A Day Trip to My Alma Mater

I got a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT, KGP). Sixteen years after graduation, I visited it again from Kolkata during Puja 05.

Most students had gone home but the institute, though fairly deserted, still evoked a flood of memories. But it was different from nostalgia (it's been a while since I felt it for the IIT), which I find plentiful in most IITians I meet ("best four years of my life"). This gap may be because I have long viewed my IIT stint as, at best, passage to a richer life in more ways than one (for which I feel fortunate but not nostalgic; for me every four year period since has been better), and, at worst, a relative waste of time that played only a trifling role in my intellectual and moral development. I went again partly because places from our past teach us something about our present.

For an elite college that attracts some of India's "sharpest" kids, its near total lack of liberal education now seems a deprivation to me. That the IITs see no value in leavening technical instruction with the humanities should give us pause about the quality of its graduates. In my former department, only three non-professional courses are on offer today in four years, including English for Communication which comes with eight other courses in semester one. The incoming freshman must take nine courses in the first semester and eight in the second! And all that while negotiating life away from home. How can he learn anything well? UC Berkeley averages three or four each semester. The IIT KGP curriculum offers nothing even on the history of global science and technology, nor on the unique challenges of technological development in India.

The institute is still run by uninspiring men who cannot intelligently address an alumni gathering to save their lives. I recall it more as a time of stress and confusion than of joy and learning. Faculty teaching skills were abysmal on average; there was no recourse or accountability. The program was rigid: four years, minimal departmental mobility, meager choice of electives. Exam-related anxiety dreams haunted me for years afterwards. For most of us, the main reason to study was the grades, so we could land financial aid from US universities—what better validation was needed for its impoverished idea of education? Barring exceptions, it has fostered a generation of insipid, incurious men who are little more than glorified plumbers of the US economy.

So it is hardly surprising that my fondest memories relate to the wacky, inventive, and taboo things we did—as college boys are wont to—and some of the friendships I made then, the kind that are so hard to acquire later in life. Is it true that the most unaffected bonds between men are the ones formed when they are young and stupid? I also pleasantly recall what was rare in the 80s: a diverse student body from all across India, which helped me shed some of my provincial, small-town ways. Here I honed a more analytical outlook that has helped me in other walks of life. Here I learned to live independently. But I suspect that my own poor self-awareness, perhaps poorer than many of my peers, blocked me from making the best of the extra-curricular opportunities we did have. I regret not picking up more Bengali.

Nehru Hall, where I lived for four years, looked fairly unchanged, except the TV room is now a provision store and the canteen on the catwalk has moved below, near the mess. The rooms were exactly the same with their iron cots, open shelves, wobbly door latches, and the green flap doors that have withstood many a sutli bomb and late-night Floyd sessions. Every room now has a desktop PC and 3 Mbps fiber-optic net connection. I wondered what new marvels 19 year old boys—what with the IIT's sorry gender ratio of 20 boys to every girl—find on the Internet today? Trading pondies must be history. Are they as physically playful with each other as in my time? The water-tanks (aka s---tanks) in the bathroom area remain. I noticed some improvements in the plumbing and tile work by the washbasins, but the toilets are still the squatting kind. A few trees, once far below my second floor wing, C-top West, had grown quite tall. Recent rain had accentuated the withering of the cheap, yellow wall paint. The common room and the mess were closed for Puja. Pradeep, the provision store owner from the old days, is still around but was out that day.

Several new and slick halls of residence have come up (most for freshmen). A new all-AC building in the institute, with rows upon endless rows of desktop PCs on two floors; another architecturally bold building has lots of seminar rooms; both have nice, modern toilets and water coolers with AquaGuard. A new library is searchable online, said to be the largest technical library in Asia. Strangely, there were lots of security guards at the institute entrance but as soon as I said I was an alumnus they waved me in with broad smiles. A few Nescafe kiosks now exist inside with stone benches strewn about. The Tagore Open Air Theater was like before.

