Modi government promises to open 16 New IIMs: Good or Bad?
The Modi government has announced its intentions to open new IIMs and IITs in every state. While few people have raised their objection, there are many who are excited with this prospect. This article analyzes its implications.
Addressing the joint session of the parliament, Honorary President Pranab Mukherjee said the government would set up IITs and IIMs in every state. "We will set up IITs and IIMs in every state.” the president said in his speech.
An IIM and IIT in every state, what will be the implications? While few people have raised their objection over the matter, there are many who are excited with this prospect.
The current Government had promised the same during elections and has thus fast-tracked its poll promise by including it in the President's address. Prime Minister Narendra modi had earlier stated that, “Education and job opportunities for the youth; IIMs, IITs & AIMS in every state is one of the 8 Point Development Model of our government”.
As per the sources, the government is keen to quickly start this expansion and HRD minister Smriti Irani has already listed infrastructure requirements for new IITs and IIMs as an agenda item for her meeting with state secretaries of higher and technical education on June 17.
Before listing out the merits or demerits of this massive expansion project, let’s just analyze the current situation of our IITs and IIMs as a whole.
Indian Institute of Management – IIM : Current Scenario
There are 13 IIMs now in Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Bangalore, Lucknow, Indore, Kozhikode, Shillong, Rohtak, Raipur, Ranchi, Tiruchirappalli, Kashipur and Udaipur. In the present 13 IIM’s there 3335 seats.
|
Name of B school |
No. of Seats |
|
IIM Ahmedabad |
380 |
|
IIM Bangalore |
400 |
|
IIM Calcutta |
452 |
|
IIM Lucknow |
432 |
|
IIM Kozhikode |
361 |
|
IIM Indore |
440 |
|
IIM Raipur |
110 |
|
IIM Ranchi |
150 |
|
IIM Kashipur |
120 |
|
IIM Shillong |
120 |
|
IIM Trichy |
100 |
|
IIM Udaipur |
120 |
|
IIM Rohtak |
150 |
Considering every state has an IIM, it will be total of 29 IIMs. 16 new IIMs will add at least 1920 seats (considering a batch size of 120). Hence the total seats in the IIM quota will be 5255. Out of the total seats, 27% will be reserved for OBC’s, 15% will reserved for SC’s and 7.5% seats is reserved for ST category making a total of 49.5%. Hence, the general category will now have 2653 seats at their disposal, a massive increase from 1684 seats earlier.
The New IIMs are currently proposed to come up in J&K, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Maharashtra, Seemandhra, Telangana, Delhi, Odisha and north-eastern states other than Meghalaya.
Indian Institute of Technology – IIT : Current Scenario
The 16 IITs in operation are in Mumbai, Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Chennai, Guwahati, Roorkee, Hyderabad, Patna, Bhubaneswar, Ropar, Jodhpur, Gandhinagar, Indore, Mandi and Varanasi. A total of 8862 seats are there in 16 IITs in India.
Although ISM Dhanbad is also usually considered among IITs and has a total of 1023 seats making the grand total as 9885 seats. In the general category 4,844 seats are available.
The new IITs are currently proposed to open up in states like J&K, Haryana, Seemandhra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Chhattisgarh and north-eastern states. It remains to be seen if there will be IIT in each north-eastern state or these states are clubbed together.
Benefits of setting New IIMs and IITs
- Setting of new higher education institutes, increase in the number of seats is definitely good news for aspiring management and technical graduates who want to pursue their careers in the field of management and technology.
- Inspite of having the largest population of young minds, students’ access to prestigious institutions like IIMs and IITs is limited due to lack of adequate seats. Increase in the number of seats will benefit these brilliant minds to fulfill their dreams.
- Owing to setting up of new institutes, a lot of investment will happen in every state and so the local economy will grow. The standard of not only higher education but primary education will improve, as more people will aspire to avail better education available.
- A large number of students have to migrate from one state to other in order to acquire quality education. Opening of these quality institutes in every state will help in the growth of every state as the migration will decline. Also the industries will look to higher more local talent than talent from few good colleges from abroad or other states, that will help them higher better and motivated employees willing to stay longer.
- Availability of local talent will further solve a lot of HR issues and industries can benefit from this in many ways right from setting up industries to spreading their business in the state and location of their choice.
- A sense of competitiveness will grow stronger and can only do well. So, it will be a win- win situation for everyone, local, state and the nation as a whole. Thereby the whole socio-economic scenario will change.
Few areas of concerns
Although the vision is commendable but there will be few road blocks in front of the new government to fulfill this dream of an IIM and IIT in every state. Few points of concerns are:
- The new IIMs established earlier are already reeling under a lack of infrastructure and experienced faculty. To establish such institutes, the government needs to tread cautiously. It has to ensure that whatever institutes are established, are able to deliver quality education to the highest number of students possible.
- Government must first try to enhance the capacity of the current IIMs and IITs by increasing seats and faculties rather than opening new one. Indian IIMs and IITs have not increased their intake capacity in comparison to other Top Institute around the world. Government must take steps to increase the depth of these Institutions rather than focusing on breadth.
- As per experts, Setting up an IIT on an average costs Rs 1,750 crore and an IIM and central university need Rs 1,000 crore each. This excludes the cost of land that state governments have to acquire and hand over to the central government free. The Narendra Modi government will have to take this expansion in a phase wise manner, taking few states at a time rather than at a one go.
- Government has to do his ground work before planning this huge expansion. Work on infrastructure, faculty and quality of primary and secondary education is required for the success of this initiative.
- Lack of developed infrastructure, number of Quality permanent faculties are two of the biggest road blocks for this initiative. The government and the HRD Ministry has to solve this issue in order to reap the benefits of their future plans.
Whatever be the concerns, providing quality education to a wider section of the society is the need of time for India. Being a developing economy and in order to support this growth, a fair growth in the output of well educated and highly qualified individuals is absolutely essential.
Thus it will be interesting to see the next step towards this project from the Narendra Modi government and the HRD Ministry. Students on the other hand should be happy as the chances of studying from the premiere institute of management and technology will increase.
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