• The new IITs should be built with care so as not to dilute the IIT brandname. That means they should not be made overnight. In this regard, the HRD panel is mostly right about giving the IIT-cousin status (and not IIT-status) to the institutes that are being upgraded. The government should decide on 5-7 new IITs in states that are at the bottom of the HRD higher education funding computed per capita. As of now, Bihar, Rajasthan and Orissa are at the bottom of that list. A mini-IIT with 1-2 departments and with only MTech programmes should be established in these states in two years’ time. Initially, these mini-IITs could be referred to as branch campus of an existing IIT. There should be a mandate and funding to make these mini-IITs to full-fledged IITs in 10-15 years by adding undergraduate programmes after 4-5 years and new departments every 1-2 years. In this regard a pilot programme can be immediately started at Bhubaneswar—where IIT Kharagpur has an extension center, where it already offers a PG Diploma in Information Technology and a 1.5-year part-time Diploma in intellectual property law.

These steps will not only correct the unfairness of the current proposal, but if taken, will address the regional balance in the distribution of higher education institution in a better way. Also, there will be more IITs without any dilution of the brandname or the associated quality.

The writer is a professor at the Arizona State University and is an alumni of IIT Kharagpur