http://themag.in/2009/07/iit-a-brand-no-more/ A Magazine for All Generations Sat, 28 Aug 2010 06:11:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 http://themag.in/2009/07/iit-a-brand-no-more/comment-page-1/#comment-26 Achintya Nath Sexena Mon, 27 Jul 2009 14:02:21 +0000 http://themag.in/?p=502#comment-26 The IITs were never intended to be a brand as they were never set up for a commercial purpose. It was due to their noble objective of creating world class engineers in the service of the Indian nation and steps taken to ensure that the students get the best opportunities. In short, the only 'Return on Investment' sought from IITs was quality researchers (a fact that people often forget given the craze for the B.Tech degree and the IIT-JEE exam) and engineers and not a 'brand' like the more commercially driven private institutes. Till now, there is no institution in India other than IITs and IISc where there is an emphasis on research and almost all the institutional research taking place in India is in these institutions. Reservation is a problem created by the politicians and not the IITs and the author of this article only shows his ignorance and foolishness by saying that the IITs lowered the cut-offs for students. Truth is, there is political pressure on not only IITs but also the private colleges to admit more SC/ST/OBC candidates and also to ensure that they pass. The Constitution of India has been amended and Article 15(5) has been inserted to empower the government to extend caste quotas in private colleges. The State of U.P. has in fact acted on this article and made quotas mandatory in private institutions, whether aided or unaided, foreign or Indian. So quota issue will affect not only IITs but all institutions, government or private. Therefore, the author of this post is requested to come out of his well and take a holistic view of things outside, otherwise he would only be exposing his ignorance of the real issue. The IITs were never intended to be a brand as they were never set up for a commercial purpose. It was due to their noble objective of creating world class engineers in the service of the Indian nation and steps taken to ensure that the students get the best opportunities. In short, the only ‘Return on Investment’ sought from IITs was quality researchers (a fact that people often forget given the craze for the B.Tech degree and the IIT-JEE exam) and engineers and not a ‘brand’ like the more commercially driven private institutes.
Till now, there is no institution in India other than IITs and IISc where there is an emphasis on research and almost all the institutional research taking place in India is in these institutions.
Reservation is a problem created by the politicians and not the IITs and the author of this article only shows his ignorance and foolishness by saying that the IITs lowered the cut-offs for students. Truth is, there is political pressure on not only IITs but also the private colleges to admit more SC/ST/OBC candidates and also to ensure that they pass. The Constitution of India has been amended and Article 15(5) has been inserted to empower the government to extend caste quotas in private colleges. The State of U.P. has in fact acted on this article and made quotas mandatory in private institutions, whether aided or unaided, foreign or Indian. So quota issue will affect not only IITs but all institutions, government or private. Therefore, the author of this post is requested to come out of his well and take a holistic view of things outside, otherwise he would only be exposing his ignorance of the real issue.

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