‘IITians should transform their viewpoint from being job seekers to being job creators’: IIT Kharagpur director at Idea Exchange

The greatest impact of IIT Kharagpur is that it could establish the brand and credibility of the entire IIT system. In terms of outcome, I would say that IITs are known for their famous alumni, who are global icons in their own areas. But as with everything, there is self-criticism. Being the first IIT, I would consider nation-building through education and technology as its significant objective. I would say that while the entire IIT system has offered a lot of promise, we are yet to deliver the kind of outcomes which will place us in the league of nation-builders. Second, it should transform the mindset of the new generation, adapt to new requirements and give a new direction to the entire higher education ecosystem.

For example, placement is considered an important benchmark of success for IIT students, with salary in focus. While this is a significant benchmark, the transformational initiative that IIT Kharagpur in particular and all other IITs should take is to migrate from the viewpoint of job seekers to job creators. Many of our alumni have been very successful in creating jobs, but this has not become a culture of the entire IIT ecosystem. So, the entire IIT pathway for the next 75 years should be about moving forward with these pointers in mind and, of course, facing the challenges of the AI (artificial intelligence) era.

Abhinaya Harigovind: Since you have been one of the most visible faces as part of the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), what needs to change in terms of pedagogy at IITs?

NPTEL (a joint initiative by IITs and the Indian Institute of Science [IISc] to create and offer high-quality online courses and learning materials) has democratised IIT quality education. Currently, there are 23 IITs, so the scalability is still limited. If I recall, I have recorded and taught around 10 NPTEL courses. They have given rise to an entirely different set of students outside the IIT. In the US, they have a very strong qualifying exam where students are asked challenging questions either through an interview or a viva. Many students write in saying they succeeded in these exams by listening to NPTEL lectures. In fact, NPTEL courses are now considered creditable. One can do them with the certification exam and their grades can be considered as part of the evaluation by any accredited university.

On medium of teaching | Conceptual learning is easier if a talented student, who has studied in the regional language till class XII, is allowed to do so and is not limited by English. THERE IS NO SHAME IN dealing with challenges of English

The challenge for Indians is that we are good followers but not very good leaders. We always like to emulate what foreign countries are doing. If we do good, we say we are at par with the world but what are the things that we could introduce, which would make us a class apart? Can’t we use NPTEL to democratise education at the grassroots and use regional languages? Conceptual learning sometimes gets augmented if a talented student, who has studied in the regional language till class XII, is allowed to do so and is not limited by English. So, we may speak English for professional purposes but I don’t think there is shame in dealing with challenges of English communication. Why can’t we have small classes or tutorials in regional languages?

We are going to start a new era of NPTEL in collaboration with IIT Madras and IIT Kharagpur, where a regional language will be one of the mediums of instruction. A pilot will be done with Bangla at IIT Kharagpur. Spreading education in a language-agnostic manner to the grassroots level will be a significant milestone in democratising the spirit of the NPTEL. For instance, if we have lectures on AI in Bangla given by some of the best teachers at IIT Kharagpur, it will be transformational in terms of spreading the impact of the highest level of education to the bottom-most layer of the pyramid.

Abhinaya Harigovind: Since you have taken charge as director, you have focussed on mental health support for students and appointed a dean of student well-being. What are systemic issues that you would like to see addressed?

Everything has to be addressed by holistic education. Students who are doing well in school exams are brought into the ambit of ‘coaching’ so that they can get admission into premier institutions. Now coaching institutions have only one purpose, to get into a dream institution by hook or crook. So you are being subjected to a complete one-dimensional education system. There is no emphasis at all in developing your other skills, including soft skills. These mean communication, resilience, life skills or ability to keep up with group activities or coping with normal ups and downs.

Compounding these challenges is parental pressure. A particular committee, which had one of the country’s top mental health experts as chairperson, revealed that 80 per cent of students whom the committee interrogated had prepared themselves for IIT because of parental pressure. Now this pressure is also being applied to students to get a return on investment (RoI). Parents think that since they invested so much time, energy and money on their children, they should get a highly paid job. It is a vicious cycle.

Every child who comes to IIT Kharagpur or any other IIT has already faced an initial challenge, which has been set up by society, peer pressure and socio-economic perspectives. Therefore, we cannot consider their mental health or well-being in an isolated manner. While most have reasonably high IQ (intelligence quotient), they are low on EQ (emotional quotient). We have to realise that these people will be exposed to the outer world where we will no longer be there as a safeguard. How will they manage real life situations? So engagement activities should start from the lower school till the highest level of the education system. Group work and participatory activities can destress students and make them feel less lonely. At IIT Kharagpur campus, there was a WhatsApp message from one of the students, which was circulated in an internal group. She wrote to her friend that she was thinking about committing suicide but since she had seen someone else do it, she wouldn’t. When we looked into it, we found that it was done for fun. We have to come up with a holistic transformational change in the overall learning pattern from junior school.

We now have psychologists and a mental health management team residing in the campus. Certain triggers may not be easily visible to the naked eye. That’s why we have the SETU app for the well-being of students.

Anuradha Mascarenhas: During Covid, you had developed a low-cost, portable diagnostic device, which was integrated with a smartphone application that analysed an image of a paper strip test much faster. Was that scaled up and can it be used to detect infections like dengue?

We have advanced significantly forward. The RT-PCR test has always been resource-intensive. So we created the device, COVIRAP, which could take the sample, the nasal or the oral swab, and amplify the DNA in an isothermal or constant temperature set-up, which was controlled by the machine. Then we got the test results through a smartphone app-based analysis of the signal, which is a colour signal generated from the reaction. It can be used by anyone with minimal training.