The Tatas have built a sports complex in light of which Gyan Ghosh looked positively derelict, its grass overgrown. The only person I recognized was the Surd at Sahara restaurant. Nair's has changed beyond recognition into another restaurant. Waldies was closed that day but its exterior looked the same. Anarks has been turned into a relatively upscale hotel-restaurant by its owner. The Tech Market has grown to at least twice its former size, as has the student body (they admit many more these days; lots more compete for it too). I saw several ATMs and banks. Rollicks ice-cream is still ubiquitous (my travel partner remarked, "gosh, such simple taste you had in ice-creams back then!"). Bimala Sweets lives, as does Thackers Books. The Surd’s joint outside Nehru Hall, where we occasionally splurged on a chikan dish, had morphed into a basic canteen and travel agent plus courier service.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the IITs lack a holistic idea of education. To be sure, India needs them and the skills they teach, but the IITs are definitely over-rated as centers of learning. Without roots in a vibrant university, they are more like the best "engineer training" institutes of India. What would Tagore have said? They're the holy grail of the entire urban school system, where too many middleclass Indians (including my own family) equate education with success in competitions and acquiring skills and degrees that promise plush jobs or a life abroad. Their all-too-pragmatic attitudes are understandable of course, if also less than admirable.

Most IITians continue their game after graduation. The great Indian middleclass now cheers their adult achievements: job titles, salaries, stock options, tenures, timely marriages and issues, houses and cars, but above all, money. Nothing is sexier than an IITian who makes his millions in America, or leads a multinational corporation. Achievements on this track leave me cold. I see in them little independence of mind (one can reasonably argue that it's too late to inculcate this at the IIT. It needs to start much earlier in school and at home, for which middleclass ideas of education must evolve). Barring exceptions, I find most IITians to be a thoroughly conventional and self-satisfied bunch. As immigrants in the US, in particular, they seem to embody some of the most unflattering stereotypes of the Marwaris of Calcutta.

It struck me afresh that the campus is so large, green, quiet, and pleasant to wander through. Many roads are wider; the Scholar’s Avenue was shadier than ever; the walk past the gymkhana and the swimming pool brought back memories of inter-hall competitions. Independent staff houses still look straight out of the 80s though: derelict verandas with lush tropical creepers, leaking pipes running down the back, green moss on the walls. But on the whole, IIT KGP, the first Indian Institute of Technology, has become a bigger institute since my time. India Today ranked it the #1 engineering college for three years running (2001-03) and it continues to hover near there. A shiny new management school is named after a philanthropic alumnus. It has more funds and projects, departments, teachers, researchers, labs, new halls, and a devoted alumni network. The cycle-rickshaw ride back to the impressive Kharagpur train station felt pleasant, with the area still sparsely populated and unhurried.

(Click here for pictures.)

Comments

[Ruchira Paul]

Great! Now that you have opened the can of worms, I will sit back and enjoy.:-)

[Sanjay]

Well shunya, whenever I see the term "code coolies" or the new-and-still-studiously-insulting slur "glorified plumbers", I tend to dismiss it as a peculiar form of envy, aimed conveniently at a shapeless mass rather than keeping it personal & specific. However, I'm sure there are compelling reasons, known only to yourself.

Is it because their education lacked a "humanities" component or wasn't quite holistic enough? or is it because they were born in a middle class household? or have a marwari last name?

[Shunya]

Sanjay:
Reacting to the mere sight of terms is usually a sign of knee-jerk defensiveness, which makes reasoned debate difficult. Closer attention to the text might have revealed it as both personal and specific. It addresses the deep malaise in our education system and critiques our middleclass ideas of learning and achievement, via the one institution I know from experience: the IITs.

Are coolie and plumber insulting because they are blue collar professions? No dignity of labor, eh? When I look at the relationship of the average IITian to his work and his life and times (nothing “wrong” with it per se, it’s simply not laudable), the average plumber doesn't seem that different. In the US, they both even make lots of money. Based on the context of use, code coolies, too, can be an apt and brilliant metaphor.

[Sanjay]

Shunya,

We both know that most IITians are neither coolies nor plumbers and I'm yet to be convinced that the metaphorical use of these terms is meant to signify blue collar "dignity of labour". More like objects of "pity and regret" perhaps.

