Why is Smriti Irani giving step-motherly treatment to IIT Jodhpur?

Student protests for #DictatorfreeIItJ has been going on for 21 days. The students have been asking for the resignation of the Director of the institute stating that he is acting like a ‘dictator’ instead. On the 20^th day of the protest, IITians finally encircled the administrative building and celebrated ‘Lollipop Day at the campus. They did not let Professor CVR Murty enter his office and demanded his resignation.

Why the Lollipop Day?

Students of IIT-J distributed lollipop as a symbol of false promises of the Director. IITians ate lollipops to stage their protest and said that they don’t want any more ‘lollipops’. They also alleged that IIT Jodhpur’s administration is threatening them.

On April 26, Board of Governance is meeting to discuss on this issue. But students have already said that they have no time to talk to the board members as their exams are starting from April 27. They claim that the meeting has been fixed purposefully a day before the exams so that students cannot have detailed discussions with the members.

#IStandwithDirectorIITJ

Earlier, students had done a candle march in black T-shirt to demand Prof Murty’s resignation. Professor Goverdhan Mehta, Chairman of IIT Hyderabad, stood up in support of Professor Murty and said, “It is not the right way to pressurise someone to resign. I am hurt due to the protest. If the situation remains like this, it will become difficult for the IITs to acquire new faculty. We employed 60-65 faculty members at IIT Jodhpur as per the specified criteria. There are reasons to remove them too which dictate which teachers are to be retained and which ones are not to be retained. The words ‘termination of faculty’ is not correct. I appeal to the students to go back to their classes and not spoil the brand name of IIT.”

Professor Mehta also assured that good faculty is the power of the institute and it will be taken care of. Funds announced for entrepreneurship may not have been released in time due to some technical problems and I will advise the director of IITJ to meet the student representatives and resolve the issues as soon as possible.

What Director Murty has to say?

Director Murty has been caught in the whirlwind of students’ anger due to firing of the beloved faculty members of the institute. A former faculty Dr. Sheshadri alleged that she was driven to suicide by the dictatorial attitude of the Professor.

When asked about the protests, Dr. Murty said, “Dr. Ganesh was teaching just a few students and scholars. Protests by so many students is unfortunate I haven’t done anything against the institute, so why should I resign?”

There have been allegations that Prof. Murty had been firing faculty members despite the faculty crunch at IITJ. Prof. Murty responds, “At IIT, it is the quality and not quantity that matters more. Only qualified people can stay here. The standards have been defined by the Board of Governors and the decision to fire the said faculty members was that of the Board’s too.”

He also said, “Dr. Ganesh Bagler might have won international acclaim for research on Indian food but his work was not approved by Germany. The decision to fire him was taken by the Board of Governance. I have forwarded his appeal and students’ demands to bring him back to the Chairman but the decision is not in my hands.”

Students’ Allegations

Praveen Arumughan from IIT Madras tweeted, “At #IITM, Murty was a simple professor and yet acted like a dictator. We feel sorry for #IIT Jodhpur.”

• For more than one and a half years, ever since Dr. C V R Murty has joined as the Director of IITJ, his behaviour is said to be ‘dictatorial’. According to students, any dissent is quelled with force and violation of their basic rights. Their right to protest had also been taken away.

Students claim that the Director has been trying to exercise absolute control over the institute and is continually disbanding student bodies – hitting at the democratic structure of IItJ. Powers of elected councils have been diluted too and smallest of issues require his direct approval or written consent.

The ‘Code of Conduct’ issued to IIT Jodhpur students forbids them from:

• interacting with media,
• posting anything on the social media regarding anything related to the Institute,
• associating with political parties, and
• protesting (peacefully too) on campus.

Students claim that all these rules are obviously ‘draconian’ in nature.

Moreover, Facebook and social networking sites have been blocked at the institute and students have to use VPN services to access them.

The PRO of IITJ said, “This Code of Conduct was approved by the Senate and not just the Director. Students cannot be allowed to use educational infrastructure to malign the name of the institute. If it is violating their freedom of speech, it will be reviewed and the policy may be changed if it is deemed necesary.”

Faculty promotions too have been stalled for reasons like ‘not wearing white shirts’ as instructed by Prof Murty.

• Since the appointment of Dr. Murty, 6 Professors have been terminated while 8 have resigned citing ‘non-conducive environment’ as their reason for leaving the institute.

At IIT J, the faculty-student ratio is 1:18 – as against the 1:8 ration maintained at all IITs. Dr Bagler, who had excellent track record as a researcher and who had been consistently rated as ‘best faculty’ of the institute in faculty reviews by the students, has moved the Rajasthan High Court against his termination. Prof. Ravidra Arora, another senior faculty who resigned due to differences with Dr. Murty, said, “I strongly feel he is having a psychological problem, which has made him to be a sadist.”

Students sent a petition to the HRD Ministry and IIT Board of Governors stating:

“We feel that our Institute is in a very bad condition and we are facing various serious issues all due to one person – the Director. Over the past one-and-half years, there have been many instances of dictatorship, autocracy and favouritism due to which many faculty and staff have been terminated senselessly and many have left the Institute bearing pressure due to non-conducive environment.”

However, peaceful protests of students and their demands for resignation of the new Director and a rollback of his policies have fallen on deaf years.

Rate of attrition among professors at IITJ is alarming. The Computer Science department has only 2 faculty members. Students are afraid that some of the departments may have to be closed down in near future due to lack of faculty.

• Director closed down the Innovation and Incubation Centre (IIC) which was set up with a budget of 10 crore rupees. It is said that this happened due to the clash of Dr. Murty with the professor in-charge of the Centre. The money spent on the companies incubated there was recovered from the salaries of staff who had set it up.

The National Instruments Lab and the System on Chip Lab also had to shut their doors. 

The administration denies that it has ever shut down the IIC. It claims that out of the 5 companies incubated there, 3 had to close down after a review. 2 companies were allowed to continue but were bought by a venture capital firm incubated at IIT Bombay. The Centre is still up and running even though it does not have any incubated startups right now. It also says that the NIL and SoC Lab are also open. The NIL equipment was shifted to another room due to shortage of space and is being used there. SoC -  a virtual lab which is not part of any course at IITJ – has merely been shifted to a room where experiments can be conducted.

Ankit Saraswat, one of those who had incubated his startup at IIC, IIT Jodhpur, has just pointed it out to us that while 3 companies were not given extension, remaining two only got false promises of releasing Rs 10 lakh award soon from IIT-J. This award money has been pending for one and a half years now. The reason why the 3 companies did not make enough progress was that IIT Jodhpur administration didn’t give any funds to them. The new Director was clever enough to not give anything in writing but he was clearly behind-the-scenes of the entire scenario. The administration continued to engage budding entrepreneurs in false paper work to release money won by them in the national-level competition organised by IIT Jodhpur in 2012.

According to the IITJ administration, the problem is only due to space constraint as the institute is running out of a ‘temporary campus’ right now.

Where is Smriti Irani?

The IIT Jodhpur fiasco is a wake-up call for the HRD Ministry and the government authorities responsible for selection of IIT Directors. The rumours of Dr Anil Kakodkar resigning due to a tiff with the ministry over choosing the Director of IIT Ropar – despite for formal interview process and all the background checks – raises further questions about how such important matters are being handled by the government.

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