Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal on Wednesday said so far the thrust in IITs had not been on research, but things are changing now.
His comments came in the backdrop of environment minister Jairam Ramesh’s statement that “there is hardly any worthwhile research taking place in our IITs”. Mr Sibal, however, avoided getting into any argument with his Cabinet colleague.
“I would not like to make any comment on what the minister has said as it would not look good,” he told reporters here when asked about Mr Ramesh’s critical remarks on faculty of IIMs and IITs.
“But I would like to say that when the IITs were formed, a majority of courses were of B Tech and thrust was not given to post-graduate degree (M.Tech), where all the research activity takes place,” the HRD minister maintained.
“Bright students used to do B.Tech here and if they wanted to go for research, they used to go to the US.”
“Another thing that we should keep in mind is that a country like the US spends $250 billion annually on research. Even China spends about $50-60 billion, while in India we spend just $8 billion annually,” he said. “So we have to think about it before saying research is not being done due to faculty members of IITs.”Mr Ramesh, speaking in Delhi on Monday, had said, “the faculty in the IIT is not world class.” —PTI