Over the past 15 years, in virtually every organization, work that used to be done manually has now become automated. Knowledge of how, when, where and why a particular piece of work was done used to reside in people's brains. Not any more. Now this same knowledge is contained, captured and hidden in billions of lines of code. If anyone wants to know what line 5000001 of code really means to the organization, what work it is performing and which function it is supporting, it will more than likely be an Indian that increasingly has this knowledge. Slowly but surely, every possible job function of an organization is being automated. The typical process of automation involves extracting all the relevant information out of people's brains and eventually turning it into numerous lines of code. Like a puppeteer controls the functioning of a limb by skillful manipulation of levers, strings etc, so also a given function of an organization by changing line 1 million of code. Terms like coolie etc do not begin to even capture this aspect of control.

Be that as it may, I'm interested in hearing your views on what may be wrong with India's educational system. At my niece's request, I remember surfing the Harvard site for the entrance requirements of a technology program and was taken aback to see things like American History and extracurricular activities (i.e. working with non profits and charitable orgnizations) as one of the "needs to have". I felt very uneasy by this and told her to push harvard down on her list.

Just wondering: is this the humanities you have in mind? if yes, what would it look like in India?

[Shunya]

Sanjay:
Let me summarize your large middle paragraph thus: IITians serve a useful function. I agree. Coolies and plumbers too serve a useful function—you say they can’t match the complexity of the functions IITians do. I agree again, but my point is not about the complexity, rather about creativity, attitude to their work and environment, and independence of mind. And how can the IITians excel here? The great Indian middleclass they come from doesn't care about learning for its own sake, equating achievement with test scores, degrees, salaries, titles, and professional awards.

Kids are herded into "safe" professions from early on. Anyone opting for history or art is considered a loser. There's no respect for such pursuits. There's relentless pressure on kids to get into "stable careers" (bete ne line pakad li) and to perform on exams, through rote if necessary; failure leads to severe self-esteem issues, crushing their spirit for ever. Parents will then pay enormous "capitation fee" for an engineer/etc. stamp from a faraway shady institute, which is then valued in matrimonial markets as a stamp of human worth. I can go on and on. There are good reasons why this is so, but it is lamentable all the same. Barring exceptions, the products of this education system are shoddy by global standards. Like plumbers, they are most useful when uncreative labor is called for (however complex).

The IITs specialize in churning out students trained in narrow disciplines with little awareness of their social milieu, or the unique challenges of technology development in India, or the history of global/Indian science and technology, or thinking out of the box in general. The IITs have historically operated in a rarefied milieu, oblivious to the local market, always looking to the West for inspiration but making a sad parody of it. My point is that if the instruction is leavened by the humanities (Harvard is on the right track here IMO), it not only makes better engineers but better individuals.

I find it revealing that you should invoke the "service to the nation" aspect in your large middle paragraph. With this impoverished, utilitarian view of education, you might as well work with robots. What’s missing in your case is the human individual and her need for personal growth and fulfillment through a well-rounded education. The goal of education is not just to train people to do automation, but to also help raise young men and women who can think for themselves.

[Sanjay]

Shunya,

I said nothing about complexity, only about control. Modern societies are composed of institutions and the reality is that IIT'ans today understand and control an increasing number of the key functions of virtually every major institution in a large part of the world. With intimate knowledge & control of functions will come control of the institutions themselves. Inevitably. Something that can never be imagined by coolies or plumbers, even in their most creative, wildest dreams.

I'm not sure that it is the IITs producing uncreative, unthinking, shoddy people, rather it was the milieu in which they were forced to work. Just because Africans were used as slaves by the dominant system of the day does not mean that Africa produces only slaves. There was an older mindset that saw a unit of code as something that faithfully executed a set of written instructions. And this is how coders were seen too i.e. as people that faithfully coded to pre-set instructions. They were hired, evaluated & compensated based on their ability to always stay in the box. I guess you get what you incent. However, this old coding paradigm is now being replaced with something that represents a massive ontological shift taking place - inside out - within all institutions.

Having said this, I have an even more fundamental disconnect with your position. I'm not at all sure that real creativity is something that can be taught in schools or classrooms. Certainly not with the excessive focus on theoretical, "left brain" (for lack of a better term) learning. How does learning history make one creative? Is creativity spontaneous or learned from a book?

