Odisha HRD

New IITs to have a broad array of disciplines and have a seven year total budget of 760 crores each

Following is an excerpt from a report in Times of India.

The three new IITs in Bihar, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh will teach not only engineering, but also design and creative arts, management, health sciences, humanities and social sciences.

… To be set up at an outlay of Rs 760 crore each over six years, outsourcing will be resorted to in the three IITs for various routine services. In fact, the Expenditure Finance Committee (EFC) has only approved creation of the post of director and the registrar in each institute along with minimum support staff. The HRD ministry would submit a separate proposal to EFC for support staff.

… Initially, each institute will have an intake capacity of 200 students, but when fully developed, each IIT will have a total student strength of about 3,000 students with approximately 2,000 of them in B Tech, 500 in M Tech, 400 in Ph.D and 100 as post-doctoral fellows.

The new IITs will be mentored by one of the existing IITs to enable them to attain high standards. Each institute will have a faculty strength of 262 at the end of the seventh year of operation and adhere to the teacher-student ratio of 1:9, as in the case of other IITs.

Our earlier article at https://www.orissalinks.com/?p=630 gives numbers related to NISER, IISERs and some of the IITs.

March 6th, 2008

IITs plan to pay handsomely to top-notch researchers

Following is an excerpt from a report in Telegraph.

… The decision, officials at the human resource development ministry concede, indicates a desperate effort to stall the drain of top teachers from IITs to the corporate sector or foreign universities, which offer salaries several times higher than what the government pays.

The ministry has set up a committee under IIT Kharagpur director Damodar Acharya to determine the performance indicators and recommend the raise the best professors will receive.

Quality and quantity of peer-reviewed research and student feedback from classes are likely to be two crucial indicators, sources said.

“The top faculty, who are often wooed by the private sector, will now receive differential treatment and will get salaries close to what they would in the corporate world,” a senior official said.

At present, the faculty are paid a fraction of what fresh IIT graduates earn.

… A separate committee will be set up to revise pay scales for all faculty members at the IITs and the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). But the revised scales will be no match for corporate salaries, officials conceded. The increments the Acharya committee recommends will be over and above the hike.

March 6th, 2008

Anil Agarwal’s net worth as per Forbes (pledged $1 Billion for Vedanta University in 2006)

• Update 2010: 113 in the list of Billionaires with net worth of $6.4 Billion
• 2009: 468 in the list of Billionaires with net worth of $1.5 Billion.
• 2008: 164 in the list of Billionaires with net worth of $6 Billion, 8 in Britain’s list of Billionaires
• 2007: 230 in the list of Billionaires with net worth of $3.8 Billion
• 2006: 245 in the list of Billionaires with net worth of $2.8 Billion
• 2005: Net worth of $2.1 Billion
• 2004: Net worth of $1 Billion

March 6th, 2008