Time to reorient STEM education for Viksit Bharat

While IITs have failed to respond to national technological priorities, they have found the time, money, and institutional will to expand into Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), not as complementary disciplines but as full-fledged ideological projects.

- SANTISHREE DHULIPUDI PANDIT

Despite being one of the world's leading engineering institutions and home to thousands of technical colleges, India faces a growing national concern: the reliance on foreign companies and firms for essential technical services. A good example that has emerged recently is the reliance on Turkey's Celebi Aviation and Turkiye Mechanic, which manages airport ground handling, maintenance, and aircraft servicing in all major Indian airports.

For a country that sends satellites into orbit, reaches Mars in one go, develops the most sophisticated missile system and nuclear program with no outside help, runs one of the world's most sophisticated technologically advanced weapon systems, does medicinal wonders, and moves ahead, aspires to become a global manufacturing hub, such dependency is neither technical nor logistical, but rather reflective of the wrong priorities that are both intellectual and institution-driven.

In other words, the failure lies not in our capabilities but in our priorities. And that failure is most sharply visible in the yawning disconnect between our IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), IIMs and other HEIs (higher education institutes) and the real engineering demands of a rising Bharat.

These institutions were set up with a clear vision: to produce high-quality engineers who would drive nation-building. Over the decades, that vision has been compromised as these institutions, instead of aligning with emerging national sectors like aerospace maintenance, defence production, logistics, and large-scale systems engineering, have drifted toward theoretical research, doing legwork, and seeking validity from Western academics.