More IITs?

It has been said for a long time, by many, many people. The IITs, India's premier technological institutes, don't have sufficient capacity for India's teeming millions. There are many students being denied the chance for a quality education, just because there aren't enough seats in the IITs, they say. More IITs will mean a better education for millions, more research output, better faculty, is what everyone proclaims. IITs are the silver bullet that will ensure that the percentage of "employable" engineers we produce increases.

I might be alone in thinking this, but why? Does calling a college the Indian Institute of Technology, (fill in the city), make it a quality institute? Or is it that only institutes bearing the IIT moniker have a right to better funds, quality faculty, good students and high-tech research. Forgive me, but where does it say that colleges must permanently be graded as First Class, Second Class and Steerage?

Here is the killer question. Why must the IITs be considered the premier institute in the country forever and always? Why can't other colleges be made to meet the standards of the IITs, if not in the brilliance of students (the cream will always go to the most venerable college, after all), then at least in terms of faculy, facilities and syllabi? It's true that our premier educational instutions, the IITs and the IIMs are considered among the best in the world. But what of the others? On an average, do the other institutes come anywhere near making the global top 500?

I once played a computer game called Brian Lara Cricket, with the great Geoffrey Boycott commentating. At the start of any match involving India, Boycs would launch into his programmed spiel about the strengths of each team, and he would say in that Yorkshire accent,"Well, India...their best players are as good as any in the world, but some of their other players are sub-standard, so they have some weak players in their lineup."
That one sentence just about sums up our country. At our best, we are as good as anyone else in the world, at just about anything. Unfortunately, the gap between the best and the rest is as large as the Grand Canyon.

We boast of four of the world's ten richest men. We also have some of the worst cases of human suffering in some parts of our country, conditions which handily beat even sub-Saharan Africa. Our film industry produces the most films in the world and is one of the richest in the world. Despite this, there is a startling lack of any international prizes of repute (not even counting the Oscars). Our cricket team has gems like Sachin Tendulkar, who must play alongside hopeless cases such as Wasim Jaffer. And the country of IIT produces millions of engineers who are simply "unemployable": computer engineers who couldn't code to save their lives, mechanical engineers who don't know a crankshaft from a piston, and electrical engineers who are clueless about the difference between AC and DC.

The vast majority of engineering students will only ever see the inside of an IIT at one of their excellent festivals. That doesn't mean they aren't entitled to a quality education. This holds true for just about every kind of student (medical, law whatever) in this vast country, and I believe, since we have the largest young population in the world, we may also have the largest student population in the world. This really is something to think about, very hard.