With the UPA government announcing that it would set up eight new IITs as part of the 11th Five-Year Plan and the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MHRD)

deciding to open six new IITs this year itself, there will now be around 6,800-odd seats available for the engineering students.

The six new IITs will come up at Hyderabad, Patna, Rajasthan, Gandhinagar (Gujarat), Punjab and Bhubaneswar.

While each IIT would be mentored by the existing IITs, IIT Bombay will mentor two new IITs - Gujarat and Indore. In conversation with Kalpana Pathak & Shivani Shinde, IIT Bombay Director Ashok Misra talks about the challenges he will face in the mentoring process. Excerpts:

What plans do you have for IIT Gujarat?

We plan to start classes this July. We have made provision to keep 120 students in IIT Gujarat this year.

We will be starting courses in mechanical, electrical and chemical engineering and holding classes at a college in Chandrakheda, Gujarat. Along with setting up the classrooms, we will set up physics and chemistry laboratories which are pre-requisites for the first year.

The Gujarat government has identified some land for us. We were earlier proposing to start a satellite campus from there but with IIT Gujarat in picture we would use theland for IIT Gujarat.

We, however, will continue with our plan to have an extension campus in Gujarat and deliver short-term courses from this campus. The campus will continue till IIT Gujarat can take over completely.

Has the MHRD granted you funds to take project forward?

The HRD has not sent any funds but we need to start immediately. To begin with, we will advance funds from IIT Bombay to the IIT Gujarat account. We have estimated around Rs 8 crore (Rs 80 million) to be required in the first year.

Later, we will come up with a planned budget and a project report that would talk about the investments we would need to set up a full-fledged IIT. Any IIT would require Rs 700-1,000 crore (Rs 7-10 billion) to be set up. This is just the initial money to keep the plan going.

How do you plan to go about recruitment of faculty?

Some faculty members would be deputed from IIT Bombay. We will also hire 'young' faculty by looking at the possibility of hiring our own PhD students and deputing them at IIT Gujarat.  We will also get retired faculty to come and teach at the institute. An interesting possibility is that in Gujarat there are several good research institutions and we could get faculty from them as well.

How long would you mentor the new IITs?

The new IITs would need our assistance for at least five years. It however, could be more than that. Till we see enough infrastructure, faculty, and finances in place we would be taking care of these new institutes.  

You would be mentoring IIT Indore too. What plans do you have on that front?

IIT Bombay is the only IIT that will be mentoring two IITs. As of now, IIT Gujarat is on the radar. We can take up IIT Indore next year or the year after.