A Day Trip to My Alma Mater

I got a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur (IIT, KGP). Sixteen years after graduation, I visited it again from Kolkata during Puja 05.

Most students had gone home but the institute, though fairly deserted, still evoked a flood of memories. But it was different from nostalgia (it's been a while since I felt it for the IIT), which I find plentiful in most IITians I meet ("best four years of my life"). This gap may be because I have long viewed my IIT stint as, at best, passage to a richer life in more ways than one (for which I feel fortunate but not nostalgic; for me every four year period since has been better), and, at worst, a relative waste of time that played only a trifling role in my intellectual and moral development. I went again partly because places from our past teach us something about our present.

For an elite college that attracts some of India's "sharpest" kids, its near total lack of liberal education now seems a deprivation to me. That the IITs see no value in leavening technical instruction with the humanities should give us pause about the quality of its graduates. In my former department, only three non-professional courses are on offer today in four years, including English for Communication which comes with eight other courses in semester one. The incoming freshman must take nine courses in the first semester and eight in the second! And all that while negotiating life away from home. How can he learn anything well? UC Berkeley averages three or four each semester. The IIT KGP curriculum offers nothing even on the history of global science and technology, nor on the unique challenges of technological development in India.

The institute is still run by uninspiring men who cannot intelligently address an alumni gathering to save their lives. I recall it more as a time of stress and confusion than of joy and learning. Faculty teaching skills were abysmal on average; there was no recourse or accountability. The program was rigid: four years, minimal departmental mobility, meager choice of electives. Exam-related anxiety dreams haunted me for years afterwards. For most of us, the main reason to study was the grades, so we could land financial aid from US universities—what better validation was needed for its impoverished idea of education? Barring exceptions, it has fostered a generation of insipid, incurious men who are little more than glorified plumbers of the US economy.

So it is hardly surprising that my fondest memories relate to the wacky, inventive, and taboo things we did—as college boys are wont to—and some of the friendships I made then, the kind that are so hard to acquire later in life. Is it true that the most unaffected bonds between men are the ones formed when they are young and stupid? I also pleasantly recall what was rare in the 80s: a diverse student body from all across India, which helped me shed some of my provincial, small-town ways. Here I honed a more analytical outlook that has helped me in other walks of life. Here I learned to live independently. But I suspect that my own poor self-awareness, perhaps poorer than many of my peers, blocked me from making the best of the extra-curricular opportunities we did have. I regret not picking up more Bengali.

Nehru Hall, where I lived for four years, looked fairly unchanged, except the TV room is now a provision store and the canteen on the catwalk has moved below, near the mess. The rooms were exactly the same with their iron cots, open shelves, wobbly door latches, and the green flap doors that have withstood many a sutli bomb and late-night Floyd sessions. Every room now has a desktop PC and 3 Mbps fiber-optic net connection. I wondered what new marvels 19 year old boys—what with the IIT's sorry gender ratio of 20 boys to every girl—find on the Internet today? Trading pondies must be history. Are they as physically playful with each other as in my time? The water-tanks (aka s---tanks) in the bathroom area remain. I noticed some improvements in the plumbing and tile work by the washbasins, but the toilets are still the squatting kind. A few trees, once far below my second floor wing, C-top West, had grown quite tall. Recent rain had accentuated the withering of the cheap, yellow wall paint. The common room and the mess were closed for Puja. Pradeep, the provision store owner from the old days, is still around but was out that day.

Several new and slick halls of residence have come up (most for freshmen). A new all-AC building in the institute, with rows upon endless rows of desktop PCs on two floors; another architecturally bold building has lots of seminar rooms; both have nice, modern toilets and water coolers with AquaGuard. A new library is searchable online, said to be the largest technical library in Asia. Strangely, there were lots of security guards at the institute entrance but as soon as I said I was an alumnus they waved me in with broad smiles. A few Nescafe kiosks now exist inside with stone benches strewn about. The Tagore Open Air Theater was like before.

The Tatas have built a sports complex in light of which Gyan Ghosh looked positively derelict, its grass overgrown. The only person I recognized was the Surd at Sahara restaurant. Nair's has changed beyond recognition into another restaurant. Waldies was closed that day but its exterior looked the same. Anarks has been turned into a relatively upscale hotel-restaurant by its owner. The Tech Market has grown to at least twice its former size, as has the student body (they admit many more these days; lots more compete for it too). I saw several ATMs and banks. Rollicks ice-cream is still ubiquitous (my travel partner remarked, "gosh, such simple taste you had in ice-creams back then!"). Bimala Sweets lives, as does Thackers Books. The Surd’s joint outside Nehru Hall, where we occasionally splurged on a chikan dish, had morphed into a basic canteen and travel agent plus courier service.

