New Delhi: In October 2017, the central government asked all centrally funded technical institutions (CFTIs), including IITs, to put in place a process to discontinue the services of non-performing faculty members.
Three years later, only a few IITs have implemented such a procedure, according to the replies provided by 14 branches to RTI queries from a former faculty member. Many IITs claimed to have an appraisal process in place, but said nothing about specific policies to terminate the services of non-performers. Two IITs said explicitly that they had no such policy in place yet.
The 2017 Ministry of Education directive — a copy of which has been accessed by ThePrint — was issued with regard to pay revisions for faculty and scientific staff at CTFIs in accordance with the 7th pay commission.
“The nomenclature of Assistant Professor (contractual) shall change to Assistant Professor (Grade II) and Assistant Professor (Grade I). There shall be no change in terms and conditions of appointment or nature of appointment. The institutes should put in place a process for discontinuation of non-performers,” it read.
Last year, the aforementioned former IIT faculty member moved an RTI query before 14 of the 23 IITs, to know about the progress made in this regard.
This report is based on replies received from the 14 IITs — Delhi, Kanpur, Guwahati, Kharagpur, Jammu, Ropar, Mandi, Jodhpur, Roorkee, Indore, Hyderabad, Patna, Gandhinagar and ISM Dhanbad — between August and October.
A detailed email sent to the Ministry of Education for a comment on the matter remained unanswered till the time of publishing this report.
Speaking to ThePrint, former IIT faculty members said the institutions need a clear policy on discontinuing non-performers, adding that it is key to addressing the “arbitrariness” they allege often govern hirings and firings at the institutions.
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What the IITs said
According to the RTI replies received, IIT-Delhi and IIT (ISM)-Dhanbad have not come up with any policy in this regard so far.
In its reply dated September 2020, IIT-Delhi said “no process has been adopted in this regard so far”. ThePrint independently verified this information and found that there has been no development on the matter since September.
A senior official at IIT-Delhi said, “There are processes in place for an annual assessment of a faculty member’s performance. Removal of non-performing faculty (there will be a few) is an issue we are looking at. It’s a long-drawn process in a government set-up.”
IIT (ISM)-Dhanbad said in its RTI reply in August that “no process in this regard has been initiated at the institute”.
“The matter was discussed in our recent meetings and we were told by the IIT Council to take up the matter… we will work on it now,” IIT-Dhanbad director Rajiv Shekhar told ThePrint.
Led by the education minister, the IIT Council looks after the administrative and other important affairs at the institutions. Other members include MPs and directors of all IITs.
Among other institutes, Jodhpur, Patna, Indore and Jammu said they have an annual appraisal process to review the performance of faculty members.
IIT-Jodhpur stated that “performance evaluations of faculty members are done on annual basis”.
IIT-Jammu said they follow up performance reviews with probation extensions in order to give faculty members a chance to do better.
“As per the regulations, a faculty member’s performance during the probation period is reviewed at the end of the probation by a committee of professors. The committee after the review recommends extension of the probation by either 3 months, 6 months, 9 months or 12 months, giving the faculty concerned a chance to improve the performance,” it added.
At IIT-Indore, faculty members submit the “duly-filled self-assessment form… to the Head of Department for the recommendation after completion of each year of service”.
Even at IIT-Guwahati, “all confirmation/upgradation of pay of faculty members are based on assessment of a self-appraisal report which is duly routed through the concerned Head of Department and Dean of Faculty Affairs”.
“Decision of confirmation of probation period/upgradation of pay are made upon satisfactory assessment only,” the institute replied.
At IIT-Hyderabad, student feedback is key. The institute said “regular student feedback is obtained for each faculty member for each course” and “research output is regularly evaluated at department & institute level” to evaluate faculty members’ performance.
IIT-Gandhinagar said “the process to assess the performance of faculty members was already there at IITGN even before” the central government letter was issued.
None of these institutes, however, said anything specific about removing non-performers.
IIT-Ropar, however, said it has “initiated the process of identifying non-performing faculty members”, without specifying the exact procedure.
IIT-Kanpur stated that it has constituted a standing committee to appraise faculty members and identify non-performers. According to the information shared by the institute, they have identified one non-performing faculty member so far.
At IIT-Roorkee, “an assessment is carried out before conversion from AP Grade-II to AP Grade-I, so that the non-performers can be discontinued”.
In its reply, IIT-Kharagpur said it does not have the relevant information, while IIT-Mandi refused to provide any information in this regard.
Reached for comment, a senior official in the ministry said, “The IIT Council takes up these matters with the institutes on a regular basis.”
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‘Clear policy required’
IIT faculty members say a clear policy that sets rules to identify non-performers is the need of the hour to “avoid arbitrariness”.
“It has been three years since the government order but IITs have still not come up with a clear policy for identifying the non-performers. This just shows that IITs want to maintain their arbitrariness in faculty hiring and firing because if they have a clear policy in place they will not fire people at whim,” said Brijesh Rai, a former faculty member at IIT-Guwahati.
Citing an example, he added, “I know of a faculty member at an IIT, who was given a two-year probation as opposed to the one-year usual probation for other faculty members. After his probation got over, he was asked to leave, now he is fighting a legal battle against the institute… so this is how institutes can work on their whims if there are no set policies.”
A faculty member at IIT-Kanpur who didn’t wish to be named said, “It’s not that easy in a government set-up to identify and remove non-performing faculty. But if the government has asked for such a rule, there should be a clear policy on the part of the institutes, otherwise there can be arbitrariness.”
Non-IITs or technical institutions that are not under the purview of the central government directly are regulated by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and follow its rules for appraisal and teacher evaluation.
Under AICTE rules, performance appraisal requires “evaluation of teachers by authorities”, “feedback mechanism and evaluation of teachers by students”, “online and web-based regular feedback mechanism”, “mid-course corrections”, and “analysis of feedback and implementation of corrective measures”.
The rules don’t contain anything about the removal of non-performers.
(Edited by Sunanda Ranjan)
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IITs are working with around 30% less faculty. One can fire some based on performance. That adds to burden of better performers. New comers get scared to opt for faculty positions. Government policy wants OBC, sc, st, economically weaker section reservation in faculty. You can not fire the reserved category faculty as the sc/st/obc commissions will not allow it. Sure way to destroy a successful system. Modi says government should not be involved in business, banking juficiary etc – they can only destroy iits because others are any way destroyed. Wonderful.
Rs 1000/gas cylinder
Fire non-performers? First off they need to define what is non-performance. If it is teaching duty then everyone teaches some or the other course. The quality of teaching can be subjective and the evaluation can also be very subjective. People in adminstrative positions don’t do much of teaching work. Evaluation of to the next aspect, i.e., research, is going to be even more subjective. It depends on how much facilitation the establishment makes, the kind of students and their willingness to stick to the research program, etc, etc. Then we have the issue of whether the establishment provides any means or modality for redressal of grievances? All this will make the removal of the “non-performance” even more difficult and questionable. The best thing the government can do is to slash the retirement age back to 60. It is the previous governments which increased the retirement ages from 62 to 65 which was unnecessary.
Not surprised about Kharagpur giving no reply, sometimes feels like that’s how they deal with all problems.
60% faculty deserve to be removed
Before worrying about IIT non performers, the GOI in New Delhi should clean up its own house and itself. It scores zero in economics, health care and education. If your focus on replacing with RSS gofers in all crucial places, the country automatically goes to zero in everything. A regime change is needed first for the last 7 years.