Date:08/07/2005 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2005/07/08/stories/2005070812490400.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

IISc.'s immediate goal is to become internationally competitive

Divya Ramamurthi

Institute to improve laboratory and experimental facilities for students, faculty

P. Balaram

BANGALORE: The immediate goal of the Indian Institute of Science is to become internationally competitive by raising the bar for its research performance.

Its Director, P. Balaram, said it plans to achieve this by improving laboratory and experimental facilities available to students and faculty. "We have excellent faculty and students, but some of the conditions they work in are less than optimal. The institute will be celebrating its centenary in a few years time and so will some of the laboratories," said Prof. Balaram in an interview with The Hindu . The former chairman of the institute's division of biological sciences took over as Director from Goverdhan Mehta on July 1.

Part of the money for renovating the laboratories will come from the windfall of Rs. 100 crores announced by the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, in the Union Budget this year. "The very idea of the Finance Minister granting us this money was to make at least one institution in India truly international," Prof. Balaram said.

An exercise to identify a wish list of the needs of the different departments is currently being undertaken. "We will prioritise how to spend the money based on the needs of the departments," he said.

Too few Ph.Ds

To a question on the meagre number of students who opt to do a Ph.D. in India, the Director said that although the numbers are few there is no need for immediate concern as the numbers are not "desperately low."

But there is need to worry about the quality of students, he said. Prof. Balaram said the poor quality is not because of a lack of basic abilities among students but because of their imperfect understanding of the fundamentals of different issues. This he attributed to the quality of education in other institutions, which is below optimal. Advanced institutes of learning such as the Indian Institute of Science need to take in students who are not bad but poorly trained and help them improve, he said.

The institute is not throwing its gates open to undergraduate students, said Prof. Balaram. "We do not have a formal process to start an undergraduate programme, and it would be very difficult given our past history and our physical infrastructure," he said.

But, the institute is definitely looking at ways to improve the quality of science education in general. "We do not as yet know how to do it. But, we are working on different approaches," Prof. Balaram added.