Friday, September 25, 2009

On IIT's Professors hunger strike for salary hike

Is this justified for Professors to do hunger strikes when they are supposed to be teaching students... especially in this economic downturn.. most of us comes from financially struggling families and worked hard.. how about the sons and daughters of small farmers or shopkeepers or single parents or no parents (orphans).. don't they have any right to get educated. India still can not provide the adequate education to every child.. a systematic failure of democracy .. no wonder we are ruled by a 'special family'. probably India's caste based culture is now converted to family based culture and everyone is ready to snatch others kids' bread to buy new toys for his or her kid. Comparing the professors with highly earned politicians is shame of their hard earned education. I am not sure if IITs are getting money from GOI to run the institutions every fiscal year. If answer is 'no' and the institutions can easily generate enough revenue to meet the expenses, autonomy makes perfect sense. Autonomy implies 'don't bother each other'. Hunger strike sounds OK for a crime victim or 'blue collared labor union' as a desperate attempt to be listened. Mahatma Gandhi did it when we did not have our Government. Now though incompetent, but we have one. Instead of doing hunger strikes, it will be better if these intellectuals come up with a business plan to be self sustainable. And I am sure that the professors or VC of these institutes can easily set an appointment with Ministry of Human Resource Development. For Ministry too, instead of pumping money to a few elite institutions, if a general Government fund can be formed and any new or expanding institute can get money from it. For the time, they are owed by Government, they are made to follow the GOI's conditions and affirmative actions (reservations). Ultimate goal should be to make all the institutions run as autonomous and financial suffice. They can generate multiple streams of earnings from consulting projects, fees and research funds.

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