If I'm right that creativity cannot be taught, then the conclusion is inescapable. The IITs actually have it right i.e. why not minimize the subjects that are forced down your left brain? just focus on the need-to-learn. I guess that would also mean that Harvard has it wrong. As far as learning for its own sake, I stopped believing in that a long time ago in this era of mass marketing, mass production and aggregate demand.

Finally, I've been puzzling over the comment in your last paragraph and its connection to anything I might have posted. I still have no clue. Please clarify.

[PIAW]

Sanjay,

Are you honestly asking the question, "what is wrong with India's educational system?" If you are, then the lack of critical thinking and introspection that your question signifies is the purest indictment of the Indian educational system!

And if you are being disingenous, well, then there is nothing to say.

Did you actually recommend to your niece that she not apply to Harvard *because* they value the study of History and encourage working with non-profits? I feel sorry for her!

It is one thing to be in India and not have choices and make the best of what is available. But to be here, at the shores of a virtual emporium of choices and to spurn those choices is tragic.

[Shunya]

Sanjay:
You have a severely exaggerated sense of what IITians control and of its virtues and benefits. What is the source of such a megalomaniacal delusion? Indians in IT remind me of Mexican-Americans in California, who are said to control some major aspects of “running” California. They do, but I wouldn’t go about envying their lot, or attributing any great power to them as a group. But even if the IITians control what you say and your predictions come true, why is it good? It is something to fear and worth fighting to avoid. I don’t want IITians controlling any more than what I trust them with.

The IITs (and countless other urban Indian schools and colleges) and their milieu are one of a piece. They reflect and reinforce each other’s shoddy standards. I’ll agree that there is an ontological shift happening in urban Indian education. But it’s starting from a poor base and may well take generations to make an appreciable dent.

Creativity cannot be taught you say. I say that it can be killed off by the system. I also say that the substrate for it can be made fertile. By offering a broad diversity of knowledge, higher self-awareness and wonder can be encouraged in more kids, a prerequisite for all lucid creativity. Good teaching in school, alongside a more evolved middleclass mindset, can expose students to some of the perennial human questions and thereby open up new vistas in their imagination. Creativity feeds off on stuff that can indeed be taught. My observation tells me that, on average, middleclass kids in the US are more self-aware and creative than middleclass kids in India. I attribute this not so much to gaps in economic resources than to a better cultural substrate for learning and a more holistic idea of education in the US (note that I'm only invoking urban Indian middleclass education for comparison).

Let me clarify that I am also making a case for teaching science and technology well (which the IITs don’t do either, for reasons I outlined in my article). Science education in India is a disaster. I ask a results oriented person like you: What has India got to show in science that befits a sixth of the world population? The results make sense, given how unimaginative science teaching is in India, so devoid of the awareness of its wonder and grandeur and relevance in daily life. In India, science came as an imported pursuit and is largely still done as a career. It is no more than a job even to most university teachers of science. What quality do you expect from this system?

The last paragraph was motivated by what I saw as a pattern in your argument. IITians may control all sorts of things via automation, but you spared no thought to them as individuals. You thought of the utility of their skills to socioeconomic ends, but not of their inner lives and ‘human material’. It is apparent now that you've stopped believing in learning for its own sake. It may be a valid survival strategy today but don’t you confuse that with education. Like PIAW, I too feel sorry for your niece.

[Dukhiram Desi]

As someone who went to another IIT (Kanpur) during the same years, I must say that some of the facts presented by Shunya are KGP specific. (However, that is not to say the his conclusions are not valid IIT-system-wide.)

For example, in my first semester studying engineering at Kanpur we had 5 courses -- Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering Drawing, and one elective. My transcripts show I chose Introduction to Psychology as my elective. I enjoyed it immensely -- learning about perceptual constancies, group-think, Freud, classical and apparent conditioning (Pavlov's dog), IQ tests and what they measure, and much more -- the course gave me a formal framework for approaching many kinds of complex social behavior in this world.

I think I ended up electing to take a non-engineering course every subsequent semester -- the rolling transcript shows Introduction to Philosophy; Industrial and Social Psychology; The History of Scientific Ideas; Management of Production Systems; Conversational French; Solar Energy and Appropriate Technology (this last a peculiar Indianism for innovating for rural societies; I remember my own semester project as being a smokeless 'chulha' or village oven); and so on.

