Where's the DISCO?

Post Update:Corrigendum

Apparently I have been an ass. As Amrutash has very politely pointed out, my outrage got the better of me and I didn’t bother to dig deeper into the issue before ranting about it. For the benefit of others, I have pasted his comment which brings the matter into a more relevant perspective.

HT has worded it very nicely to make it sound sensational. I'll fill in what they left out / got wrong -- stuff you should've found out before writing a blogpost about it. 1) The quota is called Board of Governers (BOG) quota. 2) Its definitely not a "secret", pretty much everyone knows it in KGP (its definitely not hushed up -- I don't know why HT needed RTI to find out about it, they could've just asked around). 3) To be eligible for BOG quota, you need a faculty parent AND 4) need to QUALIFY in IIT-JEE with a rank (any rank) (unlike what HT has mentioned) (You need 60% to qualify for IIT -- that rule is for everyone). 5) You can apply only for MSc courses in Kharagpur (like geology, maths, etc) NOT for Btech or Dual or Mtech (In 2003, MSc math in KGP would've been ranks 4500+ -- these are seats which sometimes would anyway go empty because no one took it). 6) As far as I remember it was banned for many years, except for the years of 2003 and 2004 (where, 50 odd kids would have gotten through).
I know this as I was eligible.
I think the practice is on par with most schools having a quota for teacher's children (including schools which have a waiting queue for 2-3 years). Not that I am defending it, I am just saying that I don't think its on par with AICTE corruption. By comparing the two, you are doing a Qureshi. It was introduced, as far as I understand as an incentive for faculty with children in middle school to stay on with IIT KGP -- since school education faclities in Kharagpur used to be limited. We are talking about 80s here (Pre-factory era).
The simple reason why the news has received a swift burial is that its really old news. The practice was stopped in 2004. There is no BoG quota to protest now! Besides, there are way many more things worth protesting about in IIT Kharagpur.
A follow-up lies here.

Obviously my complaint about no one from the IIT community speaking up about this no longer stands. However the validity of the ‘rural argument’ can be debated. The discussion would be more nuanced but I agree its no longer a topic meriting much thought. Sigh. I will be more careful.


Original Post


When I read this article on the Hindustan Times about a secret quota for children of the faculty at IIT KGP, I was not unmoved. It existed till 2005 and was removed when the RTI Act was passed. The infallibility of the JEE process had always been one of those totems of a few things which still remained accountable in this country. Of course the process has been faulty at times as earlier events have shown. Stupid mistakes have been made many times before but they were invariably honest mistakes. This recent development is however a departure.

At the risk of sounding clichéd and derisive I don't expect systems to function in India and do understand that its ingrained in our Indian psyche to work around obstacles rather than remove the obstacles themselves. So news about corrupt administrators in AICTE or the MCI or even outrageous lapses in defence purchase or a zillion other scandals are so easily digested by our perversely permissive society, something I have failed to see in any other developed/developing nation. So it is kind of immature of me to share my indignation about this IITKGP affair which seem so insignificant compared to the daily barrage of thievery we hear about. But this ‘small’ matter is wonderfully indicative of the fact that the lack of integrity in public offices have nothing to do with the level of education the person may have received.

My five years at IITM did give me opportunities to look at behind-the-scenes activities of the administration. My initial assumptions that IITs are an oasis of committed and sincere professors, administrators and staff were admittedly naive. The administration did have elements which characterize any Indian bureaucracy anywhere. Ego-driven supervisors and dishonest individuals never failed to make their presence felt. But for every shifty character I could see two earnest ones. My eventual opinion was that the system while flawed usually worked to give positive progress. The guys actually running the institute had taken a pragmatic approach where they tolerated a few of the malevolent elements as long as that didn’t affect the running of the institution and its core objectives significantly. While it might not seem the best strategy to purists, I feel it's perhaps the only one which could perhaps work.

So this makes me extremely keen to see how the IITs respond to this admission of a criminal subversion of its admission process which in no way can be trivialized. This offence is impossible without tacit sanction from the rest of the IITs as JEE chairmanship rotates between the IITs every year. Left to the individual professors, I am sure a majority of them would denounce them in the strongest of terms. They have never hesitated to denounce the ‘quality’ of students which the newer JEE formats have supposedly resulted in. Dishonesty among students has always been efficiently investigated and resoundingly punished in the famous DISCOs (disciplinary committees) across all IITs. I hope I can safely assume that they will show a similar enthusiasm in demanding a more thorough investigation of all their colleagues who would have directly misused their position or indirectly facilitated it by remaining quiet.

