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The Gauntlet
Why don’t you do
something for IIT-Kharagpur, Prof . Chopra?
This challenging question by the Adviser, Technical Education
in the MHRD, India, haunted me. A physicist being chosen to head KGP was a
surprise. For me the question was why I should abandon my forty coworkers in my
internationally acclaimed TFL, IIT- Delhi, which was buzzing with excitement
and innovations. In any case, I had no idea where Kharagpur was and what ailed
IIT-Kharagpur. Yes, Kharagpurwas a part of the IIT family but know in Delhi
more for its notoriety and indiscipline, among other things. In fact, I
understand that the concerned minister threw up his hands at one time and
wondered why it should not be closed and students transferred to other IITs. I
mulled over these agonizing bits of information. My conscience stirred me to
take up the challenge for a limited period of three years. I insisted on
visiting KGP before I accept the position. The Ministry said a categorical “no”
since the KGP unions were known to create unpleasant situations which would
frighten anybody. Anyhow, I had myself invited to KGP to deliver an Institute
Seminar.
I went around the campus and visited some department without
giving any impression of what I was up to. It was clear that the grand old KGP
must have seen glorious days. After all, it was the very first IIT, the Mother
of the other IITs. The resurrection of such an institute of national importance
posed not only a challenge but an opportunity to prove my credentials as a
demanding educationist. I made up my mind to take up the gauntlet. The Ministry
was happy with my positive response. Numerous senior scientists and
administrators in the country were rather taken aback at my decision and
advised me not to venture into a turbulent sea. Bets were on in Delhi as to how
long a tough disciplinarian would last at KGP. I met RussiMody, the then
Chairman of the Board of Governors. He was absolutely clear that he wanted a
tough IAS type administrator for KGP whose first job was to dismiss two faculty
association leaders who had manhandled another senior faculty of the Institute.
When I told Mody that I was an academician first and an unknown administrator
next and that I will do only what is good for the Institute, MrMody was not
happy. He wanted to know why I applied for the job. I said that I have never
considered applying for such a job but that I was invited by the Ministry. As I
started walking out of his hotel room, MrMody followed me and putting his hands
on my shoulder said that he is sure that I am the best person for the job. This
was a crucial event between two strong personalities and it marked the
beginning of my unfettered running of the Institute. I was asked to join
immediately to conduct the Annual Convocation and then I could take off for a
month abroad for lectures which I had given my commitment to much earlier.
THE TASK
I joined one week before the
Convocation, And that one week brought home some of acute problems of
Kharagpur. Sitting in the dining hall of the guest house with dangerously
cracked walls and roof all over, I overhead two service engineers talking about
the sad affairs of the institute. The Cyber computer, which their company had
sold to the Institute, was lying in the boxes for over a year and could not be
installed for lack of a proper room, with power and air-conditioning. The more
inquisitive I became during my morning walks and visits to various places, the
more sordid the situation appeared. I was greeted by barking dogs, roaming
chicken and menacing bulls inside the academic area, even at the entrance.
Unreliable and inadequate were both the water supply and electricity, with
nominal roads; shoddy and dilapidated buildings; dogs and cattle moving freely
in the middle of roads, a thoroughfare road right through the campus ridden
with speeding buses and letting in undesirable pedlars of country liquor and
drugs; encroachment of IIT land by outsiders; disorderly bicycles parking
everywhere fight upto the porch and entrance to the main offices; filthy
corridors; non-functional telephones etc. these defined my task.
In such a scenario, I was happy to
get a break going abroad for a month. This gave me time to ponder over my line
of action. I came back with a clear head more determined than ever to make the
needed changes at KGP within the three years I had given myself. On my return, I faced even more serious
problems with regard to the financial health of the Institute. The Employees
Provident fund to the tune of about Rupees Three crores had not been deposited to
for about seven years. As per the law, the chief executive concerned could have
been imprisoned for this serious lapse. I informed the Ministry that, if it
wished me to continue, funds should be given to deposit and make up the deficit
in the PF account. Fortunately, the Ministry welcomed and appreciated my alarm
raising, and soon provided these funds to plug the deficit. This exercise was
the first and foremost lesson that led me to understand how an the Institute
finance was being managed and how it can be bankrupted by soft and populist
measures. This was the beginning of the long range strategic thinking to transform the budget which was the lowest
among IITs then, by gradual enhancement to become the largest and most diverse
to take Kharagpur to its rightful place. I started getting numerous anonymous
letters of mischievous intent, whose writing I began to realize was the
specialty of a few people here. These would be sent everywhere complaining
about my frequent visits to Delhi alleging that these were just to collect
travelling allowances, (those expenses that I rarely charged IIT for). No, I
did not get deterred by these trivialities.
