[Reader-list] American giants run into IIT backlash

[Shivam Vij]

I just can't believe this!
Shivam

American giants run into IIT backlash

The Telegraph, Calcutta
http://www.telegraphindia.com//1071029/asp/nation/story_8485027.asp
Sat Nov 24, 2007 12:43 pm (PST)

New Delhi: Select US corporate giants - long viewed as
symbols of America's military-industry complex - have run into an
unlikely hurdle in their plans to recruit and research at the Indian
Institutes of Technology.

The red flag has passed on from the Left's hands to students and
faculty members at the IITs, which are as symbolic of India's brain
drain as George W. Bush is of the Iraq war.

Across the IITs, students and professors do not want companies like
Halliburton, Lockheed Martin and Dow Chemicals to have "anything to
do with IIT".

"We don't allow al Qaida to come and recruit from our campuses.
There clearly is some line which has to be drawn," said Siddharth
Sareeen, an IIT Madras student.

The students and faculty want the companies to be scrutinised for
their past record in business ethics, environmental issues and human
rights before being allowed into any IIT campus.

While Dow and Halliburton want to recruit from the IITs, Lockheed
Martin has made requests for cooperation with specific departments
like aerospace engineering.

A petition against Dow has been signed by over a thousand IITians,
including several faculty members, and submitted to the directors of
the seven institutes across the country.

Dow had provided the notorious Napalm - a chemical that sets on fire
anything that it falls on - to the American military during the
Vietnam War. "Dow's history, particularly its role in the Vietnam
war, is an important reason for our opposition," Milind Brahme,
assistant professor at IIT Madras, said.

Methane leaked from a plant of Union Carbide, now owned by Dow, on a
December 1984 night killed thousands - some immediately and many
more later from medical complications caused by the gas.

"Dow coming to the IITs is quite disturbing. It has a lot of
unfulfilled economic and environmental liabilities in Bhopal," a
professor at IIT Bombay said, clarifying that these were his
personal views and not those of the institute.

Lockheed Martin, one of the world's largest defence contractors, is
an integral part of the US military-industrial complex. It is one of
the bidders for the 126 fighter aircraft India is seeking.

Halliburton was one of the first companies to win oil contracts in
Iraq after the Americans quelled the initial resistance in that
country, and has been at the centre of controversies because of its
links to US Vice-President Dick Cheney.

At IIT Madras on Friday, students and faculty - including some who
believe Dow should be allowed to come to the campus - held a debate.
They had invited a Dow representative to participate, but the
company did not send one.

IIT Bombay's placement committee is examining the request to scrap
Dow from the list of visiting companies. The company's
representatives were scheduled to come yesterday, but the IIT has
asked for the visit to be postponed, citing a busy Sunday schedule.

Dow had also postponed its visit to IIT Madras for recruitment on
Friday. The company, which has paid compensation to Bhopal victims
but is still battling a case on environmental compensation against
the Indian government, said the postponement was unrelated to the
campaign against it.

"Our officials who were to visit the campus could not come on the
pre-decided date as other meetings suddenly came up. This has been
conveyed to the IIT," Nand Kumar Sanglikar, Dow India's
spokesperson, said. "We are expanding in India. We want the best
brains in the country to join us."

Building consensus against Lockheed Martin or Halliburton will not
be as easy as the campaign against Dow, Brahme confessed, because of
the absence of an India link.

"But the main issue is to put in place guidelines by which companies
would be evaluated on an ethics compliance scale. There is growing
sentiment on campus for such guidelines," Brahme said.