Hemali Chhapia reports in The Economic Times that IIT faculty will go on hunger strike today, since there has been no formal announcement from the HRD Ministry on their pay hike demands (for which they had set yesterday as the deadline).
It's not clear to me if this protest will happen since the IIT Directors made a specific appeal to their faculty yesterday to "desist from any form of protest or demonstrations". The appeal ends with this reminder: "As IIT system we have some stature in society. We all hope that you will hold it as high as is expected from all of us."
The Indian Express report has something else that should be of great interest. In their appeal, the IIT directors also revealed that the HRD Minister mooted a "Performance Related Incentive Scheme ... to provide additional remuneration to the faculty members."
2 Comments:
Well, some people at one IIT had tried to come up with such a scheme sometime ago. No conclusion was reached. There's no fair way to implement such a PRIS unless they decide to give it to everyone.
This problem is going to last for a while. In the short trem, the following may be done:
1. Improve the faculty pay to at least what the Mehta committee recommended.
2. Allow faculty to pay themselves a remuneration from government funded projects.
3. IITs/IISc/IIMs should change their revenue sharing model for faculty. The institute share should be 0% for 10 lakhs or less, 10% for 10-20 lakhs and whatever the institute sets for above 20 lakhs. This is completely in the institutes' hand, no MHRD involvement necessary.
4. Eventually...decouple wages from central pay structure and adopt market wages.
Balakrishnan
Post a Comment