IIT Kanpur was set up around 1961 under the auspices of the Kanpur Indo-American Program (KIAP), an effort to graft MIT into the doab between the Ganga and the Yamuna by Kennedy and Nehru. The liberal electives represented the 60s cultural environment in the US rather than any specific impulse or conviction in Indian society. The engineering faculty, mostly educated in the US, was tolerant of the few humanities crackpots in its midst. The other bequest of the KIAP was a splendid library, with acres of shelves from aardvark to zymurgy. I skipped most of my Strengths of Materials lectures to read The Origin of Species, Incident at Oglala, The Idiot, and Brideshead Revisited. Paid for it with a C, too.

But for most of my contemporaries life at Kanpur centered around scoring As, which would surely lead to 'schols' (scholarships in US universities), thereafter assuring a suitable career. The KIAP seeds languished in the doab; in many ways America herself changed and the values of my fellows were tugged at by her unprincipled ambition and greed. Today I struggle to see any difference between them and the benighted one-dimensional graduates of Kharagpur (or for that matter CalTech).

[Sanjay]

PIAW,

Thanks for the sound bytes and for caring so deeply for my niece. Unfortunately, neither addresses any of the substantive questions I had raised.

[Anirudh]

Good post. How about going a step further and questioning the very existence of instituitions like the IITs and other collges- good or bad? (I am not being sarcastic.)

[Madhat]

Hmm.. I would add an 'almost' before the phrase "total lack of liberal education"

I think comparing the IITs with the Stanfords or the Harvards isnt fair because the IITs have always been a "technical institute" concentrating on technical and science education, and the others are universities with wide range of other pursuits. I suppose IITs need to be compared with institutes like Caltech. Wonder how much liberal education Caltech provides.

A friend of mine, when we were discussing the IITs, said that they are "glorified polytechnic institutes" and I tend to agree with him. IITs are perceived as job-guranteed-degree-givers.

[PIAW]

Sanjay,

Your own comment "what's wrong with Indian education" and your mention about the advice you gave your niece are refelective of the thrust of your argument. After all, YOU are the one who brought them up.

I find your rationale too preposterous to merit deeper engagement.

[Shunya]

Madhat:
Unlike the IITs, Caltech has a full-fledged humanities and social sciences (HSS) department, and is better known for its PG program (with 30 Nobel Laureates!).

FYI, in every UG program at Caltech, at least 25% of the curriculum is HSS (6% at KGP; I've changed my text to say "near total lack of..."). It has had some legendary teachers (e.g., Feynman). And if my reading is correct, it teaches 33% fewer professional courses than IIT KGP.

[vp]

A few points that occur to me, some disconnected, others perhaps less so:

* I went to IT-BHU from 1985 to 1989. I know that IT-BHU was not quite an IIT ( a chip that I was able to unload from my shoulder after a few years), but the entrance exam, the syllabi and the profiles and ambitions of the student body were very similar. The situation at IT-BHU was worse than that described here. I was told that the courses were modeled after those at IIT Kanpur, but we were generously allowed one elective in 4 years. We had mind-numbingly poor teachers, 9 courses each semester (including labs) and the whole thing was one miserable blur.

*BHU is somewhat like a US university, in that it has a self-contained campus with many departments, including all the major humanities disciplines taught and studied in India. That didn't change anything for the IT student body though - they remained the ambitious, cut-throat people that the hyper-competitive atmosphere had changed them into. I remain unconvinced that offering humanities courses at the IITs will change anything.

*Most famous universities in the world are recognized for the quality of their research or the accomplishments of their faculty. The claim to fame of the IITs is the quality of their undergraduates - which is probably attributable to the entrance exam rather than to the education they receive at the institutes themselves.

* If the goals of the IITs were to produce innovators and entrepreneurs then the emphasis on putting a bunch of smart young people through engineering boot camps is misguided, I think.

* I find it interesting that the IT boom has elevated lines of code into exemplars of technology. Any one with any sense of the history of science and technology would find that pathetic.