ISRO, (Indian Space Res. Org.) had
earlier agreed to set up a Regional Remote Sensing Centre here at KGP.
Unsatisfied by the laggard progress of this work, they informed me that this
Centre would be withdrawn. I requested and persuaded their Chairman to
reconsider this issue, and assured them that I would personally attend to
getting the building erected. Thence, ritually, I visited the construction site
every morning till it was complete and to the satisfaction of ISRO. And now, of
course, we have an ISRO Centre and its Community complex in the campus.
As was expected, the Employees’
Union started flexing its muscles. And as the Teachers’ Association defending
two office bearers was still involved in a long and expensive court battle
keeping it temporarily subdued. The local area MP, kept threatening with dire
consequences if I did not offer permanent employment to someof the daily wage
workers. There was also the case of long standing defunct Jersey Bulls and its
Dairy which had long dodged solutions. Dealing with Unions was not always easy,
all of which make a long story and need to be told elsewhere.
THE
STRATEGY
My strategy of operation was now
ready. And it included the following:
·
Involvement
of Senior Faculty in the management of the Institute in all aspects.
·
Priority
for Transparency and Accountability in Management.
·
All
Rules to be liberalized for the benefit of the IIT community.
·
Campus
beautified to make the IIT community proud and befitting a national
institution.
·
Providing
a Good basic Infrastructure for all (students, staff, faculty and residents).
·
Discipline
relating to all spheres be seen by example and felt by action.
·
Create
partnerships with alumni and industry.
·
Introduction
of Continuing Education for industry and community in a professional and
business mode.
·
Breaking
down of barriers between departments/centers in academic subjects to the extent
possible.
·
Introduction
of Assessment of Teachers and Teaching.
·
Establish
feedback channels through direct personal contacts with students, faculty and
staff.
·
Regular
follow up of all initiatives undertaken.
Men abhor change and intellectuals find good excuses to
oppose any change. My propsed reforms and initiatives did not have a smooth
sailing almost always. I had to personally direct the security personnel even
to chase a fierce bull which was a regular visitor, in the main premises. They
were so scared of this bull and would not go near it. And there was a senior professor who refused the
security and did not remove the cycle from the porch, a no parking zone. When I
had to intervene, he said that the Director should have better things to do
than remove cycles from the porch. Often I had get the cycles deflated and
removed personally until this improved discipline began to get notice,
appreciation and support from the majority of people affected.
When we decided to
build our Rural Development Centre in a more rural setting near the periphery
of the campus, we were met with bows and arrows. Thousands of trees that had
been meticulously planted by our students of under the National Social Service
were set on fire by arsonists. Still we persisted and established our right and
reclaimed the land up to the boundaries. In fact, under an official survey by a
government agency, wall markers were set up to define the boundaries of the
Institute for the first time.
The building that
housed the Hijli Jail and became the birthplace of IIT, had reached an
extremely dilapidated state. I felt inspired by its unique architecture and
beauty among the campus buildings. I had been warned of its being infested with
snakes and not step inside. But I ignored these as I was bitten by my inquisitive
nature as a physicist and I even climbed up all the way to the top once as a
part of my routine morning walks. I literally cried when I saw this fine and
historic monument in such a sad state. I became determined to renovate it
despite having no funds for this purpose. I persuaded the Employees’ Union, the
Thrift Society and other occupants there to vacate and shift their offices
elsewhere in designated places and enable the building to be renovated for
housing a Museum of Science and Technology, name after Nehru. After initial
refusal, the Ministry relented and reimbursed IIT towards Rs 40 Lakhs spent on
this renovation. When it was lit at
night, this magnificent building housing the Nehru Museum as well as other
offices, and the adjacent former jail cells which were used by the British to
intern our freedom fighters it shown brilliantly as a national heritage monument. Mischief mongers
used some newspapers to make allegations of the building being damaged by me.
Many among the public who saw the renovated building first hand were moved to
tears. I accepted their request and renamed the building as “SHAHEED BHAVAN.”
The Academic
reforms were hotly and thoroughly debated in various fora. Numerous hours spent
on lively discussion were not uncommon in the Institute Senate. Whether it was
assessment of teaching and teachers, or the setting up of the Vinod Gupta
School of Management, or the new integrated course of Biotechnology, to the
merger of centers with departments, or renaming or rearranging of departments,
or major revisions in the UG & PG curricula, they demanded thorough and
critical exchanges. To the credit of the entire concerned faculty, any concept
perceived useful was adopted in due course.
