Shouri Chatterjee comes across as a regular guy from Kolkata, fond of reading and meaningful cinema. Every morning while cycling his way to his tiny office at the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (IIT-D), he mingles with his students. In fact, he's often mistaken for one. But he dispels the impression with a firm, "I'm here to teach."

And if you ask his seniors at the institute, this simple statement from the US-returned electrical engineer means a lot to IIT-D these days.

Contrary to what most IITians with a BTech degree in hand and a foreign stamp on their post-graduate degrees did in the 1980s and '90s, Chatterjee abandoned his dollar dreams at the Silicon Laboratories in the United States to join the institute in November last year. A PhD from Columbia University in New York, Chatterjee says he knew all along that teaching and research were his "true calling".

He is not alone. The 38 other men and women who have filled up faculty positions at IIT-D in the last 18 months, would agree. The new recruits, many of them under 35, reflect a trend that is slowly picking up across all the IITs. Most of those who have joined are either first-time teachers or have taken to teaching after a few years of experience in the industry.

For 32-year-old Anirban Mahanti, for example, teaching at IIT-D is a job change for the better. The shift from a three-year-stint as an assistant professor at the University of Calgary in Canada to teaching at IIT-D may have meant a "big downer" financially but in terms of freedom in research work, the gain, he says, cannot be translated into monetary terms. "In industry-based research, you just do what the company wants you to do. Here at IIT, we set our own pace and do what we want to do," he adds.

While Prof Bijendra N Jain, Deputy Director (Faculty) at IIT-D, insists that the emphasis on recruiting young faculty is not new, he admits much is being done to "incentivise" the lot.

This month, IIT-D introduced the Outstanding Young Faculty Fellowships. The fellowships, currently numbering 26, offer Rs 1 lakh per annum to the select faculty for a period of five years. Jain says IIT-D hopes to launch about 500 such fellowships in the next five years.

"Creating fellowships are most important to us now than anything else. Return on money invested in a young faculty usually exceeds everything else. They are young, enthusiastic and several of them have left lucrative jobs abroad to join us," says Prof Jain.

The institute has also asked the Department of Science of Technology under the Ministry of Science and Technology to launch at least a thousand fellowships for young science teachers across the country.

Similar efforts were made at IIT-Bombay when the institute announced a signing bonus of Rs 3 lakh for its new faculty with help from its alumni. It even significantly increased seed research grants to Rs 10 lakh to new faculty members from Rs 3 lakh in previous years.

Educationists say compensation packages are the need of the hour to build a pool of young teachers as a large number of faculties across IITs, hired at a time they were being set up in the 1950s and 1960s in anticipation of excellence in science and engineering education, are nearing retirement.

"The faculty was recruited some 30 years ago. Only a few years ago, we realised the fact that many of them would be retiring," explains MS Ananth, director, IIT-Madras.

While IIT-Bombay has a faculty strength of 420 with about 100 vacant positions, it is not alone. Figures at the seven IITs reveals an estimated, cumulative shortage of at least 900 faculty members.

At IIT-D, about 20 percent of faculty positions are vacant. Further, according to a report prepared by its alumni association in 2004, more than 20 per cent of its most experienced faculty would retire in the next seven years.

The shortage is most acute in IIT Roorkee, which has a sanctioned strength of 575 but only 345 on the rolls.

So, IIT-D, along with IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Roorkee and IIT-Madras, has standing advertisements for faculty positions in all departments. And, the progress has been "good" as against a "dull response"' until a couple of years ago. "About 50 per cent of the applications we receive now are from teachers settled abroad. They all want to teach at IITs," says Prof Jain of IIT-D.

The recent recruitments have pushed the number of teachers aged under 35 from 15 to over 30 at IIT-D and 'Brand India' is one of the reasons behind the rising numbers.

In the 1990s, Prof K Achuta Rao, now 43, would come looking for research jobs in the field of climate change in vain. "Two things have happened since. First, the Government is encouraging quality research and second, a great research pool is being created here with the advent of big research labs setting up shop here. This is the time to be in India and be part of the changes it is undergoing,"' says Rao who joined IIT-D this June after working in the US for over two decades.

While Rao's decision to come back to India took two decades, young IITians have decided pretty early. Statistics show that only three of IIT-Kanpur's 273 BTech students and two from the integrated MSc course went abroad last year. All others-267 MTech students, two-year MSc grads and MBA--stayed back in the country. In Delhi, of the 1,000-odd job seekers, only one student went abroad to join a financial consulting firm. At IIT Mumbai, 95 per cent of the students were placed in India while in Madras, only two BTech students went abroad.

But the lot willing to take up teaching and research is "still a faraway dream," says Mahanti. "You can't say that the US hangover is over. But there has been some sort of reverse drain. That doesn't mean we should no longer be worrying about brain drain," he cautions.

Courtesy: www.indianexpress.com, December 17, 2007