* I doubt that tinkering with course offerings or teaching methods will really make people pursue education for its own sake. US universities provide a diverse and intellectually stimulating environment, yet US college students are notoriously ignorant and don't seem to care for education per se.

* If you argue that the Indian economic milieu (middle class anxieties and ambitions) are responsible for the distorted view of education, I would urge you to look at the rich countries. Economic security has not led to any clear indication of education being appreciated for its own sake.

I am a cynic as far as education is concerned. I am yet to come across any society where people largely interested in education for broadening their minds. For most people, the economic motive is predominant.

[Madhat]

That in indeed an impressive amount of HSS courses in the curriculum of Caltech.
Well, my point was just that IITs need to be compared to Caltech and not Stanford. But needless to say, the IITs perform badly in that comparison too. Because even though there is a HSS dept, the quality of education is not up to the mark.
Education is very utilitarian in India. Anything deemed monetarily unfavourable is treated like the plague.
I see parents discouraging their children from extra-curricular activities with the argument "what is the use of this?"

[Shunya]

Thanks to Dukhiram Desi for his valuable perspective. I admit my facts were KGP specific. His note prompted me to explore the websites of some other IITs for the # of humanities and social sciences courses on offer in four years today in their EE depts.

a) IIT Kharagpur: 3 out of 50 courses
b) IIT Kanpur: 4 out of 46 courses
c) IIT Bombay: 7 out of 60 courses
d) IIT Madras: 6 out of 60 courses
e) IIT Delhi: 1 out of 60 courses

Just for the record, the same numbers for Caltech are 12 out of 42 (est) courses.

[Shunya]

vp:
Thanks for participating. An economic motive behind education is quite reasonable. In fact, it’s usually necessary for survival. However, what’s also essential is a space for learning for its own sake. I’ll argue that this space very much exists in the US (despite its notoriously ignorant students and adults) and almost not at all in India. This has less to do with economic wellbeing than with a different cultural attitude towards learning (which may stem from their historically different notions of the individual).

Many Americans go back to the university in middle-age (often not for career reasons alone); many more attend non-professional continuing education courses, or change vocations. Lots of Americans have a diversity of secular interests and pursuits (many of dubious merit but still) that enable new learning and personal growth. Indeed, curiosity and independence are encouraged right from elementary school. Most US kids will not choose to study engineering unless they are turned on by it in their teens (unlike most IITians, including me). Those who elevate creative passion over money are numerous enough, and are not only accepted in daily life but are often envied, encouraged, and respected—the money/security factor guides these people but it’s not the only one. And it shows. It's why the US is the most innovative and creative society in the world today (ok, the two coasts and a few other spots).

It is a reasonable argument that mere proximity to liberal coursework (as in IT-BHU), or electives offered by the IIT management to look good on paper, would not change much at the IITs. Most incoming students (with rare exceptions like Dukhiram Desi, who I happen to know personally as a happy desi :) are probably too far gone by then, too cut-throat to be drawn to them. But a part of me thinks that a conscious policy can create real benefits. Like an affirmative action program for the liberal arts in the IITs (;-), alongside cutting the number of core courses and raising teaching standards (instituting a public whipping post for the worst faculty is a decent start).

[Vi]

I definitely feel the heat of this a lot, being an History and Elementary Education major myself. It doesn't affect me as much because I live in the US and that my parents have accepted (mostly) that this is what I want to do, but I do indeed get called a loser (they think I don't notice) by my cousins and family in India. I attend an excellent liberal arts college, and I can't imagine what it would be like if I couldn't take the amazing classes they offer and just isolate myself in one particular field.

[abhaga]

I would think that the critique of any system has to take into account the conditions in which it operates and though, there is little doubt that IITs fall far behind in the libral component of education when compared to US system, they remain our best hope in the Indian education system. Another thing to notice is that flexibility only works when somebody actually wants to take advantage of it. I will give you an example. It is well known how the various branches offered in IITs have well marked rankings in the minds of those who come in while IITs positively try to discourage it. A lot of poeple end up choosing subjects that they reliaze are not suitable for them after spending a little time in the dept. So the problem was this. The branch change was allowed only after 1st year while any kind of contact started with the dept in the second year. So anybody who found himself in the wrong dept, had no chance of changing his/her major. The branch change just remained as a chance to climb up on the ladder of rankings. To rectify the situation, administration decided to allow branch changes after 2nd year also so that people could move around more freely and it is anybody's guess as to what happened. It became another chance to climb up the ladder without any thought of one's preferences.
So there are problems in the whole thing that are incorrigible at the IIT lavel however that should only make IITs more determined to change the situation by becoming more and more liberal and not rest on such explanations.

