa should push for one in Berhampur

The recent recommendation of NASSCOM for 20 new IIITs did not include a location in Chhatisgarh. However, as per a recent report in Economic Times Minister of State Mr. Jairam Ramesh has announced the establishment of a IIIT in Chhatisgarh. Following is an excerpt from that report.

"The state government thanks Minister of State for Power and Commerce Jairam Ramesh for announcing at a function held Friday at Sipat in Bilaspur district to set up an IIIT in Chhattisgarh," a government press statement said.

"The state government will soon provide the location for the new IIIT as the announcement was made by the central minister as per the initiatives taken by Chief Minister Raman Singh April 20 when they had a meeting in Raipur," the statement read.

Officials said that the state government may offer a massive plot for the IIIT in Naya Raipur where the government is presently developing a new satellite town that will replace Raipur as the new state capital of Chhattisgarh, probably by 2011.

Naya Raipur, about 20 km east of here and located between national highways 6 and 43, will be spread out over 8,000 hectares.

Regardless of the NASSCOM recommendation the Orissa government and Minister of state Mr. Chandrasekhar Sahu must push for a IIIT in Berhampur, the third largest metropolitan area of Orissa. (The other two, Bhubaneswar and Rourkela, have other national institutions.)

June 1st, 2008

Kerala’s HRD goodies

Following is extracted from a report in New Indian Express.

• Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would lay the foundation stone of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) and Indian Institute of Space Technology (IIST).
• The Central University sanctioned by the IHRD Ministry will be started in Kasargod district.
• The Centre has also sanctioned another Central university with world class standards.
• An Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT)
• Upgradation of CUSAT into Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology (IIEST).
• A sub centre of Aligarh Muslim University will be established in Malappuram
• A sub centre of Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages University will be started at Kollam.
• A proposal for establishing a Centre of Engineering Research in Engineering to coordinate research in engineering.

May 23rd, 2008

NASSCOM list of locations and recommendations for the 20 IIITs

Following is an excerpt from a report in Hindu. (NASSCOM’s press release is here.)

The National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) on Thursday suggested the 20 cities for setting up new Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT).

Delhi, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Bangalore and Jammu are among the cities suggested.

… In its model detailed project report (DPR) presented to the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Nasscom, the trade body representing the Indian information technology and business process outsourcing (IT-BPO) industry, has also included the names of Chandigarh, Dehradun, Lucknow, Patna, Shillong, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Indore, Nagpur, Bhubaneshwar, Pune, Visakhapatanam, Mysore, Mangalore and Coimbatore for establishing new IIITs. PPP model

In its model DPR that will serve as a template for the preparation of the DPR for each individual IIIT, Nasscom has proposed that the new IIITs be set up as a fully autonomous institutions, through a public-private partnership (PPP) model. The partners in setting up the IIITs should be the Ministry, the respective State governments and industry members.

National importance

According to Nasscom president Som Mittal, each IIIT has been envisioned to become a world-class academic institute and evolve into technology and functional ‘Centres of Excellence’ through a strong focus on research in frontier technology areas.

To achieve this, it is imperative to attract best-in-class faculty, and students; develop sustainable linkages with industry; and provide an environment conducive for research excellence.

To justify the large investments being made in the IIITs, it is important that they provide a sufficient scale at undergraduate, post-graduate and doctoral research levels, he added. …

Autonomy

“The model for the new IIITs proposed in the DPR focuses on both academic and research excellence through innovative governance and operational approaches and a strong and sustained participation from the IT industry.

“However, achieving this will not be easy and it is important that each institute is supported, especially in the initial years, and is also allowed complete autonomy to define its roadmap and implement it,” Mr. Mittal added.

Following are some excerpts from a report in Business Standard.

While required investment into the IIITs could vary depending on the city, close to Rs 100 crore has been estimated for each IIIT. …

The locations of IIITs have been arrived at on the basis of how well connected they are in terms of transport and facilities and their prominence to industrial hubs. Considering the dire faculty crunch in the country, Nasscom has made it clear that faculty members must be be given salaries prevalent in the market.

It has been suggested that each IIIT must have the autonomy to decide its own salary structure to compete with private educational institutes. Collaborating private organisations would be requested to send their experienced employees as visiting faculty members. A higher number of visiting faculty and faculty-exchange programmes with universities in India and abroad have been suggested.

