Off Topic- Specimen of Brilliance

I thought I have come a long way in ignoring a typical IIT UG rant (let me state at the outset that at IIT I belonged really to the scum of the earth category 'HSS Ph.D.' That is doing a Ph.D. in Humanities and Social Sciences). Most of the times I don't even bat an eyelid when some of them come and leave comments on posts written long back and tell me-

"Btw its a classic case of UG's not giving two hoots about the PG's whom they consider inferior. I guess some of the blame lies with PGs too. They dont participate in anyway in the institue activities and are generally aloof and tend to keep to themselves thereby promoting stereotypification.

In case you are curious, I am a second year UG." (Emphasis mine)

I mean I have grown such a thick skin that I don't even reply to such comments anymore.

But yesterday was different. I read an article by one of the specimens of brilliance, a Mr. Aditya Jha in Indian Express. For most of the time I was reading what has been said before, if you open too many IITs (as the HRD minister is said to be planning) brand IIT gets diluted. Then Mr. Jha really demonstrates his brilliance when he says-

"Brand IIT is not about IITs; it’s about IIT-ians. And, mostly, it is about undergraduate IIT-ians at that. People who have done M-Tech from IITs always feel discriminated against. Since they never cracked the JEE, there’s no way they will be accepted into the tribe."

Will someone go and remind Mr. Jha that the company he works for (Infosys) was co-founded by an IIT Kanpur PG. Yes, Mr. Narayan Murthi undoubtedly did a PG course from IITK and still founded a company like Infosys that employs the likes of Mr. Jha. But this could be a little too much for the brilliance of Mr. Jha to comprehend.

Mr. Murthi has said in his speeches (I have attended one such speech at IITK myself long back) that he got through JEE but could not study at IIT because of the high costs. Now one also wonders if Mr. Jha thinks just clearing the JEE is the sign of brilliance or actually doing an UG course would also do something to a person? Whatever the likes of Mr Jha think, I think Mr. Murthi did fine for himself even if he just did a PG course from IITK.

Update- After reading Sidhu's comment on this post, I went back to the article and checked the comment section of the article on IITs. Left a comment of my own too. The comments are much more balanced, I have to say.

Can You Spot IIT Roorkee in the Picture Below?

Maybe you will have to enlarge the image to see IIT Roorkee in this picture but what a shame, the way we deface the public buildings. This was a small hut on top of the China Peak at Nainital.

Breaking My Silence about my Alu Muter err Alma Mater

Update (April 19, 2008): The unfortunate part of maintaining this post is that when people start searching for 'IIT Kanpur Suicide', this one starts getting hits and I have to keep my fingers crossed, that no not one more time. So for a while people have been stumbling on this post via Google today and yet my search would not reveal any news. Not anymore. Yet another suicide at IITK-

His family blamed ragging for his extreme act but institute authorities denied the charge. The body of Prashant Kumar was found hanging from the ceiling of his hostel room.

His father Sunder Lal Kureel said he had been suffering from depression after facing ragging in the campus. Institute director Sanjay Dhande, however, ruled out ragging as a factor and said the student had been suffering from a psychological ailment.

Update (April 27, 2007): Just about six months and I am writing another update at this post. It is sad beyond words. After Jay Bharadwaj's suicide NDTV reports that they are going to appoint a few counselors for every hostel. Hope this would be a well thought out and serious step. Hope this is the last time I am updating this post for a very very long time.

Update (November 7, 2006) Abhilash, a Ph.D Chemistry student also commits suicide. The newspapers say it was not the academic pressure that led to the step.

Update (May4, 2006): Sailesh also commited suicide yesterday. Makes it two from IITK alone in the last five months. Extremely sad situation.

I saw a ticker going on and on and on, at CNBC18 saying that an IIT Kanpur student was found dead (did I say suicide?)on the premises two days ago. It brought back such a torrent of memories. I called up and asked a few friends if they knew anything because they have recently graduated and their friends are still at IITK. They told me apparently the guy jumped from the 6^th floor of the faculty building. Now, this building called ‘Facb’ in IITK jargon, is an ugly red brick building (though I always remember it as grey in color due to some quirk in my memory) where on the top floor is the department of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), what used to be ‘my department.’

I remember very clearly that afternoon of long back, even now. We have a blessed soul ‘Brijlalji’ who would make tea in the corner room of the top floor at specific times of the day. (He must be the most acknowledged person by HSS students in their Ph.D. thesis.) I was running to get a cup of tea, when something seemed horribly wrong.

Actually, above my department is a small jutting structure (above the sixth floor) where only lift mechanics are supposed to go but it had a few broken glass panes and many of us would climb there at the dead of the night just for the heck of it. I did it only twice and always in company.

That afternoon when I was running for tea, I saw a few people standing in the corridor and staring at something. When I looked in that direction my blood froze. There was this figure standing at the edge of the Facb top and taking one leg out of it. Worst still, I recognized who the person was! I too stood rooted to the spot but luckily an extremely capable professor for such situations, was standing near us but not looking at scene, and I alerted her and she took over. Security came but they were helpless, as all of us were worried that the person might jump or fall if distracted. After long anxious moments, the person backed off and came down but the memory still upsets me. And what is more haunting, it was life as usual at IIT, as if nothing had happened.

I do not know much why or how Swapnil Dharaskar (the correct name, as Vinod pointed out in the comment section) met his end but it saddens me a lot. AsVinod points out again in the comment section, the cause of his death is not clear. My musings are about the days I spent and what I saw there. I am not trying to attribute any cause to his death.

