Seven months after union finance minister Arun Jaitley, while presenting the Union Budget 2015-16, announced that an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) would be established in Karnataka, a civil war of words has broken out in this southern state (pop. 64.5 million). After Jaitley’s announcement, the Congress government in the state recommended that the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre pick one of three cities — Raichur, Hubballi-Dharwad or Mysuru — as the site of Karnataka’s first Central government-funded IIT. In early September, the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry selected Hubbali-Dharwad, which also hosts Karnatak University (estb. 1949), as the site of the new IIT. However, even as Hubbali-Dharwad’s academic community was celebrating the good news, the state’s chief minister M. Siddaramaiah changed his mind and recommended Raichur, a small town (pop. 240,000) in Karnataka’s predominantly agrarian northeast, as a more suitable location.

“I will be grateful if you kindly reconsider the decision taken on setting up of the IIT at Hubbali-Dharwad and instead convey the approval of the Government of India for setting up the institute at Raichur,” said Siddaramaiah in a September 21 letter to Union HRD minister Smriti Irani. In the letter he explained that establishing the new IIT in Raichur will contribute to the socio-economic development of this arid and under-developed region of the state.

The chief minister’s volte face was undoubtedly prompted by strong protests in Raichur about the choice of Hubbali-Dharwad as the location of Karnataka’s first IIT, and representations by MLAs of the Hyderabad-Karnataka region led by the state medical education minister Sharan Prakash Patil. They argued that Raichur — named one of the 250 most backward districts (out of a total of 640) in the country, and conferred special status under Article 371 (J) of the Constitution — should have been chosen as the location for the new IIT. Further pressure to change the location of Karnataka’s first IIT was exerted by an all-party delegation that included Congress leader in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge and BJP’s Rajya Sabha member Basavaraja Patil Sedam, which met Irani and pleaded the cause of Raichur. Angry citizens of Hubbali-Dharwad observed a bandh (general strike) on September 23 in protest.

The subject of establishing an IIT in Karnataka — a hub of engineering education which boasts 187 engineering colleges and the country’s largest number of IT (information technology) companies — has a long history. In 1998, a committee headed by former ISRO chairman U.R. Rao recommended the establishment of an IIT in Hubbali-Dharwad on the ground that the twin cities have an academic tradition (Karnatak University) and supportive infrastructure. This provoked a war of words between the state’s major political parties. Former prime minister H.D. Deve Gowda demanded the IIT be set up in Hassan, his Lok Sabha constituency, while former Union law minister M. Veerappa Moily wanted it in Chikkaballapur, also the birthplace of Karnataka’s most eminent administrator and engineer, Sir M. Visvesvaraya. In the new millennium, chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa had pressed the case of Shivamogga (formerly Shimoga).

Therefore following Jaitley’s announcement gifting a Central government-funded IIT to Karnataka, in August a four-member team from Delhi inspected sites available in Mysuru, Raichur and Hubbali-Dharwad. Finally, the committee chose Hubbali-Dharwad because of its well-developed infrastructure, including proximity to the campus of the Water & Land Management Institute on the Pune-Bengaluru Highway.

According to sources within the Union HRD ministry in Delhi, Irani is unwilling to review the choice of Hubbali-Dharwad.

Meanwhile, academics fear that with all this squabbling, Karnataka might lose the prestigious institute altogether. “The logic that an IIT will contribute to the socio-economic development of a city or region is flawed. An institute of the stature of an IIT requires supportive infrastructure which is available in Hubbali-Dharwad, and will help the institution to immediately attract high-quality faculty and students. The Congress government should stop politicising the location issue. The state could lose its first IIT due to lack of consensus on its location,” warns Dr. M.S. Thimmappa, former vice chancellor of Bangalore University.
Meanwhile as we go to press, Siddaramaiah, under attack for the spate of farmer suicides in the state, has backed down. The chief minister’s latest statement made on September 29 says that the state government will support any decision of the HRD ministry.

Jeswant J.M. (Bangalore)