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India
President Susan Hockfield led an MIT delegation on a historic trip to India Nov. 16-24, 2007, meeting with key government and business leaders and strengthening ties between the Institute and the world’s largest democracy.
This trip was one of the latest activities tied to the MIT-India Initiative, which reflects the culmination of a series of concepts and collaborations, some in existence for decades, along with a vision for a new type of cooperative international enterprise. It represents the coming together of what are perhaps the most distinctive features of MIT as research university — the willingness to transcend disciplinary and national boundaries, an intense commitment to innovation — and India’s determination to do well by its citizens and earn its rightful place as a leading participant in the community of nations.
The primary mission of the MIT-India Initiative is to foster collaboration between the faculty and students at MIT, and faculty and students at academic and research institutions in India. Among its specific goals are enabling the creation of long-term projects involving groups from both MIT and Indian institutions; and promoting inclusive growth, sustainable development, educational leadership, entrepreneurship, new models of governance, and advanced, results-focused research in India.
More information about MIT and India
Exporting MIT: Science, Technology and Nation-Building in India and Iran
By Stuart W. Leslie and Robert Kargon
ABSTRACT
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) emerged from World War II with an impressive, worldwide reputation in basic and applied science and engineering. After redefining its own engineering education in the 1950s,MIT responded to the challenge of U.S. policy makers and foundation officials and its own sense of mission in engineering research,teaching,and practice by assisting in establishing new technical institutions of higher education around the world. This paper focuses on MIT’s participation in the creation of such institutions in India and in Iran. Three case studies explore the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur,the Birla Institute of Technology and Science,and the Aryamehr University of Technology. The aim of establishing an international system of expertise with MIT at its apex reveals both the strengths and the limitations of the “export” effort.
MIT-Trained Swadeshis: MIT and Indian Nationalism, 1880–1947
By Ross Bassett
ABSTRACT
During the colonial period, roughly one hundred degrees were awarded by MIT to Indians. However their importance to India and to the historical understanding of India is disproportionate to their numbers. These men—and they were all men—often from elite families, formed a technological elite in the last days of colonial India. Their careers show a technological nationalism in India—several men came from families associated with Gandhi—and represent an important foreshadowing of the period after independence.
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