Returning to India in the 1960s, Mitra first became the director of the
Harcourt Butler Technological Institute. In 1969, he was offered the position of director of
BITS Pilani by
Ghanshyam Das Birla. At this time, the institute was undergoing major changes under the leadership of a committee of experts from
MIT. He is credited with increasing the pace of those reforms, as well as for constituting a "practice school" program of industry internship "far more ambitious than anything MIT had done, as a requirement for all faculty and students". To address the human resource development needs of the Indian industry and the financial challenge of running higher degree programs at BITS Pilani, in the year 1979, he pioneered the Work Integrated Learning Programs, which provided education and training to employees of Indian Industries. Today, these programs have an enrollment of about 17,000 students throughout India and are responsible for earning two thirds of the revenue of the institute. Mitra was responsible for introducing innovative educational philosophies which made the educational system at BITS Pilani unique, including broad-based, multi-disciplinary approach, semester long course based curricula, practice school, industry-academia collaboration, choosing electives and many other features which were firsts in Indian higher education. He was widely respected by the students who affectionately referred to him as
Dynamic Diro (Director). In 1989, he was invited by
NIIT to be their education advisor. He was responsible for introducing the 'GNIIT' program that would become the flagship offering of the institute. ==References==