November - 2000 - issue > Cover Story

The global success of the software industry in India clearly illustrates that Indian engineers can rival the best in the world. Software development provided vehicle to demonstrate this point, although for those who have seen the achievements in the nuclear, space and the missile development, this was obvious long ago. This image is strengthened by the observation that a number of Indian computer scientists have made it big in the US as entrepreneurs, either by climbing the corporate ladder or by being successful in academia after earning a postgraduate education in the US. It is equally true that an entrepreneurial spirit in India has also spawned a number of successful software ventures. It’s important to note, however, that actual software products from Indian firms have had negligible impact. India’s tech strength so far lies in its services.


India has had a long-standing tradition in the physical sciences, starting from the pre-independence days. Technical education began in a big way in the ’50s, thanks to the vision of then prime minister Nehru. The Sarkar committee created the five IITs, each of which produced excellent engineers with their state-of-the-art curriculum. In the same decade, Nehru — together with men like Bhabha, Sarabhai and Bhatnagar — created the infrastructure of space, atomic energy, and defense laboratories, which have legitimately made India a self-reliant country. Achievements like the Pokhran nuclear tests, launches of the Agni missile and the ISRO satellites are ample testimony of the high level of Indian expertise. To avoid drawing an erroneous correlation, however, it should be noted that success of these technologies relied very little on the graduates of the IITs. The basic background of most of those seeking admission to engineering schools is acceptable. The successful and well-prepared ones pass the entrance examination and are admitted into IITs. The rest get into other technical institutions. This is somewhat similar to the US, where there is fierce competition to get into the Ivy League or so-called elite schools. Recent research has shown that those graduating from these elite schools are better “connected.” In the long run, they are termed more successful, by many measures, than equally good students going through not-so-elite schools.
In the case of India, those graduating from IITs definitely have a better chance of getting into quality post-graduate schools. However, from observing the success of Indians in the Silicon Valley, it can be said that there are a large number of non-IIT professionals who are equally successful. Assuming that an IIT student stays in India, it is difficult to guess whether in the long run she or he will have an edge over other students. This is a point that authorities must consider before allocating resources to technical education within the country.

Choices, Solutions, Strategies
After the Sarkar committee report in the ’50s, there has been hardly any growth in the number of IITs. Out of nearly 1,20,000 students who take the Joint Entrance Exam, about 3,000 are admitted into the IITs. Judging by the law of large numbers, at least 10,000 should be entitled to a comparable education. Herein lies the tragedy of technical education: If proper adaptations had been made, the IITs should have had an output at least twice the output by the ’70s by incremental investments in the infrastructure. Current news reports suggest that the government is thinking of elevating some of the regional engineering colleges to the status of IITs, which is a step in the right direction and should be implemented as soon as possible. This move should be done with care. By ensuring that the syllabus of the RECs fall in line with those of the IITs and their equipment is also comparable. Most RECs have a good percentage of Ph.D.’s, thanks to the Quality Improvement Program, started in 1971, through which nearly 4,000 Indians obtained their M.S. or Ph.D. degrees from IITs. Even at a cursory glance (as well as from this writer’s experience), if the intake to IITs and similar quality institutions is 10 percent of those taking the entrance exam, the country would have a much better technical manpower pool at the bachelor degree level. Those aspiring to go abroad will do so, a trend that cannot and should not be discouraged. In the long run, Indians abroad create brand equity in those countries that they enter and succeed in. Some form of reverse brain drain will eventually occur as we are witnessing today in the IT sector.

Need for a Paradigm Shift
If the country has to catch up with the rest of the industrialized world in the twenty-first century, this can only occur through quality postgraduate training on the same scale as the undergraduate training of the ’60s at the IITs. Only through such investments can real R&D flourish in India’s technical areas. The sciences have maintained a good track record by producing enough Ph.D.s even from pre-independence days. Those in the area of engineering have some catch up to do, however. There are not enough M. Techs going around — and Ph.D.’s are little more than a trickle. This may be one reason why the country does not have much success in the software products or the designs engineering sectors, as opposed to the software services sector. Under these circumstances, the country simply cannot compete with the industrialized world. What the country will witness is that the multinational corporations will open up R&D centers for the benefit of their parent companies and the fruits of research will not be available to the country at large. This is the inevitable consequence of globalization. Indian companies must compete for the best talent; just as in the software services sector, a level playing field may eventually result. But for that to happen the institutions must produce enough M.Techs and Ph.D.s of good quality to meet the demand.
The question is, then: Can the existing IITs deliver? Given the current scenario, it’s up to the IITs to increase the output of M. Techs and Ph.D.’s. One possible solution, though drastic, is to convert the IITs into post-graduate institutions, as the IISc has done. The IITs can take the good talent from the engineering schools and concentrate on R&D and postgraduate training. Another option is to have a sponsored program for the industry in the IITs on the lines of the Quality Improvement Program (QIP) for the teachers initiated in the ’70s. Academic institutions also need these products for maintaining their excellence. The IITs and the IISc must also take a lead in distance education at the postgraduate level, an area where many foreign universities are already making their presence felt.


The bottomline is that technical education requires the HRD ministry’s immediate attention. It cannot be business as usual anymore if India has to make best use of its single resource — namely, human capital. In certain key areas of infrastructure such as power and transportation, it’s obvious that the country has failed.

M.A. Pai is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign since 1981. A winner of the Bhatnagar science award in 1974, he was previously on the faculty of the IIT, Kanpur.