It doesn't take a genius to see that the IITs lack a holistic idea of education. To be sure, India needs them and the skills they teach, but the IITs are definitely over-rated as centers of learning. Without roots in a vibrant university, they are more like the best "engineer training" institutes of India. What would Tagore have said? They're the holy grail of the entire urban school system, where too many middleclass Indians (including my own family) equate education with success in competitions and acquiring skills and degrees that promise plush jobs or a life abroad. Their all-too-pragmatic attitudes are understandable of course, if also less than admirable.

Most IITians continue their game after graduation. The great Indian middleclass now cheers their adult achievements: job titles, salaries, stock options, tenures, timely marriages and issues, houses and cars, but above all, money. Nothing is sexier than an IITian who makes his millions in America, or leads a multinational corporation. Achievements on this track leave me cold. I see in them little independence of mind (one can reasonably argue that it's too late to inculcate this at the IIT. It needs to start much earlier in school and at home, for which middleclass ideas of education must evolve). Barring exceptions, I find most IITians to be a thoroughly conventional and self-satisfied bunch. As immigrants in the US, in particular, they seem to embody some of the most unflattering stereotypes of the Marwaris of Calcutta.

It struck me afresh that the campus is so large, green, quiet, and pleasant to wander through. Many roads are wider; the Scholar’s Avenue was shadier than ever; the walk past the gymkhana and the swimming pool brought back memories of inter-hall competitions. Independent staff houses still look straight out of the 80s though: derelict verandas with lush tropical creepers, leaking pipes running down the back, green moss on the walls. But on the whole, IIT KGP, the first Indian Institute of Technology, has become a bigger institute since my time. India Today ranked it the #1 engineering college for three years running (2001-03) and it continues to hover near there. A shiny new management school is named after a philanthropic alumnus. It has more funds and projects, departments, teachers, researchers, labs, new halls, and a devoted alumni network. The cycle-rickshaw ride back to the impressive Kharagpur train station felt pleasant, with the area still sparsely populated and unhurried.

(Click here for pictures.)

Comments

[Yohan]

Hehe. this is a more measured tone than my own griping about IIT Bombay!

[Kapil]

I am presently studying in IIT Kharagpur and couldn't agree more about the lack of holistic education here (even a holistic science education).... I have myself more than once lamented the lack of a history of science course and the "conventional money based" achievement driven attitutde of most people.... and the way that this place(both the institute and the social structure) seems to be designed to crush out the last vestige of free thinking left in one..... but maybe that's the world and not just Kharagpur

[Kapil]

I would also like to add that IMHO unlike most of the people who commented; achievement (monetary, corporate, academic, research or otherwise) is in no way indicative of a successful education system (I would hate to use the phrase "successful" to describe an education system, but there is no better word), that is merely skill imparting... besides how many IITians (or people from other technology schools in India for that matter) have contributed to solving India's problems or even want to. (merely staying in India and saying I didn't emigrate when I could have doesn't count :P )

[Shunya]

There is an interesting story in Outlook India today by Rajesh Gajra. He reports on a blunt lecture delivered by an ex-IITian called Dunu Roy. Here is a brief excerpt:

No, it wasn't a frustrated or failed aspirant but a former IITian who said this last week at a lecture while addressing a crowd of nearly a thousand IITians and other college students during the annual Techfest at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB). But coming from Dunu Roy, who, unlike his colleagues and peers, decided to pursue grassroot integration of technology with local and practical requirements, it shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone who has followed this IITian's career.

But for a first-timer, the 90-minute talk and the subsequent Q&A could well have been an eye-opener. Provoking his audience by calling them "big fools" who know nothing about India and its village life, Roy said the IITians are victims of the politics of education and science. He added that the first lesson he learnt was that technologists and engineers are under an illusion that they get to take the decisions. That was not all. He went on to say that environmental dynamics aren’t understood by engineers who seem to specialise in solving one problem to create another one, thereby creating a "sustainability for the engineering profession—and not for the people".

"How many of you will end up working for the Haliburtons and Microsofts of the world?" he asked. And then proceeded to answer by pointing out that many of the students would do so because "Indian technical education is geared to meet global demands". The collapse of the US education system has led to a shortage of scientists and technologists, he said, which is why the courses they [the IITians] are learning are required for the US". Since Indian engineers are also cheaper than the American counterparts, "it made good sense for the Indian government to promote technical education so that you can provide cheap service to the US." Therefore, he suggested, the curriculum has changed. Earlier, he pointed out, IITs had a more integrated approach and also taught humanities, ethics and logic. But these subjects were removed in order to hasten the production of ‘unreal’ technologists.