In fact, I always saw IIT from the eyes of an almost outsider, being a post graduate student. I wish these kids would somehow be able to look beyond IIT, not take their end semester exams and F grades so seriously. There is a life beyond IIT and it can be fun, if you choose. I also feel parents put undue pressure on the kids to continue at any cost, even if the child is on the verge of breakdown. Many of them (parents) find it extremely difficult that in spite of getting into IIT, the child can fail in a course or mess up a semester.

I remember another suicide when a second year Hall 2 student hanged himself in his room during Antaragni, the cultural festival of IITK but the students refused to shut down the discotheque that night, giving some lame excuse about sponsors not agreeing to it.

I do not know what more to say, talking about IITK is not easy for me. So this post has no crisp ending and a sound opinion that I seem to possess about every other matter on earth.

Update: Abi has an excellent post.

News articles on the issue:

http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=83056

http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1562506,0035.htm

http://www.ndtv.com/morenews/showmorestory.asp?category=National&slug=IIT+student%27s+death+raises+questions&id=81934

Some blogs talking about IITK in general or the same issue:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/indranic/14496.html

http://adjournment.blogspot.com/2005/12/rigid-systems.html

http://riteshm.blogspot.com/2005/11/one-more.html

http://iitkstudent.blogspot.com/2005/11/life-in-iit-kanpur.html

http://rajatkashyap.blogspot.com/2005/11/shocking.html

Messing Up with what gets Written Even in Dilbert Comic Strips: Why Such Hurry to Change IIT-JEE Eligibility Norms?

Update: The meeting of IIT board decided to implement the new IIT-JEE rules from the next year. Sense prevails after all.
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This has turned out to be a rant from India but this time I am not apologetic. This comes straight from my troubled heart.

I never planned to write anything about the Indian Institute of Technologies, from where the Dilbert comic character Asok graduated. The first strip can be found at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3231561.stm

But for the last two days, I have been seething with the decision of the Human Resource Ministry to change the rule of the game midway. Yes, the procedure to get admitted into IITs has been changed, it has been announced mid session (those in 12th, the session has already begun, and those who have dropped after their 12th, and do not have 60%, they never knew the criteria when they were making the decision).

The decision sounds incredibly stupid to me for so many reasons, leave aside my personal prejudice.

1) The system is working and working well. We generally do not mess up with a system that is (rightly or wrongly) considered world class. Even Dlibert acknowledges it. Why the urge to temper with it?

2) When the systems are tempered, generally the objective is to make it better. Is it going to happen with the proposed system that attempts to make the test easier? I do not think so and here is why.

3) I wish someone would enlighten me, how the proposed system will serve the youth of the nation better? Are they going to increase the number of the seats? Many lakhs (100000) write the exam for 4000 odd seats. Do whatever with the examination system; with this mathematics will the competition go away by fiddling with number of attempts or claiming to make it easier? How can you make it easy when the weight of sheer competition is going to bog it down anyway?

4) Why has the decision been taken mid-season affecting hundreds and thousands of youth, and one of them happens to be my nephew. He is 18, he is six foot plus, he likes to put gel on his hair, (and I scold him), given a chance he will never steer a car, but like to zip on a bike (which I will never let him do, it is too unsafe on the Delhi roads), who can play basketball well, in fact he is a typical teenager and I am an aunt from whom he and his brother are the apple of the eye. They also live with us.

5) He somehow messed up his 12th board and yet we all decided he will drop a year and prepare for IIT-JEE. He is not a typical teenager because he sleeps for four to five hours a day, in hope of making it to IIT. He does not hangs out with his friends because his text books seem more fit for being used as exercising equipment rather than reading material. And now suddenly we find he is not even eligible to appear in IIT-JEE because he failed to score 60% in 12th. And please don’t tell me he anyway cannot make it to IIT, if he scores so low. My cousin graduated from IIT and had only 54% marks in 12th board. Can you imagine how he has been feeling since yesterday?

6) Well, we know there are many other options and the world will not end if he does not study in an IIT, but why this unnecessary stress to my nephew and many more like him because of the high-handedness of the ministry?

7) Yesterday night I heard the Human Resource Minister talking to a reporter and haughtily saying, there is no confusion and any confusion should be given in writing. Maybe he should try talking to some of the students or reading their mails (yes HRD ministry has a mail id listed and I am sure the mailbox would be flooded) made their decisions on the basis of the rules that existed at the beginning of the college opening session this year. What fools we are, didn’t we know things could suddenly change to relieve students of their stress!

8) On one of the news channels, a student asked an IIT professor, that did he know that the IIT topper this year managed to do it on his 4th attempt. Why is he (the person who asked this question) or my nephew not even allowed to even write the exam beyond two times?

9) The ministry says they want to reduce the role of coaching institutes in IIT selection. If the mathematics of getting selected remains the same, can they enlighten me how are they going to achieve it? Maybe they should talk to Dr. Manmohan Singh, who will tell them too much supply of students and too little seats are always going to lead to more stress and not less.

10) If you do not do well in 12th well, forget even dreaming of getting into IIT, that is the message I am getting. Why this amazing lack of tolerance for failures that we all taste in life at one point or the other?

11) Is someone jealous of the amount of money coaching institutes are making and want their cut?

For my nephew, we have other options in mind and we know Kalpana Chawala never went to an IIT. But he wanted to write it again. The pain caused to him (and seeing him like that, to me) and many like him is needless. He made a screen saver on my laptop where he had some of the choice words to say about the new rules and did some wonderful graphics on a few of those he thought were responsible. Of course, on my laptop his choice words do not go beyond ‘Ullu, Gadha, etc.’

If the rules are to be changed, it should not be done so in the middle of the game. At stake are the dreams and the peace of mind of many of the nation’s youth. Find a better way of reducing stress Mr. Human Resource Minister. And I know, you may not be confused because no one close to you is getting affected. But we are and our kids are. Maybe the court will be the hope of last resort, as usual.