On mental health challenges of IIT students | Every child who comes to IIT Kharagpur or any other IIT has already faced an initial challenge, which has been set up by society, peer pressure and socio-economic perspectives. While most have reasonably high IQ, thEy are low on EQ

The technology was awarded a US patent. But since Covid waned, it did not get the best business traction. Fortunately, we are now working with the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR) and the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). One of the flagship projects of the Common Research and Technology Development Hubs (CRTDH) is on affordable healthcare and the other with ICMR is about setting up a Centre of Excellence on healthcare. Both are housed at IIT Kharagpur. We are now working on TB detection and testing for multiple drug resistance. So the technology with which we started is now significantly generalised as a platform technology which requires test-specific adaptation.

Anonna Dutt: What are the problems that inventions face, especially if they are not from an institution like IIT, in reaching the market?

When we started working on healthcare technologies, we thought we would develop them in the lab, validate them and develop a prototype. And there would be companies or startups which would commercialise them. But there were two mistakes we made. Number one, this entire journey of lab to market is not really the ballgame of a professor, an academic researcher, a research scholar or a student. Why? Because it requires different facets of understanding, out of which a professor will be conversant in maybe one or two areas. For example, when I developed my first blood test kit in the lab, it slipped my mind that it would be used at a place which is not a lab, where there is no AC, refrigerator and the power supply is unreliable. There could be extreme dirt and no humidity control. There would be no trained human resource to use it. So from the very beginning, we must have an industrial partner and leave the product to them at the stage where we find that they are more suitable to deal with it.

Professors are great snobs. In the elite academic system, everyone thinks of themselves as Einstein or Madame Curie. We have a lot to learn from people. At the same time, people in the industry should also get out of their ‘narrow mindedness’ of looking into immediate business prospects and be supportive of developing futuristic items being nurtured in the lab.
I would say that it is just an ecosystem problem, a mindset problem but we have the ingredients to have our own Silicon Valley.

Ritika Chopra: The government is designing a new scheme to bring back Indian origin ‘star faculty’ from abroad in the backdrop of the Trump administration’s interference in US higher education institutions. We understand that IITs have been part of this discussion. What is needed for the scheme to work and retain faculty?

IITs have always had the provision of recruiting foreign faculty for a fixed time period, possibly five years. Whether the person is of foreign origin, Indian origin or Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) is not a matter of concern. The most important thing is attracting the best talent and for that we need a supportive system that is encouraging, progressive and compatible. Top intellectuals in the world are not bothered by only salary. They want an academic and research ecosystem where they find a professional purpose.

So we must get out of our own mediocrity and find mechanisms where we can not only bring them, but also nurture them with a lot of positivity and opportunities. IITs should not be seen as fallback options. For example, we have got one such faculty member from MIT, who has been a pioneer of a global technology. He will spend time at IIT Kharagpur next year and co-work with our students. That person has come for a unique set of reasons.

Ritika Chopra: Under Donald Trump, the independence of publicly-funded institutions and universities has been tested. In India, IITs depend almost entirely on public money. Do you think that publicly-funded institutions can ever be insulated from political influence?

We have to keep in mind that politics is a part of society. So, political influence should not be isolated as the only factor impacting public-funded institutions. At IITs, we have not compromised on anything. Our board of governors has huge power and tremendous authority to approve certain things. As regards the federal government, we only have to comply with or align with certain national policies. Tell me about a private institution, which does not have to abide by national policies with respect to the friendliness of certain countries or sensitivity to national security?

On student pressure | Most students say they had prepared themselves for IIT because of parental pressure. Now this pressure is also being applied to students to get a return on investment (RoI). It is a vicious cycle

We have outstanding autonomy. Why then are we not able to use it? We ourselves do not want to go out of bounds and instead want to dump serious decision-making on somebody else. So though we are empowered to take a decision collectively for the growth of the institution, we feel uncertain. We feel, in the end, we are on government salary. So we stay in our own comfort zone and let the government give us the directive. If we get out of that mentality and try to innovate on things which will generate revenue, which will generate sustenance and which will drive us more towards exercising our autonomy in different aspects — like getting endowment funds from alumni or other sources, streamlining and utilising endowments for strategic purposes —nobody will prevent us.

If we work with alumni, industry experts and other professionals, who are not naturally within the IIT system, be they strategists or developers, we can surely build a model which can exercise a significant level of academic and research autonomy compared to what we had before. Some IITs already have such a model.

Deepto Banerjee: Are you seeing an uptick in the number of students moving beyond placements towards research and development (R&D)?

There is a huge socio-economic factor at play. Someone who has chosen mining engineering at IIT Kharagpur will say they had a particular rank in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) but still wanted to study at IIT Kharagpur. By combining their rank with the opportunity of studying an engineering subject at IIT Kharagpur at the BTech level, they found mining to be the only option. This is the reality and we have to accept this. What career decision will this person take?

Let us take the example of Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet and its subsidiary Google. Did you know what subject he had at IIT Kharagpur? Metallurgical and materials. How much of that is he applying in his present job at Google? Perhaps only the wisdom that he carried, only the learning as a student in the IIT campus that he carried.

So whether a student would be good for R&D, a banking job or maybe journalism, nobody knows. What is missing in the Indian ecosystem is a proper career mapping approach. Without that, it is impossible to convince a student what career will be good for them or not. Until and unless this mapping happens, the student will not find the right direction, which then leads to frustration.