Sir Ardeshir Dalal (member, Viceroy’s Executive Council), Dr Humayun Kabir, Sir Jogendra Singh, Dr B C Roy (Chief Minister of West Bengal), Sir J C Ghosh and Sir Nalini Ranjan Sarkar were the Founding Fathers of Indian Institutes of Technology in India. The idea of setting up the IITs originated even before India gained independence in 1947. Viceroy Lord Wavell invited Sir Ardeshir Dalal of Tatas to join the Executive Council in June 1944, as Member-in -Charge of Planning and Development. Dalal proposed to establish laboratories in India, to develop science & technology under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). To man these laboratories, he persuaded the US government to offer hundreds of doctoral fellowships under the Technology Cooperation Mission (TCM) program. Ardeshir Dalal was aware that such assistance would be temporary and that India had to learn to develop it’s own technologists. This was the beginning of the concept of the ‘Indian Institute of Technology’, based on the reputed MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) of Boston, USA. Dalal did not live to see his vision fulfilled.
Filed under: Indian Politics, Indian Technology Tagged: | Boston, Chief Minister of West Bengal, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, CSIR, Doctoral Fellowships, Dr B C Roy, Dr Humayun Kabir, Founding Fathers, IITs, Indian Institute of Technology, Indian Institutes of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Member-in -Charge of Planning and Development, MIT, Sir Ardeshir Dalal, Sir J C Ghosh, Sir Jogendra Singh, Sir Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, Tatas, TCM, Technology Cooperation Mission, US Government, USA, Viceroy Lord Wavell, Viceroy's Executive Council
