Sibal is independently meeting directors of the IITs, IIMs, the National Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research in an unprecedented blitzkrieg to diffuse any lingering tensions, The Telegraph has learnt.
The HRD minister will formally offer the institutes greater autonomy — both in financial and managerial terms — and will insist on mechanisms to address faculty grievances, top government sources said.
The minister has already indicated that he is keen on greater autonomy for the IITs and the IIMs, and has asked his ministry to formulate a grievance redressal mechanism for IIT teachers.
But ministry sources said Sibal has now decided to extend his autonomy embrace to cover the NITs and the IISERs as well. All these institutes will also be offered faculty grievance redressal mechanisms.
Sibal is scheduled to meet directors of the seven IIMs on October 16, and will chair a meeting of the IIT council — the highest decision making body of the IITs — on October 19.
He is also scheduled to chair the NIT council — the highest executive body of the NITs — and the directors of the IISERs within the next two weeks. Sibal is currently in Paris attending a Unesco meeting and is scheduled to return to India on October 13.
At his meetings with the directors of the IITs, IIMs, NITs and the IISERs, Sibal is expected to declare that he wants to ease the HRD ministry’s control over tie ups these institutions engage in with others.
Sibal, it is learnt, is also keen to ease the norms that at present limit the ability of these institutions to share each other’s faculty.
The planned set of meetings follows a protracted tussle between the HRD ministry and the IIT faculty over teacher salaries. The dispute saw the HRD ministry face charges of neglecting concerns of teachers and of infringing on the autonomy of the IITs — charges that the ministry denied.
The dispute was resolved — at least for the present — after a meeting between IIT faculty representatives and the HRD minister last weekend in Delhi.
Source : The Telegraph.
1 comment :
It is high time that MHRD should realize that NITs also need flexible faculty system to become Institutes of National Importance. This is because, the focus of NITs is changed towards research now. NITs need to attract and retain PhDs and post-docs to contribute on R&D projects, PhD guidance and publish quality papers. To begin with, MHRD should encourage these group of faculty by at least maintaining parity in the number of years for promotion into Associate Professor cadre if not on pay scale.Faculty(Asst. Professors) who join with PhD and have 6 years of experience should be placed in PB IV and incumbent faculty with 6 years of post-PhD experience/service as on Jan.1,2006should be re-designated as Associate Professors. This will help to retain/attract quality faculty towards NITs partially. Otherwise there could be brain drain/absorption of doctoral degree holders towards IITs.Hope, MHRD will come out with such a package in two weeks.
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