Shourie gives Rs 12 crore to IIT-Kanpur!

Rediff: "It's a problem of plenty for many members of Parliament. How should they spend the Rs 12 crore (Rs 120 million) given to them as part of MPLADS -- the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme? Most spread it on a mix of roads, children's playgrounds and other do-good projects. Former minister and journalist and sitting Rajya Sabha member Arun Shourie, however, had a completely different idea about what should be done with the money.

The result is the new Biological Sciences and Bioengineering (BSBE) department at the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. The 16-lab department is housed in a 64,000 sq ft building equipped with the latest research tools needed for molecular biology and other types of bio-engineering. Inside the BSBE's portals a faculty of eight and about 75 students are carrying out research in a range of cutting-edge fields like DNA sequencing, tissue restructuring (which involves creating artificial human skin), bioinformatics and computational biology.

Even after Shourie had given IIT-K the thumbs up, there were other impediments. Under MPLADS rules, an MP is allowed to spend only Rs 10 lakh per project. Shourie had to work around the government's red tape and get special permission from the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to spend all the money on one project. Once he had Vajpayee's green signal he had to steer his proposal through committees in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha.

Here a spot of artful jugglery became necessary. The entire project was divided into eight sub-projects in order to fit the rules. While seven sub-projects were related to acquiring infrastructure, the building's construction was the eighth sub-project.

Construction started in April 2002. Nearly Rs 6 crore (Rs 60 million) or 50 per cent of the total Rs 12 crore went towards putting up the 64,000 sq ft building which was completed in 18 months. It has 16 laboratories, a seminar hall, library, classrooms and teaching labs. Another Rs 6 crore was spent on laboratory and other equipment."