IIT Guwahati to be Allotted Land for Medical College: Assam CM
The campus will be alloted land for its own medical college, in addition to the already existing on-campus hospital.
Guwahati: IIT-Guwahati will be allotted land for starting a medical college, as announced by the Assam Chief Minister, Himanta Sarma Biswas, on the institute's Foundation Day on September 1st, 2021.
"I have been told that IIT Guwahati wants to start a medical school on their campus. I have already told my DC to provide additional land for this purpose and if this project really comes up (well) it will be really good," CM Biswas stated.
"The pandemic has brought the focus back to the health sector. This is another area where we can work closely," he further stated, quotes Edex Live.
The premier engineering institute has had a functioning hospital on campus since 2006 which is spread across 20,000 feet and boasts of over nine specialities.
Former Director, IITG, Prof Gautam Barua, was also present at the event and he spoke about how the teaching paradigm needed to realign itself now that the pandemic was petering out. "A lot of emphasis has been towards research, which is a good thing. But we need to be careful about the teaching part. There is a very real danger that we might go easy on the teaching," he said, addressing the public.
Now with the medical college soon to come up at the IIT-Guwahati campus, Barua emphasised that it is imperative for the institute to expand into humanities and social sciences with BA and MA programmes. "We must work towards expanding our humanities base. Look at Massachusetts Institute of Technology — it is a technology institute but the likes of Noam Chomsky and others are (teaching) there," he concluded.
Meanwhile, CM Biswas encouraged students to come up with innovative solutions to one of the major issues faced by the state every year – floods. "Whether or not raising (the embankments) is feasible or whether doing what the Brahmaputra Board did earlier is feasible, (is something) I don't know. IIT Guwahati needs to start putting in a lot of effort by putting their minds together so we have solutions for problems which society is facing," he stated.
