Kanpur Indo-American Programme ( KIAP)

Soon after independence, in the wake of new hopes and new aspirations, the fledgling Government of India of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru realized that if the omnipresent gap between expectation and achievement were to be minimized it would be necessary, especially in the fields of science and education, to collaborate closely with the advanced nations of the world. This realization took the form, at the hands of Shri Humayun Kabir, the then Minister of State for Scientific Research, of international collaboration for a rapid tempo of development of higher education in the Indian Institutes of Technology. At his insistence, and that of the Government of India, a team of six American educators, put together by the American Society for Engineering Education, visited India in 1958, and after studying the pattern of education here, submitted a four volume report (the ASEE report) concerning the future Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur for further discussion between the Ministry of Scientific research and Cultural Affairs and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Subsequently a team of three professors of MIT led by Professor N C Dahl visited India in 1961 January- February in order to conduct an in-depth survey of engineering institutions of higher learning. This visit was financed by the Ford Foundation and the purpose was to see how far MIT alone could undertake to assist the newly established IIT Kanpur. The group assessed the task to be formidable for a single institution and reported accordingly to President Julius A Stratton of MIT. USAID having agreed to the suggestion of the Dahl group that a consortium of universities/institutions be formed to establish assistance to IIT Kanpur over a period of ten years, President Stratton invited representatives of several institutions of USA to a meeting on 1961 May 26. The blueprint for USAID-GOI collaboration suggested by this meeting formed the basis of the eventual operation. On 1961 August 8 USAID entered into an agreement with the Education Development Centre, Newton, Massachusetts, for the corporate management of the project.

In the months of August and September Dr P K Kelkar, the Director of IIT Kanpur, and Mr. G K Chandiramani, Joint Educational Adviser in the Union Ministry of Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs, visited USA. They had meetings with the US Steering Committee first at MIT, Cambridge, and a month later, after visits to all consortium institutions, at the University of California, Berkeley. In the first week of 1961 November members of a sub-committee, again led by Professor Dahl, visited IIT Kanpur and had meetings with Dr Kelkar and the faculty (of twenty or so). They also visited the land where construction work had begun. Later they had a series of meetings in Delhi with officials of some Ministries and Departments of the Government of India and with USAID officials. This visit became a springboard for further developments in the working relationships of the four parties concerned: IIT Kanpur, the Consortium, USAID and the Government of India. The local US organization came to be known as the Kanpur Indo-American Programme (KIAP), a name and an acronym formed by Chandiramani.

Over the next ten years (1962-1972) the KIAP activity had three major components: (1) Consortium staff working in Kanpur under the stewardship of a Programme Leader, (2) Some IIT Kanpur faculty members receiving on-the-job experience in the Consortium institutions, and (3) the procurement of equipments, books and journals not available in India.

The number of Consortium staff at any one time, was not large, but had specialized faculty, who brought a broad spectrum of ideas and intellectual resources from these nine institutions. The first batch of nine participants including a programme leader arrived in Kanpur in March 1962. In December 1965 the participant strength reached a peak of 28 which decreased to 24 by  December 1967 and by December 1971, that is just before the termination of the programme in June 1972, it reduced to 8. The KIAP programme leaders were:
 

Leader	Term
Prof Norman C Dahl, MIT	1962-1964
Prof Robert S Green, OSU	1964-1966
Prof Robert L Halfman, MIT	1966-68
Mr Gilbert Oakley Jr, EDC	1968-1971
Prof J G Fox, CMU	1971-1972

The US participants served a total of 200 man-years at Kanpur. Under the KIAP agreement 50 faculty members and technicians of IIT Kanpur were provided with special training at various Consortium institutions. Five faculty members obtained their PhD degrees and one obtained an MS degree under this scheme. Excepting these, all of the others spent a year or less in the Institutes of the Consortium. In September 1963 the Ford Foundation gave  a grant of US$ 20,000 to provide for the relocation from abroad of Indians appointed to the faculty of IIT Kanpur, for travel prior December 31 that year. Eleven members recruited in 1963 returned to India under this grant. Subsequently, between 1964 February and 1971 July, ninety-eight prospective IIT Kanpur faculty members and their families traveled to India under KIAP's own provision for relocation, with the condition that each would remain at IIT Kanpur for a minimum of two years.

Under the KIAP, as of June 1971, an amount of US$ 7.5 million was spent on procuring equipment for the various departments and central facilities. Two departments obtained equipment worth a million dollars each. Books and back volumes of journals purchased for the library, under the Purdue University Library Collaboration Project, numbered about 40,000 and were worth US$ 720,000. The task of procuring this material and assisting in the organization of the library was entrusted mainly to Purdue university; however, MIT also provided assistance in the form of a visiting expert. The acquisition of special reports such as those of NASA or Bell Telephone Laboratories which were/are not easily available in India was particularly useful under the KIAP.

Collaborative research conducted at IIT Kanpur has led to significant original contributions and have been widely cited. A large number of students trained under KIAP pursued advanced degrees in USA. Many of them have grown to become international authorities in critical areas of science and technology. The contribution of IITK graduates to the American economy is now an acknowledged fact.

The IITK-KIAP collaboration has been one of those ventures which encourage us to pursue  international cooperation. For the sake of a correct historical perspective it must be recorded that the programme became successful due, at least in part, to the rapport between the first Director and the first Programme Leader, a rapport characterized not so much by an identity of views and need for mutual benefit as by mutual understanding and a desire to accept challenges - this, after all, are the essence of international cooperation.