What is Project Vishwajeet?

The Ministry of Human Resource Development is planning to revive the Project Vishwajeet’ which was a 2016 initiative to ensure that IITs rank as top education institutes globally.

Project Vishwajeet

Vishwajeet means ‘conquering the world’. This was what the Ministry aims to achieve. This 2016 initiative aimed to push seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) to the top rung in global academic rankings. The seven IITs which will be a part of this project are IIT Bombay, IIT Delhi, IIT Madras, IIT Kharagpur, IIT Guwahati, IIT Roorkee and IIT Kanpur.

Project Vishwajeet involves a set of targeted initiatives to make these seven IITs as globally reputed institutes. It involves a mix of grants, research fellowships and funding to improve their academic and physical infrastructure.

The targeted measures proposed under project Vishwajeet include:

• Filling 20 per cent vacancies with foreign faculty,
• Allowing off-campus PhD students,
• 20 per cent international students at the undergraduate and postgraduate level, and
• A 1:7 faculty-student ratio, apart from separate capital grants for world-class infrastructure.

The project was not formally launched due to a lack of consensus on the quantum of funds. IITs had sought at least Rs 1,500 crore at the initial stage for the five-year project, while the MHRD wanted to offer Rs 500 crore.