The Hindu : Commercialise research work on larger scale, IITs told

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Nov 12, 2003

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Commercialise research work on larger scale, IITs told

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI NOV. 11. Arguing that Indian Institutes of Technology themselves are facing challenges, forced to become increasingly commercial, N. Sankar, Chairman, Sanmar Group, has appealed to them to work like other global institutions, creating fresh sources of revenue.

"The contribution of the IITs to globalisation of Indian manpower and therefore of Indian business over the last four or five decades has been immense. A concerted campaign to tap the goodwill of the IIT alumni will yield results."

Mr. Sankar was delivering an EFSI Endowment lecture on "The Changing Face of Employer-Employee Relations in India" at the IIT, Madras, yesterday.

Mr. Sankar said the ambience for business and industry in the country was witnessing dramatic changes and there was need for evolving a new paradigm to evaluate, manage and treat "human capital".

"I would recommend to the IIT that it conduct a study on ways of commercialising its research activities on a larger scale. Sponsored research, better control of intellectual property arising from its own labs, cooperation with other research institutions around the world in niche areas, all these show potential."

On arresting brain drain, Mr. Sankar said it could happen by both domestic industry expanding and absorbing more and more bright young people, and by increasing substantially the work done here for international clients. "This process — outsourcing — has become considerably easier and far more effective with the communications explosion of the last decade, and by leveraging the potential of the Internet", Mr. Sankar said. However, as a concomitant of this globalisation of Indian manpower, Western practices might "creep into our employer-employee relations."

M. S. Ananth, Director, IIT, said the EFSI endowment lectures gave some prognosis of the future as these sessions were targeted at the younger generation.

N. R. Pai, president, EFSI, outlined the objectives of the organisation.

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