The Captives at India's Premier Institutes

IITs have made a big name in recent times. It has been so partly because quite a lot of big names belong to IITs. Names like Narayanmurty, Vinod Khosla, Arun Sarin make just a beginning to an endless list. But the hype that has been created around IITs is mainly because of Indian media's latest discovery of the glamour quotient of IITs. Insignificant and completely fictious pieces like "Elitism rules on IIT campuses" (January 3, TOI, Kolkata) make their way to front page nowadays. How much it sells can be gauged from the fact that a completely ordinary piece of literature by Chetan Bhagat stays afloat as the bestseller for months. It carried the credit of being the first fiction on IIT life which made its ordinary standards convert into extraordinary sales figure. Well, for that matter, Times Of India continues to maintain a similar profile.

There are many big names among the alumni of IITs who have scored in fields other than engineering and science. Sandipan Deb and Rajkamal Jha in journalism, Manohar Parrikar in politics, Arvind Kejriwal in social activism are the well-known names. But, there are many who were lost while trying to pursue their interest by switching their supposedly core fields. The IITs draw the biggest talent pool fresh from their schools. The main reason being the craze that they have maintained among parents belonging to middle-class families. IITs seem to be the best gateway of success and instant acclamation at +2 level. Many among those who have a natural inclination towards arts and humanities are attracted by the elitism associated with ‘science’. This bias in Indian education system has been taking its toll for quite long. With the increasing fame of IITs as world-acclaimed institutions, its bound to deprive arts & humanities of its chunk of talent. Once you’re in science, you’re driven by the madness of ‘Mission IIT’. A higher secondary student is too immature to think beyond the cocktail of success, prestige & acclamation that clearing IIT-JEE provides him with. He’s too engrossed in the dreams to think about his interest field at that point of time. Once he’s in IIT, he starts feeling that something somewhere has gone wrong. Most of them don’t find anything inside the dullness that envelops the usual engineering courses. But, yes, they believe in IITs paying them handsome rewards for following sincerity. Most of the IITians end up with a job that has remained the limit of dreams in Govinda-brand bolly movies of yester year. A good number of them manage scholarship calls from top US universities. You don’t need just courage but also foolishness to think beyond that!

The IITians’ life moves around building healthy records for achieving his end. He copies assignments, sleeps in class, makes maximum use of proxy facilities and prepares for exams with minimum-efforts policy, to maintain a healthy academic profile. In the time that it leaves him with, he pursues his other interests. IITs have a sound social and cultural events’ culture, with quite a good number of exemplary enthusiasts in dramatics, literary and musical arena. But, hardly anyone takes it for more than being a good addition to his CV. We come to know of few people now and then, who gain enough psychological momentum to move beyond the lure of high-package jobs to pursue the careers of their interest. The point that can be missed here is- there’s a much bigger talent people who don’t feel at home at IITs, especially when the academics are concerned, but, they have no other option than to continue with it. India still lives in that age of insecurity which forces its youth to forcibly pursue careers which have nothing to do with his interest. We’re economically so backward that IT companies soak up all the talent, right from mechanical and chemical engineering to aerospace and mining engineering, straightaway nullifying four/five years of technical learning.

I just hope that day to become a reality when there will be equally good brand-names in fields other than science, to be pursued after +2. It’s a philanthropist's wish that someone will not have to suffer his whole life just because his parents wished his son to be one among the rare breed of IITians. Indian education system will definitely take its time to correct the biases that have made deep roots into its system and I can’t see the extinction of captives at India’s premier institutions before that.