Not surprisingly the news has already received a rapid and quiet burial. Apart from the downright stupid defence that ‘It wasn’t just me’ from one of the culprits which sounds more like Shaggy's next song title, no past or current IIT administrator has spoken a word. Some of the criminals remain at top administrative positions. Like anywhere else the heads have nodded and moved on. When I hear people sigh that if educated people were running the country and their institutions, we would see better days, I involuntarily start looking for baseball bats. No amount of education or degrees can change a human’s desire for status quo or self serving systems when in a position of influence.

Or to sum up in a typical IITM style with its love for succintness, " Kya fart hai!"

Facebook Layoffs

A recent comment from good friend Uss got me thinking. He remarked that we have 222 friends in common on Facebook. I shifted from Orkut to Facebook over two years back because the number of people on my friends list was getting too big to handle. It had begun to hover around the four hundred mark and I was pretty sure I didn’t have so many friends. Not with my demeanour.

Facebook looked more exclusive and I decided start my virtual life anew. No more of the wild wanton Orkut days where every friend request had to be accepted unless it was a Brazilian whom I was pretty sure I hadn’t met. Now this was before the dastardly days of Mafia requests and Farmville invites. Facebook used to be a place where simple, sober people used to interact and the wildest anyone got was by throwing sheep or super poking someone. A complacency slowly crept in thanks to an increasingly misplaced sense of exclusiveness. That combined with a host of circumstances like electoral compulsions, graduation sensitivities, romantic liaisons, nostalgic affections and professional commitments made things worse resulting in the screening process for friend request reaching very deplorable limits. The only thing easier than getting into my friend list was sleeping with Tiger Woods.

Now things have come to a head. I can’t be comfortable with over five hundred people claiming to be my friend. What if they all decide to borrow money at the same time? And now that I am no longer fighting elections, have graduated, not getting hitched and beginning to lose memory, it is time to follow the world’s premier corporations in what they do best . Lay-offs. Right. I have decided to lay-off a huge part of my friends and slim down my friend-list. I need to be ready to face the challenges of the upcoming upturn with an elegant, tidy friend-list devoid of redundancy and surplus . In this age it helps to be ruthlessly professional about everything. Even your Facebook profile.

Thankfully I am not at a loss on how to execute this challenging task. My last few months have been spent closely observing how my own company does it and I have decided to replicate the process. I will call it F.O.R (Friendship Outsourcing Resource). This is how it will work.

• A list of the ‘indispensables’ will be created. They include EIC, MM, WOF, Shaastra core members, old comrades whose advice is valued, individuals whose references are valued, HNIs, brother and mom. They are exempted from the F.O.R process and need not bother. Their indispensability will however be reviewed every five years.

• One individual will be selected from each of the top Univs in the US depending on their ability to build networks in their campuses and their propensity to assist me in times of need. They are exempted from the F.O.R but their relevance will be reviewed on a quarterly basis. Friendship will be renewed from the first of April of every year depending on the annual appraisal report.

• The same will be done for all Fortune 500 contacts.

• All females are exempted. They form only 15% of the total numbers. Defunct relationships will be slowly phased out by the last quarter of 2010 and replaced with new initiatives. The idea is to keep the percentage at 15% and increased only in select cases when they seem to add intellect or glamour to the list.

• All foreigners (not NRIs) are exempted till I have travelled enough to believe having foreigners, who are just aquantainces on the list is not so cool anymore.

• Everybody else who do not fall under the above criterions will have to re-apply with a new friendship request with a note detailing why continuing our association online is a good idea and how it may further the individual social development of both.

• The requests will be scrutinized by me and the selected individuals will be offered a two year friendship deal. The deal will include mutually agreed upon commitments on the number of status message comments, likes, photo comments, wall posts and personality votes which we will deliver unto each others profiles. Once we are clear on the deliverables and agree to contract termination in event of Mafia/Farmville invites or reneging on the deliverables, we re-induct each other in our lists.

• There will be quite a few who don’t make the cut and they will be summarily receive a letter of regret. Every mail will be personalized because I believe lay-offs should always have a humane touch. A sample is given below.

It breaks my heart to say this but I think we should we on other people’s live feed from now on. Your contributions to my profile have been immense but as you can understand, to face society more confidently I need people with skills other than yours. Please feel free to call or meet me as long as it just once a year and it is in a public place.

