OF IIT AND OTHERWISE

With unfailing regularity some member of the country’s elite wakes up and passes a comment on the IITs and IIMs. Now the poor and ignorant masses have to listen and gobble the Goebbelian truth for two reasons :
Firstly, because except the 5 odd lakh people who appear in JEE and CAT nobody knows what it takes to prepare and qualify for these exams.
Secondly , because it is always fashionable in an open society to have divergent views howsoever outlandish they maybe.
What is very interesting here is that everyone comments about the engineers and the engineering graduates in IIMs. When was the last time someone commented upon the selection procedure of medical students , or the falling standards of CAs.
This could be because of two reasons, I believe:
For a doctor, you know , he knows a little more about YOUR body than you do.So if you make too much noise – well you could be under the proverbial sword tomorrow.
This theory somehow even applies if the doctor (most of the times)ensures a wrong treatment or even kills your patient- rarely does anybody pull him to court and question his competency (at least in India).
For other professions- well you need them so much in daily life, that you really don’t know if they doing your good or bad- even if it’s a next door insurance agent who just sold you a ULIP with 35% upfront charges.
Now going back to the IIT graduates. Surprisingly everyone is concerned about the 2500 odd graduates who are entering and a few less(minus suicides) who are passing out of IITs. No one is even bothered to check that a 10 times the no. is passing out of NITs which are also publicly funded and a 100 times from the private institutions- that are not.
To talk of the IITians, people question there over zealousness of pursuing high salary jobs in the private sector both inland and offshore. This attitude is in a country where the focus on joining IAS or any less Babu department is to make that fast buck- in as less a time as possible (before Anna finds out).
We say that they have no contribution to the society. How ironic is that- when we don’t even know about the contribution of the freedom fighters in our own towns. We say that IIt graduates are too self-centred. Well try counting from Arvind Kejriwal- backwards and you’ll have a long list.
Now getting on to their poorer cousins from NIT and Private Institutions- well the public opinion will be severely dented if they found out a large no. of engineering graduates are manning the public and private sectors in not only administrative ranks but as inventors and innovators. Not only are they creating wealth for the society but contributing to the public welfare.
Incidentally the first of the known whistle blowers who was mercilessly killed was from IIT.
After making his contribution to the society people like Mr.Narayanmurthy decide to adversely comment upon the newer generation- that too miles away from homeland. We sure have a crab like habit boss- pulling down others who try to climb up the basket.
Why doesn’t Mr.Murthy contribute creatively by suggesting how the exam papers must be designed. By being on the moderators panel. At least Mr. Sibal can be credited with trying some creative steps in that direction.
The problem is that we don’t understand that an engineer is not about opening nuts n bolts and building bridges. An engineer is one of the most innovative and creative creatures developed by the society. Not only can he run the country for you, he can even make missiles, manage your fund corpus exceeding the GDP of a developing country- he can even move the governments to mind it’s step… and as Linda Goodman about Leos… if nothing else he can fix that broken doorknob if you marry him.