Apart from putting their students on their way to greater heights, the Indian Institutes of Technology are also working towards helping the local communities and improving the quality of education in other engineering colleges, say heads and former heads of IIT Guwahati and Mandi at the tenth ThinkEdu Conclave organised by The New Indian Express on Tuesday, March 8.
Speaking on 'Re-engineering Education: Lessons from the IITs', TG Sitharam, Director of IIT Guwahati, said that the institute looked into the profile of its students during the pandemic and found that there were students from around 600 districts across the country studying there. Although the institute is located on the banks of the Brahmaputra, it was free of waterlogging during the monsoons, he added.
"The rest of the state suffers from inundation during the monsoons but despite being just a few metres away from the Brahmaputra, not even one road came under water during the monsoons. We are also now working with the State Government to solve this problem in other parts," Sitharam added.
IIT Guwahati was ranked 41st globally in the ‘Research Citations per Faculty’ category, of the QS World University rankings 2022. "Today, the Indian Institutes of Technology have become institutes of Indian technology," Sitharam said.
Also on the panel, Prof Timothy A Gonsalves, former director of IIT Mandi, said that there were ten lakh engineering graduates every year of which only 60% are considered employable by the Indian Industry. The BTech curriculum must have a mix of science, computation, hands-on experience and expert judgement in order for it to be considered a successful design, he said. "The profile of students who pass out of IIT Mandi is similar to that of the older IITs — a majority of them go into industries, about 10% go for higher studies, another 10% opt for civil services and a few others start their own ventures," Gonsalves said.
Through the 'Learn Engineering through Activity Program (LEAP)', the students of IIT Mandi start with reverse engineering and adding features to existing projects, and then go on to build prototypes to solve real-life problems, take up mini projects in a specific domain and then, finally move on to major projects. However, the students do not stop with this.
"When we started out, we studied the needs of the women in the village and found that many of them wanted to start businesses and find employment. We then started the NGO 'EWOK' (Enabling Women of Kamand valley) that helped improve their employability," said Gonsalves. Considering there are over nine lakh other engineering students in the country other than those in the IIT, the institute's faculty help train teachers in other colleges, helping them teach more effectively, he added.
ThinkEdu 2022 is the grand tenth edition of what has consistently been India's biggest education conclave for a decade now. March 8 and 9 will see some stalwarts of India's academic, economic and political ecosystems bring ideas, ideologies and reflections on the past, present and future of India's education system.
The sessions will be viewed by a live audience, in addition to the 2,750 registered users on the conclave's digital space. Over the last nine years, the conclave has seen some true stalwart thinkers such as former presidents Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and Dr Pranab Mukherjee, MPs Jairam Ramesh, Smriti Irani, former CM of Jammu and Kashmir Farooq Abdullah, NITI Aayog's CEO, Amitabh Kant and spiritual guide Sadhguru.