Read the full story for more (pasting all of it here would be a violation of copyright). I haven't been able to find the full text or the audio of Mr. Roy's lecture. If someone finds it, please post a link here.

[Sanjay]

Could not agree more with Shunya. We need to free our young people's minds. Let them think for themselves, give them freedom to create something. Most technical education in India is overly structured and IITs are probably at top of the heap. All these sharp brains going to waste. All for a job at Citibank or wherever. Set them free if you want our society to be creative and vibrant.

[jose thomas]

Hello shunya....what a surprise....i have always wondered why most 'professional students' have very little awareness of current affairs and the 'arts'..but shunya dont fret and fume ..educate yourself man..read listen to music..watch good films..move around in a 'liberally educated environment' debate in coffee houses...o man no cigarettes now...get boozed once in awhile and split up with friends over an argument about the comparitive merits of a marquez or a rushdie....cheer up...all the best...jose Toronto

[Namit]

An excerpt from Martha Nussbaum's essay, The Robot Corporation, in the current issue of Outlook India:

With the ascendancy of the IITs has arisen a dominant conception of education that is technical, indeed mechanistic, given to force-feeding and regurgitation and suspicious of critical independence of mind. Education, in this picture, is about the implanting of useful skills that will ultimately lead to both personal and national enrichment. It should, therefore, focus on these technical skills and on the rote learning of whatever historical and political information is strictly necessary to deploy them in profitable ways. As Rabindranath Tagore once wrote of schools he knew, "Achievement comes to denote the sort of thing that a well-planned machine can do better than a human being can." He already saw that the globalisation of the economy was leading to an educational imbalance, "obscuring (our) human side under the shadow of soul-less organisation".

Education is not simply a producer of wealth; it is a producer of citizens. Citizens in a democracy need, above all, freedom of mind. They need to be trained to ask tough questions; to analyse what they read for accuracy, logic, and comprehensiveness; to reject specious reasoning and shoddy historical argument; to imagine alternative possibilities; to think what it might be like to be in the shoes of a person different from themselves. These skills are crucial for keeping democracy vital, preventing it from degenerating into mindless ideological banner-waving. They are also pivotal in dealing with the pressing issue of ethnic and religious violence, since people who cannot criticise propaganda or imagine the pain of another human being are ripe targets for the rhetoric of hate.

The skills I have just enumerated are associated with the humanities and the arts, and they are utterly neglected, even in the more successful government schools. Rote learning is the method of the hour, the imagination is viewed with suspicion, and the central question that is endlessly debated is what version of history students should memorise and regurgitate. A parent's glory is the admission of a child to one of the IITs. A parent's shame would be a child pursuing literature, or philosophy, or art—and this means that these subjects are despised even as elements in primary and secondary education.

... In many ways, the desperately poor who benefit from NGO programmes are receiving a better education for democratic citizenship than the increasingly prosperous middle classes. The rest of the nation should take note, for a nation of docile engineers and managers will not long remain truly free. It is time for a national focus on pedagogy—on the teaching of critical thinking and imagining—for a national acknowledgment that the humanities and arts are crucial for democracy's future.

[Experienced]

At my age of fifty, I have experienced it all. And I regret I dont have a technical degree. I think it was foolhardy of me to have deliberately thrown away any chance of becoming an engineer or a doctor. I did enjoy the creativity of a study in literature and I think, I have a lively mind. But I wish I had the freedom which comes with huge material wherewithals. Dont underestimate the blessings of the IIT branding. After that you can do as much of creativity as you like.

The real problem is the uninspiring quality of the IIT faculty (with exceptions). But dont expect too many great teachers to opt for being an IIT faculty at such lowly material wherewithals. No wonder Bansal Classes at Kota have wave after wave of great faculty because the pay is as high as unheard of anywhere else in the country.

[Annit]

I agree with Shunya completely. Although there was one thing:

There was a huge course in humanities. It was called ragging/orientation/disorientation. That changed the basic outlook of all and sundry. People with serious middle class hangups came and transformed into great, fun loving, testicle scratching fellows. And I can see the distinct difference between those who came from the ragging days and the converyor-belt-techies which are being generated nowadayds.

Coming to faculty, my therapist tells me that I am not yet ready to talk about it.

BTW, IIT reserves the right to revoke the degree of anyone who slanders the institution, upto ten years from graduation. That should be a good indicator too of how we are allowed to think and question the fabric of the cr*p that they were hurling at us.

I was waiting for my ten year anniversary, but just couldn't help it. Look out for Phani's I'm-In-Trouble (IIT) T-Shirts for large scale distribution from my website in 2009.

[Sridhar]

Thanks so much...this was such a great trip down memory lane. Awesome!
Sridhar Balasubramanian (KGP 89 -- Azad Hall)