HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar on Friday asked IITians to focus on innovation so that the country can reach higher levels of prosperity even as he expressed concern over the overall quality of research. He termed IITs, NITs and IISCs as temples of modern India and noted that Indian institutions don't make it even to the top 200 in global rankings. "We were once upon a time 25 per cent of the world trade, today we are not even one per cent of the world trade. We can achieve through continuous innovation. We can't just recollect on our past glory," Javadekar said at IIT-Delhi in his first "dialogue" with students of a higher education institute after taking over as the HRD Minister. [related-post] Watch Video: What's making news He said in those times people were up to date and even Columbus reached America while trying to find India. The HRD minister said the government is taking up new programmes to position IITs in the global best institutions "because currently we are nowhere in the top 200". Improving quality of research, building up labs, increasing proportion of foreign students and faculties is required, Javadekar said. "Unfortunately in our country PhD has sometimes, not in IITs, but elsewhere we see some type of stories and many times stories appear on TV about how spurious things happen. We want to control that," he said. PhDs, he said, add to existing knowledge otherwise it is not a real PhD. Lauding IIT Delhi, Javadekar said he had learnt that there are around 100 start ups in hostel rooms and expressed hoped that there would be more impetus to this movement. Referring to HRD ministry's initiatives, he said Rs 1000 crore will be put in IITs under IMPRINT programme while also mentioning schemes to encourage start-ups. This will lead to lot of investment in IITs, he said. It is learnt that during his visit to the institute, Javadekar also asked officials about how IITs can be made self-sufficient in terms of funding in the long run say by 2030. Officials said he also promised to look into how CSR funds can flow into IITs. Javadedkar said in his interaction earlier, he had asked students as to who wanted to be a teacher and was pleasantly surprised to find that barring a few, all PhD students were interested. It is learnt that during the interaction, some PhD students had expressed concerns about their employability. Javadekar had suggested that many of them could go on to fill vacant teaching posts in IITs and other teaching institutes. An official, who was present in the discussion, said students also suggested that entities like ISRO, DRDO should come for campus placements of PhD and other students, which Javadekar said he would look into. The HRD Minister is also learnt to have told officials that he would look into how CSR funds can be brought into IITs. Lauding the IIT "tradition", Javadekar said according to an estimate, alumni of these institutes are leaving a mark on the world economy and heading top organisations. Debunking the notion that most IITians go abroad, he said 7 out of every 10 are working in the country. Speaking about inquisitiveness, the minister referred to Bollywood movie "Three Idiots" and said only those teachers are best, who if they can't answer a student's question, revert back with the solution. He also sought suggestions from students for the New Education Policy and said availability, affordability, accountability and quality are the key aspects of education in the country. Speaking to reporters, Javadekar said "the UNESCO recognition for the Nalanda University is a proud moment for all of us".
