IIT professor's hunger strike hurting IIT brand

1500 IIT teachers went on hunger strike on 24th September. On the face they are raising the issue on par pay scale with DRDO and ISRO. But it all seems about the money. I can see point here. Some of the faculty members who have started working after 1980s and particularly 1990s find that they left behind in the money earning process. They imagine themselves as Narayan Murthy and Azim Premjee. What hurts these teachers most is that the students are getting higher salary than them. Do they consider that these students are going for temporary jobs in a field, particularly IT and investment banking, that they might not like do spend their life in? Starting salaries might be good but the upper range rarely goes beyond Rs 20 lakhs in India. These students have to work on the projects that their company gets. There is no freedom as IIT professors have in research.

This hunger strikes projects the IITs as if the teachers are not paid at all. IIT teachers are not starving at all. They get many facilities those are not available to UGC professors. One of the benefit of joining IITs is that career graph moves very fast. One becomes professor from assistant professor in less than 10 years. In UGC it might take upto 20 years to become professor. Is this not a better deal than the UGC professors? There is very little publication by the UGC teachers. Does this mean they are lower grade researcher? Answer will be NO. The biggest problem for a UGC teacher is the facilities. They do not have access to high speed Internet. They do not have access to science journal and online members-only databases. IIT professors get access to all the resources by default.

There is no direct comparison between the IIT professors and a UGC professor. One should not try to make fool by discussing the basic salary only. NO UGC professor gets Rs 4 lakhs for research expenses every three year. It is weird and unfair to compare salaries. There is no dearth of new students trying to join IITs as professors on current pay scale. IITs selection criteria is so strict and far from practicality that only a few are able to join there. After spending 4-5 years in foreign countries a large number of students long to go back to India. They do not find an institute with decent research facilities so they decide to stay away. Very rarely I have seen a Phd student talking about lower pay in IITs as a cause of not joining there.

They need to realise that they are the best paid public servant in the country. Yes, public servant. IITs are funded by the government. If they can raise money for their operations then they can think of any salary as in corporate. They will be measured for their performance every quarter as is done corporate. If corporate life was so easy then a large number of teachers would have not come into teaching at the first place.

Face the reality. Teaching is a profession by choice and not compulsion.