Nabankur Gupta’s flaunt here
I do agree with him on number of issues like
If you look at the body of 180,000 IIT-ians across the world, they have created for themselves important positions across the world.
They are either into completely technological areas, in techno-commercial areas or in areas of business leadership. Not only in India, IIT-ians have excelled themselves across the world. Therefore, there is a talent pool, which is unbelievably large and very, very strong, transcending different segments of the industry and the society.
In industry, you find them in NGOs, water resource management, et cetera. This talent pool should be basically inspired to involve them in transforming India.
Absolutely no problem at all! But i differ from him when he says this
If you look at India, be it its nuclear programme, be it its space research centre or its defence research laboratories — most of these organisations across India in the technology side are manned by IIT-ians who are either leading it or are in very senior positions.
In scientific organisations (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, etc) or in the corporate world, you just cannot do without IIT-ians. In India alone, about 1,500 CEOs are from IITs.
His tone seems to suggest that IITians are the only ones who have made India proud. How many IITians stay back in India to become professors? How many join research in India? It has to do with opportunities and IITians are good at exploiting that. During my interaction with seniors I have learnt many things and the most important one being that I should learn to ‘fart’ about myself, basically able to sell myself and that’s one thing you should learn in your stay. IIT is a brand name these days. Everyone gets attracted by the name. We had a company called Lime group last which was paying $100 thousand USD just because the people who help make it to the top were IITians. No doubt that IITs have revolutionized the way world sees India.
JEE is a platform which helps student even from rural India come up to an international university. I come from a place, called Hazaribagh, where people would wonder why there is a double ‘I’ in the name of institute i study! ( IT these days is the buzz word) Some would wonder why I mispronounced ITI as IIT! (ITIs are more common). I have had no background when I decided to leave that place after 10th to pursue my +2 in a place known for producing IITians, Bokaro Steel City. People flock in myriad to places like Kota, and Delhi to get access to coaching institutes available in those places. Slowly JEE became synonymous with FIITJEE and Bansal classes. JEE was slowly losing its flavour because of its monotonity and these institutes milked this for maximum gain. They did manage to even put below average student to IITs. But IITs soon realised it and recently they have taken drastic measures to reduce the influence of these coaching institutes. I hope JEE remains the best way to extract the best brains in the country.
Anyway so the bottom line is the best brain in the country don’t always make in to the IITs. But that doesn’t mean they don’t make in big in their careers. Its just a matter of time and as the famous proverb goes Jo jeeta wahi sikandar. So to project IITs as something prerequisite for the development of India is not fair. I wrote a post on research in IITs.
People talk at length and many flaunt about the prospects of research in IIT. Outsiders often wonder the level of research and the kind of equipments available in an IIT, the premier institute of engineering in the country. I have talked to people and they often express their awe at the facilities available in the labs here. Well the truth of matter is IITs exist because of JEE and not because of the research. IIT is ranked 5th in the world when it comes to Btech but that rank touches 3 figure when it comes to post graduate education. The reasons, well there are many and the most prominent among them is lack of funds. I understand India is still a developing country and to be at par with the world class institutes you need much more than brain power. No doubt Indians have out-performed their counterparts in US universities but with foreign facilities, right?
So to say that you cannot do without IITians is not true to a very great extent. Its like having a princely attitude towards others.
indians have the habit of boasting about themselves a lot instead of accepting the ground reality. iit is an example of how they blow things up.
I personally feel RPI undergraduate programs are far more systematic and the courses are better organised and they are taught quite a lot here too. It is not just about facilities. The courses are designed such that even a dull student really learns a lot at the end of the course. There is lot more dedication in the professors and they give assignments every week. it is just that the standard of students is very low.
If RPI which is ranked 24 has such a good UG progam, I would assume that places like MIT and berkely are tens of times better than IITs even at the UG level.
Ofcourse when you are selecting 2000 students from 1.5 lakh students and with india having a comparatively good school education, you expect the students to be of high caliber.