Why do new IITs and NITs zero in on eco-sensitive land for their campuses?

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Editor's note: Last year, a staggering 2.2 million students took the Joint Entrance Examination-Main, which determines admissions to the coveted Indian Institutes of Technology and National Institutes of Technology. The number of aspirants has nearly quadrupled in the last decade; it is now more than the population of Goa. Add two (worried) parents to each aspirant and you have a cohort that can populate a mid-sized European nation. Naturally, politicians have seen the writing on the wall. To increase the supply of seats (and have fewer disgruntled students and parents in their constituencies) 14 new IITs and 11 new NITs have been opened since 2008. That’s a tripling of IITs and a 50% increase in NITs. The tap was opened by the UPA government, which set up eight new IITs and 10 new NITs; the NDA government set up the rest. There is a lot to unpack here from the perspective of technical education and brand value, but—lest you wonder if this newsletter’s theme has changed—there is another point that keeps coming up: The shortage of land to host campuses of these …