Following the methodologies stated above, I hope to cut up to 60% of the names currently present. I understand everyone who will need to go through F.O.R are speculating exactly on what standards will the applications be evaluated. I want my friend list to get rid of its engineer & IIT focus and have a more diversified portfolio of individuals. I admit there will be an informal 2% quota for genuine sportsmen. People with a background in the arts with an understanding of Bernoulli’s theorem or vice versa have an edge over anyone with just one of the qualities.

We cannot predict whether this pink slip method will improve my social standing and give me more control over my virtual life. A committee of my alter-egos will go though the quarterly results and bring out a review in the annual Facebook profile report ‘Why do I have so much free time and what I do with it’. Pdfs will be mailed to anyone interested in going through it.

If you like it rate it & share it!

Beware of the Editor: Revisiting Chandrayaan

This video was uploaded on the blog over two and a half years ago. But the sheer excitement of being on television prevented me from commenting on the delightful way the media absorbs information and spits out complete drivel ruining people’s days in the process. Now that the global oil prices have finally stabilized, I can take out some time to elaborate.

In the year 2007 I was the part of the team which was supposed to be blamed for anything which went wrong during Shaastra 2007. One of the highlights of the event was a feature on Chandrayaan with some of the project leaders telling us about how the whole thing would make the moon (and ISRO) look cool again. Thanks to the media interest, we (me, Muski, Parinda & Jimmy) landed ourselves in this short segment on NDTV. We ditched a class and gave a 20 min long discourse to the reporter on various aspects of the whole project and how it was received by the students. I have given below a succinct version of what we actually told and then how irreverent and imbecilic editing made the whole thing resemble a train wreck.

Input

Me: I expressed my wonder that something so complex could actually be so small and compact.

Jimmy: He discussed at considerable length the details of the two talks we had, describing in intricate detail the technological aspects and future implications. He ended it by quoting one of the jokes of the main speaker about how you could even plan a honeymoon on the moon thanks to Chandrayaan.

Muski, Parida: Discussed their learning at length and their pride at being associated with the event.



Output

The video begins with the anchor saying that one of the aims of Chandrayaan would be to explore the possibility of honeymooning on the moon. Any doubts about whether she is joking is removed by the capital lettered tab below, screaming similar sentiments. Well news anchors are known to have an IQ lesser than Pacific plankton. So she can be excused. But the rest of segment was even more depressing.

Sounding like a wife after the wedding night, expressing her deep anguish about the short-comings of her partner, I am heard saying “Its very small. Its not as big as you are expecting it to be”. The sense of appreciation comes across as complete disillusionment with the India space program just because of sizing issues.

Muski barely manages to mention how proud he was before being brutally cut off to focus on an apparently melancholic and suspiciously constipated Parinda who mentions something about polar ice caps with his body language clearly indicating he doesn’t think highly of NDTV. The fact that he had been speaking for quite a while and may have begun drift a bit comes across as total indifference in the few seconds he gets.

But the worst was reserved for dear Jimmy. None of his astute observations on the event made it to the final cut other than his off the cuff remark on honeymoons with his mistimed snigger making it look as if he needs help in reigning in his mental faculties. The fact that they spelt his name Ukala, leaving out the all important N and making him look like a retarded descendent of a Hawaiian musical instrument didn’t help in anyway.

After this sorry excuse of a news report and ruining our carefully crafted reputations by calling us ‘techies’ on screen, we have refused all future NDTV requests for interviews till date.

2009 AD: What a waste.

As my flight made a sudden lift and barely avoided ramming into another plane on the runway while landing today, I got a bit jittery. This propensity of near misses, each bearing an eerie similarity to something out of an upcoming Final Destination sequence, is getting a tad painful. To be blunt, I am not enjoying almost getting killed anymore. So as the proverbial flashing past of life happened during those vital minutes when it seemed that all was lost, I got thinking. While I grudgingly admit that the overpowering thought was about what would happen to all the money people owed me in case I kicked the bucket, I also looked back on 2009. And they were not what one would call, pleasant thoughts.

What a disappointing year this has been. Nothing impressive achieved, not even thought about or even attempted. Its just been one expensive over-rated dinner after another, irreverent staring at walls, lifting weights and dropping them, comparing different newspapers, strategizing daily beverage intake, making excuses, mocking, evil financial plotting, waiting for downloads to happen and standing in long lines. I paid a heavy price for hubris, messed up great opportunities and whined uncontrollably. I have sunk to such lows that I have begun to like green tea and Orkut. The last straw was when I felt like watching Friends again.

