"IITs would soon be not just heading down the hill but heading down a deep abyss never to rise again", says Prof Shashi K Gulhati of IIT, Delhi in his book "The IITs, Slumping or Soaring?"

Doctors have the clout to attract attention. When they stop work, the hurt is immediate and visible. IITs and IIMs can cry

themselves hoarse and no one will blink an eyelash.

Non-cooperation, from engineers and managers is not immediately life threatening, Gulhati says as he painstakingly explains the crisis the IITs are heading.

Quoting reports, the book says that the total strength of faculty in all the IITs in 2002-2003 (2375) was 27 per cent less than their total sanctioned strength (3263). Not only the IITs but a study by McKincy and Co. forecast a nationwide shortage of faculty for the better engineering colleges to be around 50 per cent, that is, of the order of 5000 faculty members, it says.

Remuneration packages for the faculty also are low from industries working in core engineering fields. Even coaching centres which are only preparing students to be able to join the IITs pay more to their teachers than IITs, the book says.

According to estimates, an IIT professor has a package of Rs 8 lakh per annum whereas in the industry the figure is

about two-to-three times as much. And the faculty in the United States has one that is 7.5 times as much at about Rs 60

lakh per annum, Gulhati says.

IITs had great infrastructure when they were established. Although over the years inputs were made to modernise and renovate, obsolescence set in more rapidly in technological institutes, he says.

On the state of the laboratories, the author says that it was not easy to make an assessment but wonders whether the infusion of Rs 100 crore in the next five years into each IIT recommended by the Review Committee in 2004 was enough to make the IIT laboratories world class.

On recent controversy over increasing the seats to accommodate the OBCs and comparison of IITs with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) of the US, the author points out that the MIT does not admit 5000 students every year- it only admits 1000 undergraduates. MIT's total enrolment during 2005-06 was 4066 under-graduates and 6140 post-graduates and doctoral students. MITs total teaching staff consisted of 1620 and its annual budget stood at 2000 million dollars or Rs 9000 crore.

The book warns that increasing the student intake at the IITs without addressing the acute shortage of faculty and inadequate infrastructure - hostel rooms, student facilities, research labs etc - would only serve to diminish the world class standards achieved to date. "Affirmative action should be applied for mass education at primary level and not for institutions of excellence," Gulhati says.

Gulhati rues that the problem is not limited just to the faculty and infrastructure. It begins right at the JEE stage.

In recent years just about all those admitted to the IITs were 'coached' students, he says referring to the mushrooming

coaching classes.

"The coaching establishments do not educate, they break up the material into little modules that consist of various problem types. Understanding of the concepts, obviously, has nothing to do with it. Consequently it has been observed that coached students in recent years seemed less motivated to learn, he says.

Quoting studies, Gulhati says admission by nation-wide tests where hundreds of thousands appeared had made the selection process mechanical. "Writing such tests is trainable, and training offers significant advantage. Thus, India's professional colleges including the IITs have shut their doors to a vast pool of talent among the poorer sections of the society (who cannot afford the training) and are missing out on true scholars not interested in rote learning, he says.

Not only are the IITs missing talent from among the poorer, they are missing out on the richer sections too, the book says. "Indians are spending between Rs 3000 crore to Rs5000 crore on higher education abroad, a staggering amount for a poor country whose own educational institutions are starved of resources, the author says.