A K Bhattacharya: Pay your teachers

RAISINA HILL

The new IITs/IIMs and the new universities are of no use if they fail to attract world-class teachers.

In about 60 years since Independence, the Union government managed to set up only seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and seven Indian Institutes of Management (IIM) in different parts of the country. These educational institutes, considered to be India's best, produce an estimated 5,000 engineers and 1,200 post-graduates with management degrees every year.

Going by how the market values them, they are the best and the most coveted the country's educational system churns out year after year. Yet, one of the biggest ironies of independent India has been that in spite of a huge unmet demand from lakhs of students seeking admission to these institutes, all that the government could do in the last 60 years was to set up only seven IITs and seven IIMs, with their admission capacity woefully short of what a country of India's size and population should ideally have.

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government's decision last week to set up eight new IITs and seven new IIMs in the next six years, therefore, should receive unqualified welcome from one and all. The only pity is that such a decision had to be taken in the last year of the UPA government's five-year tenure. The National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had also made a promise of increasing the number of IITs to 12 by converting a few of the existing regional engineering colleges. But nothing happened to that plan after its tenure came to an end in 2004.

Setting up a new IIT costs an estimated Rs 750 crore. And a new IIM costs about Rs 200 crore. That means an expenditure bill of around Rs 5,700 crore over the next six years. Since adequate financial provisions have not been made for setting up these institutes and no one knows if the UPA will be returned to power after the general elections in 2009, it may take much longer than the projected six years for these new institutions to make a difference to the country's educational infrastructure.

The real challenge to improving India's higher education infrastructure does not lie in only setting up new institutes. That challenge lies in equipping the new institutions with properly trained and qualified faculty. For the record, the UPA government has also announced its intention to set up 14 new world-class universities and 16 central universities in states which at present have no such institution. But creating world-class educational infrastructure is not just about constructing buildings and classrooms. A critical imperative is to attract the best academic talent from all over the world.

How does one achieve that goal? It is important to create adequate financial incentives to get qualified and experienced teachers from international universities to be on the rolls of these institutions. If the IITs and the IIMs continue to be treated as among the best institutes in the country today, it is not because they have either the best faculty or the best infrastructure. They are the best because the country's brightest students, barring a few who manage to rustle up the financial resources to go abroad for higher education, join them.

So, if the Union ministry of human resources development is serious about creating world-class universities and adding more IITs and IIMs, it needs to take a holistic view. Along with creating physical infrastructure, it must put in place a compensation package for the faculty so that the best minds in the country decide to look at teaching and research also as rewarding career options. Unfortunately, no academically bright student today looks at teaching or research as a career option as the salary differential between a teacher and a professional working in industry is huge.

Even the Sixth Pay Commission, which recommended a higher pay package for regulators and scientists to draw talent into those institutions, did not spare any thought for the teachers in universities, IITs and IIMs. Thus, teachers in the proposed world-class universities "" including those existing and new IITs and IIMs "" will continue to draw salaries (even after the increases recommended by the Sixth Pay Commission are implemented) that are way below what a member of a faculty of any internationally acclaimed university will earn.

All that the ministry of human resources development is now willing to concede is to allow some fellowship grants so that better teachers can join these universities. Surely, talents cannot be drawn just by the lure of one-time fellowships? The basic salary package has to be made attractive, if the government's ambition to create world-class institutions has to be fulfilled. If scientists and regulators could be considered for a special pay package higher than the bureaucrats, then it is time the same principle was extended to teachers in India's best universities, including the IITs and IIMs.