What a bad year. Anyway, lessons have been learnt. Or so I hope. I will go back to doing what I do best and leave mature things to mature people. 2010, be kind to me.

Seasons greetings everybody. Wishing you the very best, and whatever.

Why so reckless?

My submission to The Filter Copy, September 2008

“It is legal because I wish it”-Louis XIV.

India seems to be the place where good ideas come to die. The recent progress in the systematic dismantling of India's premier educational institutions proves that however good an idea might be, the Indian government will eventually ensure its demise. Even if that idea is heralded as one of the greatest ever achievements of modern India.

The fifties saw our country making tremendous strides in virtually every field in spite of a chronic shortage of resources, virtually absent infrastructure and abject poverty. India showed the world that self-belief and an audacity to hope was enough to turn tables overnight. West Germany, Singapore, Japan, all ravaged by the war adopted our no holds barred march towards progress inspite of being reduced to near extinction as nation states. Fifty years later we see ourselves left significantly behind. But yet, we had still a few symbols of that ebullient decade which continued to inspire the nation of the potential within. The IITs occupy the highest pedestal in that short list of symbols.

The motives and intentions behind the creation of the IITs are well documented. The achievements of its eventual alumni even more so. They became the shining examples of a society which showed the world that this is how they train their best. It took decades of churning out top-notch professionals before the IITs became a synonym for excellence. And now that they enjoy such prestige on this planet, the Indian government, headed ironically by a distinguished academic, decided that maybe the time has come when they extinguish the last beacon of excellence in Indian Higher Education.

It has been a three pronged approach by the venerable HRD minister. The increase in reservation for students, the opening of a host of new IITs and of course ordering reservation in faculty positions. Bringing social equality has been the official reason. I won’t delve into the widely discussed issue of OBC reservation for students. The other two decisions, I feel have done more damage to the IIT brand.

Let’s begin with the opening of new IITs. Decision to open more premiers engineering institutions. Excellent. Calling them IITs. Short-sightedness. The concept of Brand Dilution may not make sense to the babus of Shaastri Bhawan but it does mean something in the rest of the world. We do not have twelve Stanfords, fifteen Oxfords or twenty two ETHs. The argument is if we have more IITs then we will have more IITians and hence by more hyper intelligent engineers! But IITs don't make people clever. They just provide the finishing touches to people who are already very smart. And I don't know whether people have noticed but we as a race have always faced a shortage of smart people. By having a few more buildings, we won’t end raising the IQ of the people occupying them. It does not work that way, Mr. Singh.

For some reason elitist has become a bad word in this country. Anyone who opposed calling the new institutes IITs are called elitists who want to prevent others from enjoying the facilities of an IIT. Yes, IITs are elitist. That’s because they were meant to be. The irreproducible campus culture would not have been possible if they allowed anybody in. If MIT allowed ten times the people in, would it have remained an attractive option as it is now? Is being the very best something to be looked down upon? Is propagating mediocrity the way ahead? Rather providing the new institutes with the same facilities but a different name would help in creating a new brand altogether which would build its own reputation over time. The gestation period for these new IITs will be quite a few years and in all probability the students passing out would not help in building the IIT brand further.

And will someone please pay attention to the problems faced by the current IITs before establishing half a dozen more? There is a massive crunch in faculty in all the IITs. While the administration is still trying to figure out how to fill the hundreds of vacant posts, we have another 6 adding to the problem. Recruitment of an IIT faculty member is no mean task. The applicants have to go through the strictest of screening procedures before making it as an assistant professor. Makes sense. They are supposed to educate and inspire the brightest set of people. It is difficult for a student to respect his or her teacher, leave alone learn, if the teacher is intellectually deficient and not qualified enough. So where are the teachers going to come from for the new IITs? We know they are not out there waiting. They would have filled up the already vacant posts then. So what is the ingenious plan of the government? My guess is they do not have a plan. You need people who can think when you need a plan and rumors suggest having the capability to think is a criterion for disqualification if you want to work for the HRD ministry.

