Jairam will do well to mind his business

The New Indian ExpressFirst Published : 25 May 2011 11:33:00 PM ISTLast Updated : 26 May 2011 12:41:33 AM IST

Jairam Ramesh is known as much for his carefully coiffed hair as for his penchant for becoming involved in controversies. Last year, he was asked to hold his tongue after having criticised — and that, too, on foreign soil — the home ministry’s “alarmist” outlook towards China. More recently, he conceded that he had been under pressure to overlook environmental norms — his special charge — for the sake of major industrial projects. Now, his unwarranted potshots at the IITs and the IIMs have drawn flak from the institutions as well as his own colleagues while his party has chosen to look the other way.


His contention, however, that the IITs and IIMs are world class because of the students and not the teachers is not as logical as it should have been. For the students to attain a certain intellectual level, they need inspiration and academic guidance from the faculty. To describe the latter, therefore, as virtually useless because of the paucity of research papers is to overstate the case. Not surprisingly, the remarks have been called “unfortunate” by the science and technology minister, Ashwini Kumar, while the HRD minister, Kapil Sibal, has only conceded that no Indian educational institution is ranked very high globally without specifically endorsing Ramesh’s statement.

Ashwini Kumar’s comment, however, that he was “better equipped” to speak on the subject and that he did not approve of “decrying the IITs and IIMs lock, stock and barrel” underlined the point that Ramesh should have stuck to his own portfolio instead of trespassing into the fields of others, as he did both about the home ministry’s policies on China and the national highways authority’s inadequate re-forestation efforts, which was construed as a dig at the surface transport minister, Kamal Nath.

As a recipient of the distinguished alumnus award from IIT, Mumbai, Ramesh can claim to have the right to speak about his alma mater, but only as a private citizen. As a minister, he should observe greater restraint lest such off-the-cuff remarks and the consequent irritated responses show the government to be speaking in many voices