Why has Pakistan failed to produce IITs? A Physicist from the country finds out

January 25, 2016, NewsCrunch

Pervez Hoodbhoy, a noted columnist, activist and physicist from Pakistan, was in India recently. He toured academic institutions, including IITs, giving talks and went back to share his experience with the Dawn leaders.

One of the questions he grapples with is why Pakistanhas failed to develop its version of IITs, the face of modern India, as he puts it.

Hoodbhoy notes that an essential condition is openness to the world of ideas, which requires the physical presence of foreign visitors.

In Indian campuses, Hoodbhoy says, you see a large number of foreigners — American, European, Japanese, and Chinese, who come for short visits as well as long stays, enriching universities and research centres.

But in Pakistanforeigners are regarded with suspicion and are a rarity. Hoodbhoy gives an example.

The National Centre for Physics in Islamabadis under Quaid-i-AzamUniversity. But it is actually ‘owned’ by the Strategic Plans Division, the custodian of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

“Academic visitors are so tightly restricted that they seek to flee their jails soon after arrival,” says Hoodbhoy.

He also recounts the experience of delegates, who came from Canada, Turkeyand Iran, to a recent conference in Pakistan. They protested in writing and said they would never want to come back.

Hoodbhoy also hints that the Indian openness might be at risk due to the rising tension between secular and religious forces under Modi.

He says Hindutva ideology has put the Nehruvian ‘scientific temper’ under visible stress.

Hoodbhoy also notes that the recent Indian Science Congress at Mysore had Hindutva scholars blowing ‘conch’ to exercise rectal muscles and claiming that Lord Shiva was the world’s greatest environmentalist.