The Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati or IITG was set up in 1994 in Guwahati as part of a development programme for the north eastern (NE) region of India. IITG now has most of the engineering disciplines and is a fairly well established IIT. I visited my friend Ashish Anand, who is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE). Ashish was kind enough to show me around the campus and also host my talk, which was arranged at the Department of Biotechnology (BT) through Dr. B. Anand, an Assistant Professor at the department.
The campus
The IITG campus is built in the northern part of Guwahati (about 20 Kms from the city center)
along the banks of the Brahmaputra river admist the scenic North Eastern Khasi
hills. It is very cleverly designed in approximately 700 acres of land reclaimed by leveling
some hills. The central part of the campus includes the academic complex comprising of four "cores" which
house the different engineering and social sciences faculties. All class rooms and seminar halls are
located within the academic complex. The student hostels are located in a separate part
of the campus within walking distance to the academic complex. Most students either walk or
ride bicycles to move around the campus. The faculty accommodations are also located close by
and comprise of different categories of housing (ranging from independent two-storied landed houses to
flats in multi-storied buildings) allocated to faculty members on a certain priority basis.
The guest house has several smaller flats and rooms for visitors. Apart from these, there is an auditorium,
a bank (the State Bank of India), a grocery market, canteens, cafes, post office, sport facilties, etc. making the campus quite self-sustainable.
Recently a lot more buildings are being added to the campus - mainly seminar halls, hostels and faculty housings
to cope up with the increase in student and faculty in-takes.
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is also setting up its own software development centre in the vicinity of the campus,
and there is also a biotech park coming up close by.
However, in spite of the intelligent planning and construction of buildings,
I felt that the campus required a bit more cleaning and maintenance.
From Guwahati city, the campus is about an hour's drive (for 20kms) which can take longer depending on the traffic. The main bottleneck is crossing over a bridge on the Brahmaputra where most of the traffic jam happens. The institute runs regular buses between the city and the campus. There are also shared taxis, jeeps, 'autos' and public buses that run regularly between Adaburi and Jalakburi areas of the city and the campus.