With the new Union Steel Secretary G Mohan Kumar being from the Odisha cadre of IAS, hopes are high about upgradation of the Biju Patnaik National Steel Institute (BPNSI).
“We have a perfect opportunity to push for upgrading the Union Steel Ministry-run Biju Patnaik National Steel Institute (BPNSI) to the level of RGIPT (Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology), strongly feels leading non-resident Odia Prof Chitta Baral of the Arizona State University, who has always been active so far development and educational issues of Odisha are concerned. He has urged the top Odisha bureaucrats to take up the cause of the BPNSI with Mohan Kumar.
Currently, the BPNSI, a national level institute, is in a pathetic state which is insulting for the State. The institute, established in 2002 by the Union Ministry of Steel, is in dire straits running from rented premises, only offering a diploma course and having a faculty of three, none with a PhD.
Besides some land issues, the institute’s original vision is severely limited, and its original budget estimates of Rs 20.36 crore in Phase I and Rs 40 crore in Phase II are too small amounts in today’s requirement.
In contrast, the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Petroleum Technology (RGIPT), established in 2007 by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas, offers BTech, MTech, MBA and PhD programmes and already has 21 IIT quality faculties. Its proposed budget for 2007-2016 is Rs 695.58 crore (comparable to the budgets of new IITs), a big part of which will come from the public-sector oil undertakings, Prof Baral points out.
One reason behind the difference is that oil PSUs are putting up a Rs 250-crore endowment for the RGIPT while there is no contribution from the steel PSUs towards the BPNSI. Hence, an approach can be made to the SAIl to put up a similar amount and bring up the BPNSI to the level of the RGIPT, said Prof Baral.
The SAIl, especially its Rourkela unit, has profitably used Odisha’s mines for more than 50 years and has made huge profits mainly because of the minerals that the State has been gifting it at cheap prices. It is time the SAIl fulfilled one of the original ideas behind public sectors “that money made from Government companies would be spent on schools, hospitals and roads.”
The SAIl should also establish a medical college at the Ispat General Hospital (IGH0 at Rourkela, which it promised, at the earliest.
The SAIl should make the BPNSI an institute of the same level as the RGIPT with a similar budget, similar levels of programmes (BTech, MTech, MBA and PhD) and similar vision as the RGIPT but in areas related to steelmaking and steel applications, Prof Baral said.
An upgraded BPNSI could start with an initial focus on steelmaking and have BTech, MTech and PhD programmes in mining engineering, metallurgical engineering and environmental science and engineering. But later, the BPNSI should broaden its focus to steel applications and have programmes in areas where steel is used.
This includes instrumentation engineering, structural and civil engineering, automobile/automotive engineering, aerospace engineering and industrial engineering and design.
Prof Baral said other minerals-based PSUs such as Nalco, MCl and NTPC can be approached to establish institutes of similar quality, budget and breadth and located near their operations (Angul, Koraput, Talcher, Sundargarh, etc.) instead of smaller research institutes that some of them have talked about.