Exemplar of Academia—Industry Interchange: The Department of Chemical Technology at Bombay University

Abstract

It was a textile industrialist's bequest that helped establish the Department of Chemical Technology at Bombay University in 1934, and there has been sustained and systematic use of the department's resources by industry ever since. Among other noteworthy features, the report of the university's academic council recommending the establishment of the department made a categorical distinction between technical education, designed to create skilled foremen, and technological education, oriented towards establishing a mode of thinking amongst future technologists. The paper's principal thesis is that the presence of the textile industry in Bombay allowed the funds for the establishment of the department to be made available. It also ensured a concentration of the curriculum and syllabus, in what was conceived to be an institution of technology in general, on the area of enquiry most relevant to the textile industry, textile chemistry. This effectively converted the department into an institution specialising in textile chemistry, later broadened into chemical technology.