Every major
initiative was a battle by itself. Being determined to see every initiative
fructify within my tenure, I always placed myself in the firing line. In some
cases, the times taken by the projects were unduly long. But I never gave up. It took four years to convince
the West Bengal government and its Chief Minister to permit us to create a
replacement state road along the boundary and exchange it for the state road
that bisected the campus. Three years it took for the two million dollar
donation of alumnus Vinod Gupta to materialize formally and then with two years
of construction the building for the Management school came up and it stands as
a landmark until today. It took three years to acquire a plot of land in Salt
Lake City, near Kolkata, evict a dairy there and construct our Extension
Center-cum-Guest House there. But exceptionally, it took only a few months to
get our proposal approved for setting-up a virtual group at Bhubaneswar, by the
Chief Minister of Odisha. Both the money and land for the concerned building
were transferred immediately after that. This was also the case with the
donations of Rs 3 crore, thanks to the generosity of Mr and MrsArjunMalhotra
(our distinguished alumnus) and it led to the setting up of the G S Sanyal School of Telecommunication.
INFRASTRUCTURAL FACILITIES CREATED or EXPANDED
·
Campus
Ring Road
·
33
KVA Sub Station
·
Shopping
Complex (near Old Petrol Pump) and IIT Market
·
Multistoried
Apartments (100+)
·
Vocational
Training Institute
·
Annex
of KendriyaVidyalaya
·
Guest
House Annex
·
Continuing
Education Centre
·
Community
Center
·
Salt
Lake Extension Center
·
Indira
Gandhi Hostel
·
Hostel
for MBM Students (now Ashutosh Mukherjee Hostel)
·
International
Students Hostel
·
Hall
Management Center
·
Nehru
Museum of Science and Technology
·
Science
and Technology Entrepreneurs Park
·
Annex
of Materials Science Centre
·
Rural
Development Centre
·
Center
for Educational Technology
·
Center
of Biotechnology
·
Building
of the Computer Science and Engineering department
·
Prof
SR Sen Gupta Foundation Laboratory
·
Vinod
Gupta School of Management
·
Building
for Aquaculture Center
·
Building
for Regional Remote Sensing
·
Building
housing Technology Cafeteria and SBI Extension Office.
·
Building
for Library extension with an Electronic Library
·
Telephone
Exchange/Service expanded as a Telecom Centre.
·
Office
Complex for National Examinations, like JEE/GATE
·
Complex for Sponsored Research and Industrial
Consultancy
·
Technology
Foundation for Alumni Outreach and Interaction
·
Extension
Centre at Bhubaneswar
·
Micro-science
Laboratory
·
G
S Sanyal School of Telecommunication
·
IIT-
BREF-BIOTEK Centre
THE NEW TEMPO
Being result oriented it became clear to me that I must
complete my full term of five years to see my dreams fulfilled. At the end of
my first term, I was offered good position in Delhi and Varanasi. But I had
fallen in love with KGP. It did not take long for MrMody and others in the
Government of India to persuade me to accept another term of five years. A
management Guru in our Board of Governors had advised me to quit when you are
at the peak of achievements. But, selfishness overtook me and I could not think
of leaving KGP in the middle of its resurgence. Warm and supportive relations
with the alumni, the creation of the largest corpus fund among IITs, Science
& Technology Entrepreneur’s Park, Joint Ventures with industry and state governments,
Technology Development Missions etc.began or taken further ahead in the next
five years became my contributions which were unique for India. This KGP
attracted the attention of academics the world over. Its old glory was
conspicuous once again and it had become a symbol of a new dynamism in the
educational sector.
FAREWELL
I had come to KGP in awe. But I fell in love. Bigamy is what
my wife grew to being reconciled with. She stood by me forever giving spiritual
strength, steady like a rock. She also could not help becoming an integral part
of the whole KGP family. To preserve my sanity through academic work, I
established a Micro-Science laboratory with the help of several dedicated
colleagues and research scholars. We were amply rewarded with national awards
for the work done in this unique facility. Whatever had
been achieved at KGP, it was due to the tremendous commitment and dedication of
numerous people, faculty and staff members, and not in the least, the ambitious
students. We are in gratitude to them
all. Beyond physical and academic facilities, the KGP community at large seemed
full of pride, patent in the vibrancy and festivity of all community functions
and campus activities. But as all good things come to an end, the long decade also
became history fast. The time to bid farewell had arrived.
K.
L. Chopra
Director,
IIT, Kharagpur
1987-1997
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