Five More IITs to Open: A Step in the Right Direction?

From the TI archives — originally published August 2014, when these institutes existed only as a budget announcement. They have since opened and admitted their first batches.

In the 2014–15 budget, the newly elected Narendra Modi government announced five new IITs — for Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Goa, and Jammu — as a step toward its promise of an IIT in every state. The plan was to start classes from temporary campuses in the next academic session, following the pattern of earlier new IITs. Sixteen IITs were functioning at the time.

The announcement split opinion immediately, and TI captured the debate as it stood in 2014:

The quality worry. Building a fine institution takes decades, critics argued. The eight IITs opened since 2009 were still struggling — some departments lacked faculty, research facilities were thin, and student morale was shaky. Opening five more, in a hurry, risked diluting the brand that made IITs valuable in the first place.

The priorities worry. Others argued the money would do more good at the bottom of the pyramid: India's primary and secondary schools, where education actually begins. Elite institutes for a few thousand versus foundational schooling for millions — the tradeoff was the real debate.

The scarcity worry. A third view held that IITs derive their value precisely from being few and brutally hard to enter. An IIT in every state, the argument went, would defeat the purpose of having IITs at all.

A Change.org petition by IIT alumni made the case in writing: strengthen research and infrastructure in the existing institutes instead of multiplying them. The government, for its part, pressed ahead — the five institutes opened in 2015–16 and have been admitting students ever since.

A decade on, the 2014 debate reads less like a settled question and more like a permanent one: every expansion of elite education in India replays the same argument — access versus excellence — and both sides keep having a point.