[Sumant]

Hi Shunya,

you post is just awesome! I agree with you 100% (though I couldn't have articulated it so well). But I wouldn't single out IIT and IIT-KGP. The whole higher education system in India sucks! I wish there was more of a free market economy in education and it wasn't controlled by the government. Yes that would be mean that the fee would go up (though not cost). But we should be willing to pay market price of all products and not expect government subsidies.

regards,
Sumant

P.S. Incidently I too stayed in CTW Nehru Hall (batch of '97 EE)

[Aishwarya]

Great post. Of course this isn't so much a failing of the IITs as it is of the entire system that has everyone believing that there is little value in being taught the humanities.

[ramesh]

on an entirely different note, i shudder to think of the dirt if squat toilets are replaced...they rock and in a hostel they are the best thing...

[Ashok Singh]

Dear Namit,

I have made similar points to the executive members of the Delhi Chapter of the IIT-KGP Alumni Association. My point has been that why celebrate something like being first in the 'Business Today' ranking of institutions as though it makes us unique as institution? Why perpetuate mediocrity in teaching and quality of education at IITs by celebrating it as the best in India? Nostalgia does not mean that we must remain rooted in the past. We must see things as 'they are' compared to the rest of the world.

IITs are unique in the world in one way. They have some of the best inputs in the world in terms of students but mediocre and below average systems and teachers. I say below average because they do not complement the quality of the students. I give the example of Fluid Dynamics experiments in Chemical Engg. Everything was written out in terms of what to do etc and what was expected as a result. What is the need of doing an experiment which is only going to prove the obvious? However, if I was given a steel ball and some viscous liquid and a list of measuring instruments available to find out the relationship between fluid friction and relevant variables I might have learnt more.

Of course this has been mentioned by several people who have written their comments and is nothing new. However, IMHO it strikes at the very root of knowledge creation and creativity. Even if come from a school education system that is geared to getting high marks in examination by any means the IITs can be different. They can change the way the students think and use their knowledge. Don't forget that one of the reasons why the IITs haven't done any Nobel prize winning research is because students are not thought to really think and apply. They are in turn taught to pass the exams with good grades and go and conquer the world outside.

The quality of life in the hostels today is several degrees worse than what I remember. Housekeeping of the halls of residence is shocking and the attitude of the students apathetic. Thanks to the successive regionalisation of IITs there is less Indianness.

Even in the area of student social activities instead of encouraging students to do their best on their own, they are encouraged to approach alumni for funds for springs festivals and so on.

Part of the lack of fresh thinking in IIT education is because they are
governed by the government. No director would really like to strike out on a radically new path but stick to what the establishment wants.

I was also disappointed during my various visits to IIT over the past 10 years on the super-annuated faculty. It is a great worry that even the quality of teachers we had earlier - a small proportion of whom were truly great, will get much worse. Then, the IITs will hope that their alumni do well and earn some laurels because the Institute will not be able to have any significant achievement from their own research and development. Just an example - Prof YP Singh of Electrical Engg has just been allowed a patent on the use of mobile phones to monitor and control automobiles. He is over 70 years old and not involved in any academics or research for several years now. The mind however keeps working productively if we let it. Alas if we could have more teachers like him.

I have rambled on but the visit note written by you and subsequent discussion got me carried away.

Regards,
Ashok Singh

[Manoj Madhavan]

I think the IITs are serving a purpose, albeit a tangent-one. IIT-ans get instant "brand-recognition" and are able to achieve wealth and position faster than they would have without the brand tag. Some (granted only a few) are able to break-free from the shackles of a crippling and crippled education system, broaden their minds and use their knowledge, wealth and position to tackle problems of poverty, disease, and dare I say, even education in India and the world