IIT profs to protest against Centre’s ‘failed promises’

MANOJ R NAIR

It is very rare that teachers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) resort to agitation to air their grievances. But the government’s delay in announcing new pay scales for faculty members has led to simmering discontent among the institution’s teaching staff. While the date and method of agitation has not been decided yet, the general body of IIT Bombay Faculty Forum, an association of teachers is planning to meet soon to discuss the issue.

While the protest options that are being discussed include wearing black badges or mass casual leave, more drastic plans include a refusal to mentor the new IITs that have been set up recently. IIT-Bombay is mentoring the new institutes at Gandhinagar and Indore, including selecting the faculty for the new centres and also providing teachers there till a full fledged teaching infrastructure is set up there.

Usually, new payscales for IIT teaching staff are introduced along with the revised salaries for central government employees. This time, however, while the Sixth Pay Commission for other government employees was announced in September 2008, the faculty members at IIT are still waiting for pay hikes that are due from 2006.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) had appointed a pay review committee headed by Professor Govardhan Mehta, chairman of National Academic Acredition Council to make recommendations for revised pay scales, among other things, for IIT teachers.

The committee submitted its report on February 6. While the report’s contents were not revealed, the government appointed another committee on February 24 to examine the findings of the Mehta report. There has been no development in the issue since then.