Higher education is, and has to be, elitist. But post-independence, merit has become a dirty word. Now there's neither prosperity nor glory in teaching.
Some US-based IIT alumni have offered to donate $1 billion for a Global Institute of Science and Technology. Their prime concern: why, since independence, has India not produced even one Nobel Prize winner in science? Earlier, we produced C.V. Raman. S.N. Bose too would have got a Nobel if the importance of his work had been realised during his lifetime. J.C. Bose also was Nobel Prize material but he was too early. After independence we have stuck a dry patch. Why is that so?
Winning a Nobel Prize is hardly an ambition among our youth. Time was when Raman, J.C. Bose and Ramanujam were role models. The youth could not but be impressed by the way Raman gave up a lucrative career to become a professor. As vice-chancellor, Ashutosh Mukherji could straightaway make Raman the Palit Professor in Calcutta University even though he had no academic background. As director, IIT Madras, I could not have done anything like that. Those days, vice-chancellors were 10 feet tall. These days, their counterparts are pygmies. How did that happen?
For one, the economic equation changed. The Sarcar Committee, which planned IIT Kharagpur, calculated the cost of education at Rs 1,460 per year per student at the Imperial College, London, and Rs 1,520 at mit, Boston. On that basis, the government funded that IIT at the rate of Rs 1,500 per student per year. Thus, it dared to fund an Indian institution at the same level as the best in the world. Such confidence is unthinkable now.
While presiding over a lecture given by his student K.S. Krishnan, Raman commented that Krishnan (who had by then become the director of the National Physical Laboratory) was paid more than he had ever earned. He was making an important point-by making jobs in the CSIR more attractive than teaching in universities, the government was devaluing university education. It was also weaning bright youngsters away from academic research.
The decline of higher education from a confident India of the '50s to the present sad state was accelerated by increased funding to CSIR and other laboratories rather than universities. These laboratories lack the ambience for pure scientific research. Research atmosphere emanates only when scholars interact with bright young students.
Then there were caste-based selections of academic staff. Higher education is, and has to be, an elite exercise. Teachers are the intellectual seed of the next generation. However, after independence, merit has become a dirty word. Bright youngsters see neither prosperity nor glory in a teaching career. This sad state of affairs can be rectified if some basic principles are accepted.
One, science (particularly basic science) is best done in universities. Two, scientific research is like sport and requires talent. Three, research requires freedom from petty officialdom and overbearing bosses. Four, science costs money.
In India, governments support over 9,000 colleges and a thousand-odd university departments. But quantity does not breed quality. Quality emanates only where there is academic freedom to decide what to teach, whom to teach and who will teach. We need to identify institutions that will accept the challenge of teaching only those topics that are taught in the best universities of the world; admit only those students who can cope with global standards in science and recruit only those teachers who have an international reputation for research. If such colleges are granted international levels of financial support, Indian science will prosper.
As matters stand, there is little possibility of having even one such meritorious institution. Both the Constitution and our politicians prohibit any institution from exercising academic freedom. That is the crux of the problem. There is no solution in the offing.
(P.V. Indiresan is a former director of IIT Madras. He is currently the president of Indian National Academy of Engineering.)