…

The report says all programmes in an IIIT should be given equal importance, having noted that generally it is the undergraduate programme in institutes that receives most of the attention. It has been suggested that other post-graduate programmes, especially the PhD programmes, should not be compromised with.

The development of the PhD programme, according to one of the suggestions, is vital to the growth of IIITs as these doctoral students could be groomed for teaching positions in IIITs, creating a strong pool of candidates for top academic positions.

It has been recommended that the undergraduate programme of IIITs could be scaled up to 600 students, the post-graduate programme could take about 400 students and the PhD programme could have an intake of 100 students.

A faculty-student ratio of 1:14 has been suggested. The report has suggested an integrated campus model and a hub-and-spoke campus model, depending on the IIIT.

The Orissa government has to figure out a way to have this IIIT in Berhampur and if not then convince the central govt. to establish one of the proposed 10 NITs in Berhampur.

1 comment May 23rd, 2008

Eleventh Plan HRD distribution across states

Following is excerpted and corrected from http://darpg.nic.in/arpg-website/ChiefSectConf/PPT/HRD.ppt. (See also https://www.orissalinks.com/?p=1043.)

 * Not funded by MHRD.

 So Orissa could get 18 colleges (in 18 districts) and 11 polytechnics. Each of these colleges would be supported by GOI by upto Rs. 2.5 Crore or one-third cost with the balance being met by the State Government or Private participation.

May 15th, 2008

IIT directors urge govt to give new institutes another name

Excerpts from an article in the Business Standard:

Directors of some Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are understood to have written to Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia urging the government to give the proposed IITs some other name.

They are of the view that calling the new institutes “IITs” would dilute the brand image of the existing premier institutes, which figure among the world’s 100 best technology universities and are compared with the likes of MIT, California University and Berkeley.

If true, this is an unfortunate development. I do not think increasing the number of IITs from 7 to 16 is going to have any impact on the existing IITs, if done right. IIMs don’t seem to mind any "brand dilution"; the elitist attitude of the IITs is rather shocking.

IMHO, existing IITs are so good because of their students, faculty, and funding. If the government is willing to invest in the IITs and is careful in hiring the faculty, then the proposed IITs can have equally good infrastructure and faculty compared to the old ones. As far as students are concerned, doubling the intake is not going to impact the quality of students drastically. I believe that the top 6000 IIT JEE rankers are as good as the top 3000 rankers (or however many students are admitted these days). Finally,  existing IITs are nowhere near MIT or UCB, so its not really a big gap to bridge for the proposed IITs. 

April 4th, 2008

NITs and IIESTs

The 11th plan intends to establish 10 NITs. Following is a list of the existing 20 NITs and the 5 4 proposed IIESTs which is proposed to be part of the NIT act. (IT BHU, which was earlier proposed to be an IIEST, is now slated to become an IIT.)

1.   Andhra Pradesh: NIT Warangal, IIEST Visakhapatnam (Andhra Univ. Eng. College), IIEST Hyderabad (Osmania Univ. Eng. College)
2.     Assam and 7 other north-eastern states: NIT Silchar
   1. Arunachal Pradesh:
   2. Manipur:
   3. Meghalaya:
      
   4. Mizoram:
   5. Nagaland:
   6. Sikkim:
   7. Tripura: NIT Tripura
3.    Bihar: NIT Patna 
   
4.   Chhattisgarh: NIT Raipur
   
5.   Goa:
   
6.   Gujarat: NIT Surat
7.   Haryana: NIT Kurukshetra
8.   Himachal Pradesh: NIT Hamirpur   
9. Jammu and Kashmir: NIT Srinagar
10.     Jharkhand: NIT Jamshedpur 
11.     Karnataka:  NIT Surathkal
    
12.     Kerala: NIT Calicut, IIEST Kochi (CUSAT) 
13.     Madhya Pradesh: NIT Bhopal
    
14.     Maharashtra: NIT Nagpur 
15.     Orissa: NIT Rourkela
    
16.     Punjab: NIT Jallandhar
17.    Rajasthan: NIT Jaipur
18.     Tamil Nadu: NIT Trichy 
19.     Uttarakhand: 
20.     Uttar Pradesh: NIT Allahabad 
21.     West Bengal: NIT Durgapur, IIEST Howrah (BESU) 

1 comment March 31st, 2008