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Students for the world: India's
dilemma
By Raju Bist
MUMBAI -
When Arun Sinha, co-promoter of the Mumbai-based
software firm Design Expo Pvt Ltd (Dexpo) wanted to
expand operations, he immediately hired 30 fresh
chemical engineers from the Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT) located at Mumbai. Chemical engineers
in a software firm? "That doesn't matter. The IIT
imparts such robust logical analytical skills that a
graduate is quick to pick up fresh concepts in any new
discipline," said Sinha.
Dexpo has since been
acquired by Canadian banking software major SLMSoft and
renamed SLMSoft India. Director Sinha, himself a
graduate of the IIT based in Kanpur, an industrial
township in north India, continues to swear by IIT
engineers and hire them.
He is not alone.
Leading firms turn to the seven IIT campuses across the
country - Mumbai, New Delhi, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Madras,
Roorkee and Guwahati - when they require top-notch
engineering talent. When Valley legend Jim Clark
(co-founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape) was
floating healthcare firm Healtheon, he had one diktat
for his headhunters: recruit as many IITians as they
could find.
The IITs offer undergraduate and
postgraduate programs in various engineering, science,
technology and management disciplines. The IITs are
turning out to be the cradle of some of the world's best
talent, with IITians today heading some of the biggest
corporations all over the globe.
Arun Sarin is
the newly-appointed CEO of Vodafone, Europe's biggest
mobile phone group. Vinod Gupta is chairman of database
management company InfoUSA. Rajat Gupta heads
international management consultancy McKinsey & Co.
Manoj Singh is managing director, America, of Deloitte
Consulting. Rono Dutta is president of United Airlines.
Dr Purnendu Chatterjee heads leading venture capital
firm, the Chatterjee group.
Vinod Khosla was
co-founder of Sun Microsystems. Gururaj Deshpande
started Sycamore Networks and is one of the highest
net-worth Indians. The senior vice chairman of Citigroup
is Mumbai lad Victor Menezes. Dr Arun Netravali is
president of electronic research center Bell
Laboratories. Romesh Wadhwani is a well-known Silicon
Valley entrepreneur and investor. And Suhas Patil is
chairman emeritus of Cirrus Logic.
Back home,
ex-IITians head many of India's leading companies.
Nandan Nilekani is managing director, president and CEO
at India's leading software firm Infosys Technologies
Limited. C G Krishnadas Nair leads Hindustan
Aeronautics. Arjun Malhotra co-founded leading infotech
group HCL. Deepak Satwalekar is managing director at
housing finance giant HDFC. Y C (Yogi) Deveshwar first
headed public sector airline Air India and is now the
chief honcho at tobacco major ITC. And Reliance Telecom
is headed by B K Syngal, who was earlier the numero uno
at India's only long-distance telecom company, Videsh
Sanchar Nigam Ltd.
The main reasons for the IITs
delivering such bright products: near-complete autonomy
(even though the institution was established by the
government through a special act of the Indian
parliament) and a fanatical focus on quality. In a
country with an abysmal record of primary education, an
inefficient and corrupt higher education system and
universities that routinely bow before their political
masters, these IITs are centers of unmatched educational
excellence.
The quality of the students is
matched by the quality of the faculties. Getting a
teaching job at an IIT requires the highest caliber.
Cirrus Logic's Patil has been quoted as saying, "When I
joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for my
MS, my first thought was that IIT professors were
actually better than many of the MIT ones."
Government patronage has also helped. The IIT
was the brainchild of India's first prime minister
Jawaharlal Nehru and continues to attract oodles of
state funding. So while the Victoria Jubilee Technical
Institute, a much-respected engineering college in
Mumbai, has to manage with just Rs 90 million (US$1.88
million) every year, the annual budget of IIT Mumbai
exceeds Rs 1.25 billion.
Most importantly, an
IIT student gives of his best because he finds himself
plunged into a sea of intellectual excellence. Back in
his school days he may have been the best, but now
there's a greater challenge before him: he has to emerge
as the best from among the best. He spends five years in
an intensely competitive environment where the only
things respected are brains and talent. Students and
faculty make no distinction between rich and poor, city
bred and rural folk. The only things that matter are
ability, expertise and leadership quality.
