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| 'Flexible cadre' issue to be raised at IIT Council meet |
| Pradipta Mukherjee / Kolkata Oct 19, 2009, 01:29 IST |
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After a two-month long tussle with the union ministry of human resources (MHRD) over pay scales and autonomy issues, the All India IIT Faculty Federation (AIIITF) is looking forward to the IIT Council meeting to present some proposals which it believes “will ensure that IITs keep excelling by attracting talented faculty into the system and preserve the culture of flexible cadre system that has contributed significantly to the success of IITs.”
Towards this end, it has sent a detailed proposal to the IIT Council for consideration at the final meeting on October 19. The Councils is the highest governing body for the IITs. It comprises around 30 members including the minister in-charge of technical education in the central government, Chairman of each institute (7), director of each IIT (7) and the UGC chairman.
For one, the AIIITF wants assistant professors with PhD and three years of total work experience to be placed in pay band 4 (PB4) grade which entitles to a salary of Rs 37,400 and academic grade pay (increment grade) of Rs 9,000. M Thenmozhi, President, AIIITFF, says: “According to the draft UGC regulations of September 23, a PhD with five years experience is placed at PB4 grade but at IITs, the same position is given to a faculty only after a minimum of six years of work experience after a PhD. We want some parity there too.”
The MHRD modifications of September 16 for IITs placed PhDs with six years work experience at PB4, in order to bring parity with the National Institute of Technology (NITs). “But again it should change to bring parity between IITs and NITs as well. Hence, our request, that PhD with three years of total work experience should be placed in PB4 grade is reasonable,” Thenmozhi says, adding: "Moreover, PB4 for assistant professors on appointment is the original claim of the Federation as well as the directors of IITs to the Goverdhan Mehta Committee and MHRD.”
The AIIITF is also demanding that the flexible cadre system should be maintained “in full spirit”. Under this, certain conditions imposed on IITs by the MHRD should be made absolutely flexible, including flexibility of 10 per cent faculty strength to be recruited as assistant professor on contract, only 40 per cent of the professors could be promoted at one time, total 10 years requirement to be considered for the post of a professor of which four years have to be as assistant professor.
“Although HRD minister Kapil Sibal has assured us that none of these restrictions would come in the way as they are purely norms and Board of Governors of IITs or the selection committee would always be able to make exceptions for exceptional cases of merit, we still feel that modifying the written order is as much necessary as the verbal assurances given in public by the minister,” says Thenmozhi.
The crux of the problem is the anomaly in the revised pay scales. For instance, around 200 faculty members were hired in last five years at IIT Madras, mainly in the category of assistant professors. Consider someone who had been drawing a salary of Rs 26,526 (14,100 basic + DA) as on 1.1.2006. If this person was teaching in a UGC college or in the non-teaching cadre (deputy librarian or deputy registrar) at IIT, the revised pay exclusive of allowances would be Rs 46,400 and will be in payband 4. However, if this person was teaching in IIT, the revised pay would be Rs 38,000 and would still be in payband 3.
That apart, assistant professors in the pre-revised pay scale of Rs 22,320 to Rs 29,350, will all draw the same revised pay of Rs 38,000 as per the revisions. This is because of ‘bunching’ of 10 stages of pre-revised pay into one revised pay, despite the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendation of bunching no more than two stages. (Bunching started with the 5th Central Pay Commission. Both the 5 th and 6 th pay commissions have tried to to bring down the number of pay scales of Central government employees. In doing so, the scales of a few posts have been merged into a single pay scale. In the 6th Central Pay Commission, they have done away with scales by introducing a new term called pay bands (PB). Thus bunching reduces a number of scales into a single scale.)
Associate and full professors also are subjected to similar bunching of five-six stages. So, a professor with 25 years of experience and a professor with five years of experience will have a pay difference of just four increments.
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