When I got selected to IIT
Kanpur, some 30 yrs ago, it was rated number one amongst other IITs, which in those days were
only 5 against the 16 that they count today.
These were real centers of
excellence being run without much of governmental interference. The councils of
board of governors BoG running them were fairly independent of the political
shenanigans and with the autonomous structure they had, they could usually ward
off governmental intervention without suffering consequences.
But India there is tendency to
destroy excellence and pedestrianize all that you have and this insincere clown
of man Kapil Sibal has precisely done that. The rank of IIT Kanpur that used to
be, by one study 5th globally for UG studies, today would be today
lower than 250.
There is clearly a tendency in
India to give a pompous appellation to an institution and leave quality to the
magic of the name. This attitude in fact comes from a disregard for quality and
lack of concern of the name getting spoilt. As a consequence, you may have a
Udaipur Palace hotel without water or a shower.
Besides, creating a structure
without infrastructure is typically an Indian way of addressing a problem. But
who cares, as the country still moves. So while the 16 IITs today have
multitude of students, 1200 in the mid eighties to about 20,000 today. The labs
ipso facto are ill-equipped, libraries pathetically rigged and faculty
under-staffed.
Also, it is very onerous to
bring students of a particular class to a level to qualify for prestigious
institutions like IITs or IIMs or AIIMS. But it is far easier and popular to
reserve seats in them for those classes. Reservation has always been used in
India at the expense of merit to seek votes, and IITs were not in anyway unique
to stay unscathed from this malaise. I only dread the day, when there will be
reservations for religions and when the there will be reservations in the army.
The ratings are dropping. The
place occupied by the IITs is being vacated in favor of colleges from Singapore
and Beijing. But who cares. The UPA governments don’t survive on having a
correct IIT policy, but on having a leaking MNREGA.
All minds, though most a
sophomoric and so mediocre like Mani Aiyer, are merely planning schemes to
bring UPA to power a 3rd time.
In the process, Sibal will
continue to make the IITs the ITIs of the country.
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