If there is one common synonym for ‘excellence’ and ‘success’ for the teeming millions of India’s middle class, then it is the acronym IIT— Indian Institute of Technology. As soon as the child is born, parents start nurturing an IIT dream, even before the child has become aware of an entity called ‘life’, and regardless of what that child may want to study upon growing up. In India, IIT is a dream, passport to a good life in the developed West—especially the US, the surest way to climb the social ladder, a million-dollar coaching industry, and of course, the best grounding in skills required for real technological development of the country that would help alleviate the lives of its poor.
What makes the IIT such an omnipotent buzz word in the scheme of things in India, is the fact that an education at one of these hallowed institutions is the best that this country has to offer; almost at part with the best available in the top universities of the world, arming students with skills that have the capacity to change the fortunes of a nation as populous and as full of problems as India. And when the stakes are so high, it goes without saying that entry to one of the IITs is through one of the toughest exams in the world, after beating the most severe competition that a teenager can face in his/ her young life.
The Birth of IITs
The idea of an institute/ institutes of higher technical learning was born before India became independent. It was in 1946, when Independence had become imminent, Sir Jogendra Singh of the Viceroy’s Executive Council set up a committee whose task was to consider the creation of institutions for higher technical learning for industrial development of India. The 22-member committee, headed by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, recommended the establishment of these institutions in different corners of the country with affiliated secondary institutions, along the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
The first IIT was founded in May 1950 at the site of the Hijli Detention Camp in Kharagpur, West Bengal. The name ‘Indian Institute of Technology’ was adopted before the formal inauguration of the institute on August 18, 1951 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, the first Education Minister of independent India. On September 15, 1956, the Parliament of India passed the Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) Act, declaring it as an Institute of National Importance. Jawaharlal Nehru, first Prime Minister of India, in the first convocation address of IIT Kharagpur in 1956, said:
Here in the place of that Hijli Detention Camp stands the fine monument of India, representing India’s urges, India’s future in the making. This picture seems to me symbolical of the changes that are coming to India.
Subsequently, on the recommendations of the Sarkar Committee, four other IITs were established in Bombay in 1958, Madras and Kanpur in 1959, and Delhi in 1961.
As was the case with most other government institutions set up in the early years of Independence, the five IITs were also scattered in different corners of the country to ensure no one region got precedence over the other.
Right since their formation, the original five IITs set the narrative for the highest standards of technical education in India, designed to lead the country into technological age for all round development and improving the lives of its people.
The IITs receive comparatively higher government grants than other engineering colleges of the country. They function as autonomous institutes and their status as Institutes of National Importance helps in their smooth functioning. All the IITs are governed by the IIT Council that reports to the President of India.
The IIT Council comprises the minister-in-charge of technical education in the Union Government, the Chairmen of all IITs, the Directors of all IITs, the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, the Director General of CSIR, the Chairman of IISc, the Director of IISc, three members of Parliament, the Joint Council Secretary of Ministry of Education, and three appointees each of the Union Government, AICTE, and the Visitor (the President of India serves as the ex-officio Visitor).
The academic policies of each IIT are decided by its Senate, comprising all professors of the IIT and student representatives. The Director of the particular IIT is the ex-officio Chairman of its Senate.
The Growth of IIT Family
As the population of India grew along with the aspirations of its growing young population, a need began to be felt for having more IITs to serve the educational needs of a nation as huge as ours. In the 1980s, the student agitation in the state of Assam made then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi promise an IIT in Guwahati. As a result, IIT Guwahati was established in 1994 as the sixth IIT, more than three decades after the last one. Since then, the IIT family has continued to grow, today comprising a total of 23 members.
The next was the conversion of University of Roorkee, established in 1847, into IIT Roorkee in 2001.
On October 1, 2003, then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced plans to create more IITs “by upgrading existing academic institutions that have the necessary promise and potential”. Subsequent developments led to the formation of the S K Joshi Committee, in November 2003, to guide the selection of the five institutions which would be converted into IITs. Based on the initial recommendations of the committee, it was decided that new IITs should be spread throughout the country. However, as many as 16 states demanded IITs. Since the S K Joshi Committee prescribed strict guidelines for institutions aspiring to be IITs, only seven colleges were selected for final consideration. Eventually in the 11th Five-Year Plan, eight states were identified for establishment of new IITs.
In 2008-2009, eight new IITs were established in Gandhinagar (Gujarat), Jodhpur (Rajasthan), Hyderabad (then Andhra Pradesh), Indore (Madhya Pradesh), Patna (Bihar), Bhubaneshwar (Odisha), Ropar (Punjab) and Mandi (Himachal Pradesh).
In the year 2012, the iconic Banaras Hindu University (BHU), established in 1919, was converted into IIT (BHU) Varanasi.
Six more IITs were born in 2015-2016 — at Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh), Palakkad (Kerala), Dharwad (Karnataka), Bhilai (Chhattisgarh), Goa and Jammu. Finally, in 2016, the Indian School of Mines in Dhanbad (Jharkhand) was converted to IIT (ISM) Dhanbad.
This has brought the number of this hallowed family of institutions of higher learning in India to 23, giving a wide variety of choices to students to study — not just in terms of scientific disciplines but also in terms of location.
