It's time IITs and NITs were turned into research universities

Despite about 10 thousand crore a year spent on Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs), their contribution to cutting edge technological research is almost zero. They are, at best, great seats of learning at the undergraduate level. For pursuing higher studies in science and technology and doing research, IIT graduates and, to a large extent, those from NITs, even today, choose to go to the United States and other advanced countries and almost everyone of them is lost to this country for ever. This sad state of affairs can be allowed to continue only at the nation's great cost as it has only remained a technology-taker and buyer for all 72 years of Independence and for 68 years since the first IIT was established at Kharagpur. Time, therefore, has come when all IITs and NITs were turned into research universities pursuing serious technological and scientific research. How it should be done, we will see below.

B.Tech. should be made a five year course instead of the present four. The first two years or four semesters should be devoted to in-depth and comprehensive study of the technology stream of choice. All this while, there will be continuous assessment of students' learning, regular class tests and semester-end examinations. But after that, for three years, it will be research, more research, and much more research! Research scholars, no longer called students, will be divided into teams of four or five, and each team will be given a challenging and nationally important mission to accomplish in an allotted time period with some guidance available from senior research scholars and faculty. After that, another mission, and yet another .. like that for three years. 

The research missions, among others, could be (i) making seawater potable and that cheaply, (ii) increasing efficiency of solar panels by also utilising heat energy which otherwise goes waste, (iii) environmentally safe recycling or disposal of old solar panels, (iv) finding bio-degradable substitutes for plastic packaging, (v) making petro-crude from waste plastics, (vi) finding cheaper ways for retro-fitting water-harvesting to old houses, (vii) development of laser, microwave and hypersonic weaponry, (viii) 6G or at least 5.5G wireless communication, (ix) developing artificial intelligence and deep learning capabilities with only small data sets available for training, (x) cyber warfare capabilities, both defensive and offensive, (xi) developing India's own answers to google, twitter, Facebook, android operating system, Alibaba, Ten cents, etc., (xii) quantum computing, (xiii) finding substitutes for rare earth metals of which India has hardly any deposits and China the biggest supplier.

I know that there will be many doubting Thomases who would say that it could be India's big leap to nowhere. Obviously, they would not know how advanced technological research of great strategic importance is done year after year by 18 year-old conscripts in the Israeli Defence Force's Unit 8200. Those specially selected boys and girls, like others, join the IDF straight after 12-year High school. Compared to this, our young men and women, who could justifiably be called the cream of India's cream, would have studied for two more years, and that at the prestigious IITs or NITs, after 12-year High school when they would take to research.