Earlier this week, Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, courted controversy with his comments on the quality of faculty at the Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management. Mr. Ramesh, who is an alumnus of the IIT system, said that the students of IITs and IIMs were "world-class" but the faculty was not. ”There is hardly any worthwhile research from our IITs," Mr. Ramesh added. He was speaking on the sidelines of a function to announce the setting up of a marine biodiversity institute.
Kapil Sibal, minister of human resource development, which include education, leapt to the institutes defense. The main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party chimed in for good measure, declaring: "We cannot have world-class institutions unless we have world-class ministers.”
- Raveendran/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
- Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister has again courted controversy with his candid comments.
The opinion pages of Indian papers had a lot to say about this Thursday and Friday. India Real Time presents a selection.
The Times of India in its Wednesday editorial headlined "Aim for World Class" noted that Mr. Ramesh's were an opportunity to look at the big picture: "Not a single Indian university figures among the top hundred in the 2010 QS World University Rankings. Neither do the IITs and IIMs make it to the top ranks in similar inte [...]
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