THE 'OTHER' INDIA

I have been a keen follower of the Russian political scenario and as we all know that it has come to be dominated in recent times by Vladimir Putin.Along with his party "UNITED RUSSIA" he has come to dominate the mental landscape in his country to such an extent that all dissent has been crushed or silenced.Only recently some opposition has come into the picture in form of Garry Kasparov , the famous chess player who launched his party "the other Russia" and is bravely trying to be the voice of the mute and the muted in his country.

IIT = INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), are a group of thirteen autonomous engineering and technology-oriented institutes of higher education established and declared as Institutes of National Importance by the Parliament of India. The IITs were created to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of India after independence in 1947. The students and alumni of IITs are colloquially referred to as IITians.
Taking in students by the JEE, which is reportedly the toughest exam in the world,their name is a brand in itself from Bathinda to Bangalore to Boston.An entire multi crore industry thrives on this.Things once came to such a scene once that we had people repeating for ages all together just to get a way into these colleges.
What i accept is the fact that these colleges are the cradle of excellence and the fact that we have many IITians behind the best brands in the world, but the question i m asking today is that whether we are neglecting the enormous talent that pours out of the other engineering colleges in the country?

Today i request you to put your self in the shoes of a prospective engineer who got rejected from an IIT.The odds that he/she faces are enormous from day1.The so called "SAMAJ" belittles him to no end...starting from the NOT-SO-CORRECT BELIEF that is ingrained in him that he does not have any value in the job market... to matters of heart..where he is either rejected in favour of an iitian..or the matrimonial ads stating "IITian groom/bride required". Every one worth his penny is out there to advice him.All doing little but belittling his "UNSUCCESSFUL" hard work of last 2 years.His whole future looks DARK to him.

Today i request you to be GARRY...and give a thought to the non-iitians as they are called.The poor souls, whose life is said to have finished for all purposes just because he messed up a 3 hr test for an institute that is not even in the top 50 engg colleges of the world,

Today i request you to give a thought to this "other" india..

IITs were established as a part of the Nehruvian model of mixed economy where the state was responsible.. for everything from SCOOTERS to education.Heavily funded and subsidized, along with the increase in the requirement of engineers, soon made them temples of technical education in India.But soon, we found out, they were not enough.. with the opening of the economy.. many private institutes also came up.
However IITs were already a niche brand.They even made their way into popular literature





More than the Dilbert strip i would like u to have a look @ pic no 2... now that he is through.. a typical IITian can let his hair down a little bit.And to be honest, he deserves it.He did some hard work and was paid for it.Now he is practically "branded for life"

For a non IITian i m afraid, things are not so rosy.He wonders which magazine rankings should he chose... which NIT or private university is good.. which is not.His JEE qualified peers have made it big.He has no clue whether he would be able to look them in the eyes again.And wen he is through to college, he knows that the fight has already begun.

The College that he got to.. is not the college of his dreams. Not a very huge library...hmmm.... FREE INTERNET what is that..? that is supposed to be for IITs no ? Subsidized canteen.. or cafeteria.. oh gimme a break.... and no.. none of his profs had published papers in IEEE or yeah no guest lectures... NO Asia level college FESTs for him..

This is wen he decides to slug it out

when an IITian makes it big.. some new invention.. some innovation.. its FRONT PAGE NEWS,despite the fact that he had adequate resources at his disposal .And when the OTHER guy does it... having struggled against the RED TAPE @ his college, having to write endless applications and begs his college for some support or patronizing.. you know.. what happens...

HOW MANY ARE US ARE AWARE OF where India’s First Tri- Fuel Hybrid Concept Car was made or where India’s first indegeniously developed Humanoid Robot was invented or which colleges besides IITs have been representing INDIA @ FORMULA STUDENT England ?
An IITian knws his college attracts the best industry attention... and to be honest they deserve it.

What about others? Little said the better.His college needs "mass-recruiters" to make it 100%..NO AMERICAN BANKS or INTERNSHIPS for him. NO BIG OIL BEHEMOTHS or some construction company in the Middle East for him.

Wouldn’t it be fair to say that he has to struggle doubly hard?
He gets down to work. Makes compromises with what he has got and tries to do his best. But do we appreciate him?

India today has her own place in the world. After years altogether of slow growth, its only now that we are so robust financially that we are among the only 2 countries to have beaten the worst economic recession since 1929, and may be it would not be unfair to say that she remains the only country with such an inclusive growth in progress taking along with it swathes of population out of poverty. At this critical juncture in our history is it only about IITians? What I want to say is that while there is no doubt about the IITs being perhaps the pinnacle of technical education in India, isn’t it time that we start give a damn about the "other" India too ?

till then
TO INFINITY AND BEYOND....