Whatever the reasons for IIT's success, IITians
never had it so good. "The IIT old boy network goes a
long way in helping me in my business, "admits Sunil
Shrivastava, a manufacturer of linear bearings who did
his mechanical engineering from IIT Delhi. "My five
years at IIT Chennai gave me the confidence that I could
take on the world," says Sunita Pritam who graduated in
1985. Mohan Bijlani adds that at IIT Mumbai he "went
through a grinder" and this helped him shape up as a
first-generation entrepreneur.
Entry to the IITs
is restricted by very fair and tough entrance exams, the
Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE). The entrance exams
are fiercely competitive and no amount of connections or
string-pulling help. Only about 2 percent of the more
than 200,000 boys and girls who sit for the JEE every
year get through.
SLMSoft's Sinha came from a
large and poor family in Bihar, one of India' most
impoverished and backward states. There was no space in
his small house to concentrate on studies so the young
lad often prepared for his JEE by studying under the
light of street lamps.
An IIT degree is a
passport to a guaranteed high-paying job and a
comfortable life, and hence Indian parents are willing
to undergo tremendous sacrifices to ensure that their
wards enter the hallowed portals of the institution.
Pradeep Sawant, a Pune-based marketing officer for a
chemical company, freelanced late into the night as a
life insurance agent to rustle up the money needed for
his son's JEE private tuition. Sawant Junior is now in
his third year at IIT Kharagpur.
Two years down
the road, he plans to do further studies in the US and
later, settle down there. With most IIT graduates making
a beeline for that Mecca of opportunity - the US - it
was only apt that the 50th anniversary celebrations of
the IIT were recently held not in India but in Silicon
Valley, California.
Attending the fete,
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates told the over 2,300 IIT
alumni from all over the United States, Europe and
India, "India is a superpower of human talent. Many
brilliant IITians are working at Microsoft." Sun
Microsystems co-founder Khosla, now a general partner in
the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, announced a
donation of $5 million for IIT Delhi. Another ex-IITian,
advisory director of Goldman Sachs Avi Nash, donated $1
million to the chemical engineering department of IIT
Mumbai. Covering the two-day celebrations, CBS' news
program "60 Minutes" said, "The US imports cars from
Japan, whiskey from Scotland and smart IITians from
India. In science and technology, IIT undergraduates
leave their American counterparts in the dust."
But even though there was an all-round "feel
good" factor, back home in India the Silicon Valley
celebrations once again brought to center-stage a debate
that has fiercely raged in Indian society: should the
government continue subsidizing the education of IITians
since most of them end up working in foreign countries?
Many ex-IITians this reporter spoke do did not
blame the students for the exodus. "Who would like to
leave his family and familiar surroundings for unknown
shores?" asked one of them. "Nobody would take up
foreign jobs if they found challenging and financially
rewarding assignments in India."
The criticism
against the brain drain, however, has now reached mass
proportions and there are many who are asking that an
"exit tax" be imposed on students who pass out from
prestigious institutions like the IIT only to take up
jobs abroad. There is also a proposal to ask them to
serve time in Indian rural areas - just like medical
students are required to do.
Another criticism
often levied against the IITs is that they are good only
for studies up to the undergraduate level and do not
attract talent desirous of making a career in say,
research. But the situation is fast changing, with
industry tying up with the educational institution at
various levels. IT giant IBM, for example, has entered
into a much talked-about collaboration with IIT Delhi.
IBM India Research Laboratory has set up a
technology center within the campus there. The center
offers the organization an opportunity to understand how
to optimize the advantages of IT to achieve greater
returns from their business. Some of the solutions being
currently showcased at the center are advanced
applications for bio-informatics, grid computing,
knowledge management and application of e-commerce to
local initiatives. Similarly, IIT Kharagpur is doing
research work in collaboration with multinationals like
Motorola, Compaq, Oracle and GE Caps.
In fact,
IIT Kharagpur, the oldest of the IITs, was recently in
the news when it announced the setting up of a campus in
Silicon Valley. Helping the institution to launch the
new school will be the IIT Foundation - which is the
alumni of IIT Kharagpur students in the US.
India's premier institution will thus match its
skills with world-renowned American educational
institutions. For an institution that is rejoicing in
its golden jubilee year, there could be no better
crowning glory.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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