IMTECH Director: "Encourage inquisitive minds"
"India doesn’t have world-class institutions as a bulk of our teachers are not researchers. At best they are good imparters of old knowledge"
Dr Girish Sahini,
Director, Institute of Microbial
Technology, Chandigarh
Q. What according to you is a ‘World Class University’? What can India do to have one?
A. World-class university should perform world-class training and education. An institute becomes world-class through its quality of training, innovation quality. By eliminating anti-innovation elements in our existing system we remove the many barriers to innovation, right from primary education. We need to encourage inquisitive minds and grow out of the mindset where performance in exams alone is encouraged. You cannot inspire students, cannot turn them into researchers until you yourself is a researcher. We are not at the cutting edge because there are only a few institutions where research and teaching go ahead together.
Q. What are the challenges you face as the head of a promising institute?
A. A very important aspect looked into is recruitment, sustenance and encouragement of potential talent. Head of institutions need to be talent-recognizers.
Q. Is there scope for improvement?
A. By and large Indian universities are not the best places. Research institutes offer the best PhD training, as the facilities are very good. But abroad, universities can also impart very good training where the best works come out of universities. Our research institutes unfortunately are the only places where the very best facilities exist but not necessarily the most extraordinary minds. Our best minds may still be at the universities so what one desires actually is that something of the university goes to the research institutes and vice-versa so that you have the best of both worlds.
Q. Any unique practice being followed at your institute?
A. At our institute there are many research groups that are not only doing very good fundamental science but also trying to translate them. Sometimes when students get that experience and exposure, their whole philosophy in life changes, positively affected by that philosophy. We try to inculcate values in students so that they identify and solve nationally important problems.
Q. Could you tell us about IMTECH’s future initiatives?
A. We would like to have a programme where people from industries and universities come for short-term interactions. We want to start a good international university programme. For example, recently at least 50 undergraduate students from California came and spent a day here. They said they never believed such facilities existed in India. Also people who do not have access should come and spend three-four months here and learn things. This kind of programme requires very active government support at two levels. One, it should give support to the students and to the institute, particularly to the students. It may be incentivised for both faculty and students. It will help push people in the right direction.
Q. Can our higher education become more robust?
A. More and more courses should be designed along participatory teaching. There should be seminar courses, group discussions where the teacher is only a catalyst. Students must do most of the learning and teaching because specifically higher education should be interactive at MSc and PhD level. Modern tools of information dissemination should be there like audio-visual and laboratory sessions.
Q. Your industry-linked interactions?
A. We aspire to have industry-university-national lab synergy, which is a big challenge. It may not be easy but is necessarily not impossible. It should be a win-win situation where national labs help universities by providing them facilities and synergize with the diversity of ideas that exist there.
