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http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/murli-sings-in-upa-will-ruin-iits/435458/

Murli sings in: UPA will ruin IITs

Shiv Sahay Singh

Posted: Mar 17, 2009 at 0259 hrs IST

Kolkata Senior BJP leader and former HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi today accused the UPA government of making a mess of higher education with its confused and populist policies on the eve of the general elections in the country.

In an interview with The Indian Express on his recent trip to Kolkata, Joshi said if the UPA government comes back for another for another five years, the long-standing tradition of IITs and IIMs would come to an end. The former minister criticised the ministry for increasing the number of IITs in the country without creating the infrastructural and academic back-up for the institutes.

“I am not opposed to increasing the number of IITs, but the ministry should go about it systematically and proportionally,” he said. There is a shortage of faculty in the existing IITs and the upcoming ones neither have the infrastructure nor the faculty to function as full-fledged IITs, he said.

Joshi also blamed the UPA government for not paying attention to second-line institutes next to IITs. “The government has destroyed the set-up of the NITs in the country, changed directors at their will,” he said. Committees like the S K Joshi Committee were set up to upgrade the existing institutes in the state to national institutes but nothing has been done so far, he added. Joshi also stressed on the IIT status for IT-BHU, which the government has kept in cold storage.

“These institutions have a long tradition of churning out the best brains in the country and in research. Why can’t these institutes be upgraded? When we were running the government, we gave IIT status to the Roorkee Institute, which was conducting far more research than other IITs,” he said.

The former minister who has opposed the frequent fees hike by IIMs pointed out that recession posed the biggest challenge for the institutes.

“In times of recession, who is going to pay so much fees, now that the jobs outside the country has dried up? The students are now opting for PSUs but in this economic scenario, how long will they employ them when jobs are not created?” he said.

“My vision for the IIMs during the NDA government was to make them more affordable, accessible and able to relate to the Indian condition,” he added.

Even the National Knowledge Commission has not served the purpose it was conceived for, the BJP leader said, insisting it should be called instruction commission. “The secondary schools set up have not been developed. Where is the government going to accommodate the additional students who will be brought into the mainstream education after nearly a decade of Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan?” Joshi asked.

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