On first glance, the average educated Indian heart bleeds at the plight of our IIT professors. Mine did too. It appears they have decided to starve, so that our nation may grow healthier.
Old wounds are quickly re-opened. Anger comes flooding in... about reservations, government meddling in teaching content, subverting fine educational institutions et al.
And then there is this halo about the IITs and IIMs in the national psyche. To top it all, our inherent respect for our gurus, causes us to feel for them in a culturally unique manner that works in favour of the striking professors.
But, for a moment, if we take a step back and look at the matter as it stands, several key questions arise, that deserve to be asked. And answered.
Firstly, in terms of quality of life, is an IIT professor really living on the fringes of society? Staying in a crowded mohalla somewhere, and catching a public bus to go to work everyday?
Not really... most of them have very comfortable campus homes, in green, pollution-free and well-maintained environments. They stroll to work, breathing fresher air than what is available to even a Mercedes passenger on the roads outside.
So let's talk quality of life here, and not just how many greenbacks the government is pouring into one's bank a/c.
Should performance be rewarded? Sure. That, too, is a no-brainer.
But, even in the corporate sector, one does not get paid more merely for having joined a particular company. You have to demonstrate individual merit. There are performance targets. If one overachieves, one is recognised.
The argument that an IIT professor is somehow a more enlightened being, and is doing more important service than someone teaching, at, say, a government arts college, is an arrogant assumption in itself.
The arrogance is unravelled by one simple fact. Not only does the government provide good facilities and a decent base pay package, it also allows the professors to take on consulting assignments and earn as much as they wish to.
The truth is several of these professors do earn big bucks on the basis of their individual brilliance, through consulting engagements.
Then the bogey of “brain drain”. Another one of those scare tactics, designed to create the hype that we are soon going to be bereft of all talent. But, if one considers it, this disparity exists in almost every single field of public service today.
The brightest army men in India get paid lesser than their counterparts in the US... so do the police... so do CEOs of public sector banks, and so on and so forth.
So are we to assume that everyone is on the cusp of quitting en masse, and heading for distant shores. If they are, why haven't they done so over the last 30 years?
Finally, the shrill cries for autonomy. Every intelligent Indian wants to see lesser and lesser government intervention in the running of academic institutions. But, let’s also ask, what have these institutions done for themselves over the decades to justify and take forward such a demand?
Over the years, they have remained content to largely survive on tax payer money. Except for the odd lab or endowment scheme floated by enthusiastic alumni, there appear to be hardly any consistent self-funding mechanisms in evidence, or even being worked upon.
There is no corpus built up. There are no lines of PPP programmes being rolled out. Neither are the honorable professors able to make themselves generally wealthy, nor the institutions that they work for!
Then on what basis can a dependent child negotiate with its parent for freedom?
At the end of it all, one is left feeling somewhat bemused. We want to stand by our elite institutions and its erudite professors. We would like to help them break free from the chains of government.
If only they would be willing to get out of their comfortable armchairs inside cocooned campuses, and take the trouble to do so!
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