A journey to excellence with social responsibility

I am on a visit to IIT Gandhinagar (IITGN), which is one of the newly built IIT in India.  There are some very impressive and fresh things that made me write this blog.  Everyone seems to be happy here, and I heard no complaints.  Let me just list some of the things I noticed in the campus.

1. There is visible enthusiasm among the faculty and students.  One of the most impressive things is the sense of belonging the faculty and student have to the institute, which is quite rare now a days.  

2. Openness and democracy in the system is quite impressive. A new physics faculty  is  introducing open experiments in undergraduate lab, where the students propose experiments along with the required budget, and then they get to do the experiment under an enthusiastic guidance from a faculty.  A fourth-year undergraduate student, Akash Singh, toured me the new campus with an enthusiasm as if he was a key member of the building committee; he knew the engineers and workers. He told me that the students had a say in the design of their hostel; any student can send an anonymous complaint to a committee, and the complaint is listened to; students provide their inputs towards the organization of the cultural function, etc.

3. The temporary building in Chandkheda, Ahmedabad,  itself is nice, and the offices are as good as one gets in regular institutions.  The new campus appears to be more impressive.  The infrastructure is functional and elegant, not gaudy.   

4. I was told by the Director, Prof. Sudhir Jain, that workers’ safety and welfare is one of the utmost things in their minds.  To list a couple of innovative ideas:  10 lac fine to be imposed on the contractor on any fatality and serious accident to a worker at the work site (this clause is in the tender document); a school for the children of the workers at the site; surprise safety check at the sites with hefty fines for the violations; daily health service to workers by the state health department at the work site itself. IITGN students have taken key initiatives in providing education and safe working environment of the workers.  I believe that these are rare initiatives by any institute administration in India.   These  steps are very critical in modernizing India, bringing respect for labor among students and faculty, making system accountable to poor. I hope these steps will be replicated in other institutions of the country.   

5. For the numerous institute  contract workers engaged through various agencies, that are not employees of the Institute (such as security staff, mess staff, house keeping staff, etc), the Institute has created two welfare programmes: a) a reimbursement of expenses for their children’s education (upto Rs 20,000 per family in a year), and b) medical emergency fund wherein some financial assistance can be provided to such staff in case of significant medical expenditures on their family members. 

6. A major force behind the above initiatives is IITGN’s Director, Prof. Sudhir Jain.  Some of these steps appear simple, but they require courage and deeper commitments to ethics, which is commonly flouted in our country in the name of efficiency and/or view of “it is not my responsibility”.  The Director has also taken a tough stand agains corruption in the institute, and unethical practices in examination.  Any form of cheating leads to a suspension of year for the erring student, which is uncommon in a typical IIT system.  The Director puts an emphasis on bringing a healthy culture of mutual respect among the members of community (student, faculty, staff, and workers) along with their march to excellence. Interestingly, IITGN has a very strong humanities department, consistent with the strong humanistic component of education it wishes to impart on the students along with the compulsory technical education.

IIT Gandhinagar is a unique experiment in higher education where it is coupling the social responsibility with the technical education; marching towards excellence, yet respecting democratic and humanist principles.  I do wish success to them so that they become a torch bearer for future institutions in the country and world.