Early next month, Bharat Ratna Amartya Sen will lecture IIT-Bombay at its annual Techfest. The topic is yet to be decided, but I wish the Nobel economist would tell them why the autonomous but largely taxpayer-funded IITs ought to dovetail their scientific pursuits with the needs of the larger community, and that autonomy and accountability are not mutually exclusive.

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Well, 2013 will mark half-a-century since Wilbur Smith and Associates submitted a report for the development of Mumbai’s transport and traffic systems. Mumbai has since exploded and degenerated even as IIT-B blossomed and thrived.

With Rs120-130 crore funding each year, IIT-B has so far produced around 40,000 engineers and scientists. Typically, 300 to 400 research projects are undertaken every year at a cost of Rs100 crore (though much more is spent on overall research projects). IIT-B has “the twin advantage of being located in the financial capital of India while enjoying the serene environs of the campus located at Powai” – again, thanks to the taxpayer.

It is worth remembering that the IITs were set up to pre-empt “regional imbalances”. The government’s implied hope was the institutions of “national importance” would develop indigenous and affordable technologies to solve local problems.

In fact, one of the objectives of IIT-B is “to provide research... which will promote contact with and be of service to... government and civic organisations”. It even started studies in humanities to “help the student to interact more positively with the society in which he lives”.

To be sure, Mumbai’s betterment was never among IIT-B’s stated goals. After all, IITs’ focus is not city-centric; they have a national ethos and enjoy international fame. A semi-centennial return-on-investment report, in terms of various kinds of research projects undertaken and money spent, their relevance, timeliness and results, however, might help inform everyone.

To be fair, IIT-B has had to its credit certain projects aimed at improving the conditions in Mumbai; but, very little has come out of them. There is a huge mismatch between the number/scale of Mumbai’s problems (roads, traffic, transport logistics, pollution, municipal mess, socio-economic disparities, haphazard growth, so on) and local institutions’ contributions to fix them. It could well be that in the existing system, IITs may not be able to do much for the nation, even if they want to.

Yet, when was the last time that you read or heard that IIT-B’s products, allegedly among India’s best brains, have come up with some imaginative technology or innovation (like the famous MIT’s ‘Community Problem-Solving Project’) that can help solve a public nuisance, shortcoming or problem (say, mobile tower radiation, lack of real-time information on city buses and local trains)?

Mind you, IIT-B is recognised as “one of the best sources of technology innovation and research excellence”.So, when doctors are required to work in rural areas initially, why should the taxpayer fund aspiring engineers, scientists and managers who, as one newspaper reader vented, “do MBA after IIT”, land “a banking job in American bank” and leave “for foreign shores” (sic)?

No one grudges the fabulous starting salaries IIT graduates attract from new-age corporates these days.

But, have the taxpayer-funded IITs become an easy route to talent for tax-averse, profit-craving (Indian and foreign) corporates? Have the IITs lost the plot? Is that why, instead of applying their minds to persistent problems like, say, crumbling roads of Mumbai that millions suffer every day, they focus on building robotic vehicles that can negotiate craters on uninhabited Mars?