HOW THEY SHOT UP

Despite initial struggle, the eight second-generation IITs set up in 2008 have matured in under a decade. Careers360 looks at how they did it.

- Abhay Anand

Pine needles, abundant in the Shivalik Hills, were used as fuel on a small scale by families of the Kamand area of Mandi district, Himachal Pradesh. Indian Institute of Technology Mandi (IIT Mandi) turned it into a business for the region’s women.

Since 2016, when the institute started its Empowering Women of Kamand (EWOK) programme, it has helped women set up units that cost about Rs. 6 lakh that form briquettes out of pine needles for use as biofuel.

“Researchers at IIT Mandi worked on making the process [of using biofuel] more efficient for the users,” said Timothy A. Gonsalves, former IIT Mandi director. By 2019, when EWOK was registered as a society, it had helped 12 women entrepreneurs set up businesses.

Similarly, IIT Indore got its area put on the bus route benefitting all residents around them and IIT Patna is organising biogas plants for surrounding villages.

In just 10 years, the new entrants to the network of IITs have settled in.

Nearly six decades after the first IIT came up in Kharagpur, West Bengal, in 1952, eight new IITs were established over 2008-09. These were at Ropar, Punjab; Bhubaneswar, Odisha; Gandhinagar, Gujarat; Hyderabad, Telangana; Patna, Bihar; Indore, Madhya Pradesh; Jodhpur, Rajasthan; and Mandi, Himachal Pradesh. The IIT Act was amended in 2012 to include them.

The eight have progressed more rapidly than most institutions despite being set far from metropolises and facing many challenges in the initial years. Careers360 spoke to some of them to trace their decade-long journey.

Old and new