Faculty is not responsible for vacuum in research: Kapil Sibal

May 26, 2011 | National News | Written by

Ahmedabad, May 26: Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal has said faculty of any academic institution is not responsible for a vacuum in research.

Talking to reporters here on Wednesday, Sibal highlighted the need for giving more attention to the post-graduate courses in Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and cited how the lack of opportunity for research among post graduate students has prompted them to go overseas to pursue research and further studies.

“To say this that research has not been done because of the faculty, we need to think about this. Secondly, we always gave the importance to undergraduate courses in IITs not in post-graduate courses and what the outcome of that was that the good student in IIT from B.Tech background didn’t find the proper research facility available in India so they shift to America. Then he used to pursue his post graduation from America only, since he got more opportunism there,” he said.

Questioning India’s funding credibility to spend on research, Sibal said that the US spends 250 billion dollar on research whereas China spends approximate 50 billion as compared to India where the figure is in the range of 8 billion.

“Talking about America, it spends around 250 billion dollars every year only on research. In India’s, the fund allocated towards research is only 8 billion dollar. Is this the fault of the faculty? If government doesn’t have enough funds to sustain its research then it is not the problem of the faculty,” he added.

He further said that the problem doesn’t lie in faculties’ as such the concerned departments in the government ought to the grant adequate funds to sustain research and allied studies.

He also said that more concentration should be drawn on research and because of this emphasis has been now given on post graduation programmers.

His comment came a days after Union Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh had kicked up a controversy by rubbishing the IITs and IIMs at a public event in New Delhi.

He had said that IITs and IIMs are known only because of the quality of the students and not the faculty.

Ramesh himself is an alumnus of IIT-Bombay from where he obtained his B.Tech degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1975. (ANI)