Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) - technical engineers under attack by social engineers in India

A cruel joke used to float around in IITs during our student days. That there are three sexes in the world. Male, Female & IIT female. Although the barb was directed at the “quality of prettiness” of IIT girl students; the bigger frustration of the male students lay with the quantity. In our batch of 300, there were hardly 10 girl students (that’s about 3% ) who had courageously decided to study engineering and as perks would get free treats almost daily from the male students. Recent reports suggest that the figure has gone up to only 10% .

With such poor numbers to show , it is inconceivable as to how the present UPA government & its aged HRD minister can even think of starting an all-girl IIT. Its reported that the new President of India, the first female to be one, is behind such a move. If this move is to correct the low representation of women in IIT, then surely it smacks of another case of thoughtless “social engineering” and adding to reservation numbers through the back door. What then stops the government from opening up IITs for vastly unrepresented minority communities like Muslims, Gujjars, Parsis, Jains & others?

Both the central government and the IIT administration seem to think that IITs have become a global brand largely due to their efforts. When , on the contrary, the fact remains that it is the meritorious (top 1 % of the applicants) students who have worked hard to get a recognition for their talent & achievements as engineering professionals, academicians & entrepreneurs in a foreign country of their dreams. Most of them will confide privately that they learned their engineering during their Masters degree in top universities of USA. Neither the Indian industry required IITians at one point of time nor did the faculty have any notable work in their credentials to ignite interests in cutting-edge engineering among the students in IIT. The Indian industry in fact used IITians for marketing their products and others were left to do brainless maintenance work in remote locations of the country. The salary was pitiably low. Sadly the situation has not changed significantly today. Engineers remain one of the worst paid professionals in the country while glib-talking advertising professionals with a MBA earn three times their salary.

Curiously IIT Mumbai has gone ahead this year to ban foreign internships for their students.IIT Mumbai wants it students to get excited about engineering happenings in the domestic companies. Why can’t the IIT administration create academic excitement in the class-rooms? Why is it that students of all engineering streams continue to focus only on software companies for their placements? Why is it that they do not get excited by mechanical, electrical, aeronautical , civil engineering companies ?

Presently there are seven IITs and the plan is to add 9 more including an all-girl IIT. If the idea is to increase the numbers of available engineers in the country surely the government could have created a completely new brand of 9 engineering colleges with excellence as the motto instead of just branding them as IITs. This new brand could have studied the shortcomings of the existing IITs , assessed the model of the globally successful engineering colleges ( ones which have top-rated prize-winning faculty) and then come out with its own model. At least the new brand would then have a chance of bettering the IIT brand, if not anything else.

But conventional thinking dictated by social engineering still continue to influence the woes of these few institutions of excellence while the IIT brand gets diluted every passing year.