Upping the ante, the IIT faculty protesting against the pay order announced by the Human Resource Development Ministry has sought the Prime Minister’s intervention on the issue. In a letter to the PMO, they have said HRD Minister Kapil Sibal’s public statements on the quality of IIT faculty are causing damage to the reputation of IIT faculty, as he is suggesting that they are not performing well enough.

Reacting to Sibal’s statements that the IIT system has failed to produce Nobel Laureates and did not have their research work published well enough, the IIT faculty has written to the PMO expressing deep concern about the “public stance” and statements being made by the minister. This, they say, can hit their international standing and assignments/consultancy projects that come to the IITs.

“With the HRD Minister announcing on television that IIT faculty is not doing all that well, that they have failed to produce Nobel laureates, that they have not excelled in the last few decades or published well etc, which international institute of repute would want to liaise with the IITs for future projects? These comments have upset the faculty a lot,” said an All India IIT Faculty Federation of India (AIIIFF) member.

The AIIIFF is expected to launch a website soon to counter all the charges and statements emanating from the HRD Ministry.

To start with, the AIIIFF has issued a long rebuttal against all that Sibal has been saying on the IIT faculty’s demands and protests through a ‘White Paper’ on it. Taking on the minister for suggesting that IIT faculty was protesting for more money and not autonomy, the AIIIFF has contended that they are protesting on the counts of both ‘money and autonomy viewed together’ and on the issue of successive pay commissions systematically ‘downgrading’ the institution of IITs. On the Ministry’s comment that it was unbecoming of IIT faculty to go on a hunger strike, the AIIIFF has argued that they chose to go without food that day and never ‘struck’ work.

... contd.