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The government has proposed a possible nine (9) more IITs across India looking at the growing need and demand for engineers of the standard and level that IITs produce.

Directors of the existing IITs have however requested that the new institutes be given some other name so that the brand image of the existing IITs didn’t get diluted! They and their supporters argue that IITs have a recognition at par with American Colleges like Harvard etc and argue that institutes like Harvard have maintained their ranking as one of the top institutes of the world for many years together just because they have not added more Harvards anywhere else nor significantly increased the seats. If they had done it companies would have stopped recruiting from Harvard!

STOP recruiting altogether??? Isn’t that an absurd argument!

One of the supporters has cited that Louis Vuitton burns excess stock rather than sell it at a discount and thus maintains a high brand image!! What an example to emulate!!

IITs have remained at this number for decades now, the last one to have been included in the fold been the institute at Roorkee. Since then, the percentage of educated Indians and the need for engineers has increased manifold. In fact, the decision for these new centres has come in pretty late. However, there are some who do not want to share it with any others.

What they forget is that IITs are government bodies and not institutes like Harvard and so any claim to exclusivity only defeats the original purpose behind establishing them. Moreover China is planning hundreds of institutes of the standard better than that of our present IITs. Moreover our own IITs have their share of lamentations of being not up to the mark.

The new centres give an opportunity to make better IITs. IITs do have a good name in India, but at the world level, its ranking is questionable. Moreover, the need of our country is world class people and not just good brand name in the hands of handful of men. At this growth rate of the economy, we should be churning out atleast that many IITs every year!! Agreed that IITs are suffering because of lack of faculty, but that should be managed with a private-public participation, very attractive remuneration package or some other mechanism.

The reaction of the directors is not surprising. Its only a natural reaction. The nature of man to usurp all the good, and excellent just for himself, and expressing displeasure or even denial in sharing it with others is age old.

This nature of man is the reason behind the wars from olden times, the reason for the French revolution, the reason why Indo-Pak or Israel-Palestine or Cauvery water issues prevail, the reason for rise of rebellions like Naxals, Maoists, Bodos, ULFA etc. Both sides may have their justifications, however, if only we could think in the larger interests, much of the human problems could have been avoided.

However, no amount of parleying or lobbying is ever going to change the nature of man. He will always fight, literally or on paper. But I have read of an impending change in the Bible. Have you read about it? Nostradamus has predicted it too. In that era, no bones of contention will prevail. Its called the ‘Millenium of Peace’. Maybe in one of the future blogs I will talk about it.

IITs are not going to solve the problems of India as a whole but for now, I hope that the governments quickly goes ahead with the news IITs and mobilises a churning out of thousands of IITians.  

Tags: brand image, China, engineers, facilities, faculty, Harvard, high pay, human nature, india, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Louis Vuitton, millenium, new IITs, nostradamus, peace, Roorkee

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 10:56 pm and is filed under Economy, Geo, Society, Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.