Let’s come to this tiny issue called infrastructure. Experts believe, but then aren't they always wrong, that to run a world class institute it is a good thing if there are actual classes, labs, machines, hostels present in the campus. When the 'sudden' decision to start enrolment in at least 3 new IITs was taken for the year 2008-09, the IIT admission was taken by surprise. One primary reason was the absence of any form of basic infrastructure at the new venues. Other than the state governments securing the land, they didn't have more than a few old buildings. And as a result the already burdened IITs will have to help incubate one of the new ones. Incubate translates to harboring the students of the new IITs till the actual campus is ready.

IITG began similarly. It had humble beginnings, the reason for its establishment was political but with time it has come up very well. Something similar to the conditions now. But there is a difference between 1994 and 2008. In 1994 the existing IITs were not as plagued by a slew of problems as they are now. And an increase of one to the existing list did not bring Brand Dilution in to the picture. Curiously enough right now a survey of the standard of IITs among students will place IITG at the bottom. So 14 years and huge investments haven't actually brought things at par. This brings us back to the contention that it’s not the facilities and infrastructure of the IITs but the students joining them which is responsible for its pre-eminence. One may increase the number of IITs to a hundred but the number of smart people joining them will remain the same and they will continue to prefer the original five.

Let’s stop for a moment and keep the pessimism aside. If the current administration actually pulls off what the Nehru administration pulled off in the fifties, we all naysayers will look like idiots. Then in a few years we would have over 10 IITs producing brilliant engineers and this decision will be hailed as a masterstroke. So why are be criticizing before the idea has even come to fruition. Is that not blatant negativism and aren't we unconsciously preventing quality education for reaching more people? After giving this notion considerable thought I came to the conclusion that in spite of the possibility of a success, I would not be too hopeful. Why? The reason is this. This government consulted no one, did no preliminary survey, and took no IIT in to confidence before proclaiming this new idea. Already admission to those new IITs has been delayed because of a lack of preparations. So is it reasonable to expect that a government which is so short-sighted while taking a decision will be able to manage to actually execute it? Highly improbable.

Now let’s touch over a more contentious issue. Reservation among faculty positions. Sometimes I wonder what exactly the thought process behind such astounding decisions is. I would give anything to lay my hands on the minutes of the meetings in the HRD Ministry at the end of which they come to conclusions as mentioned above. But something tells me there are no meetings as such or any thought process either. Just a flash in the pan decision to create a flutter in the urban media and buy over specific constituencies which would suit the purposes of the honorable HRD minister.

How does reservation come in to the picture where competence should be the only benchmark is something which has been plaguing the minds for a long time. Has here been any instance where a proficient teacher was not given an opportunity because of his caste? Has there been even a single recorded instance of a professor from a disadvantaged background being sidelined by the administration? Is it viable to sacrifice quality in the name of social up liftment which will effect the minutest of percentages? The answer is not in the affirmative for any of the one above. But in turn it will definitely end up making the faculty slowly become conscious of their identity and before long a sense of division will slowly creep in. A system as proposed will wreck havoc with the academic structure in the IITs. Sample this. In a curriculum heavily dependent on the concept of electives, the strength in the class of a particular faculty member depends on his ability to deliver. Never does a student bother to inquire about his or her background. But a reservation facilitated induction may bring in questions regarding the credibility and aptitude of the individual concerned. So we may actually have brilliant Profs trying to justify their right to be in the institute just because they may be from the weaker sections. The chances of that happening are very remote but if there is even one such case; it would be an indelible blemish on the social fabric of the wonderfully heterogeneous IIT campuses.

Reservations restrict brilliance. It’s an unfortunate byproduct of social engineering. Hence it should be used as a policy not indiscriminately but in specific areas. Our research institutions and defense laboratories have almost 50% reservation and as a result countless posts go unfilled which would otherwise have been taken up by skilled individuals. Unfortunately the achievements of those very institutions leave a lot to be desired. If we want to push the IIT education structure in to the same well, then one would really have to doubt whether the hearts and minds of the country are at the right place. Reservations were incorporated to assimilate various sections. Misuse and overuse has resulted in the opposite. It has created sense of identities where we wanted to dissolve those lines of division.

It is very heartening to see the administration stand up to the government in opposing this draconian step. Inspite of all these regressive steps, it is hope that keeps the chins up in the campus. Hope that the government will realize its follies just at the last moment. Hope that the illustrious alumni will convince the authorities of the perils involved. Hope that the students and the faculty will stand together to uphold the sanctity of the institute. Hope that complete autonomy will be decreed and it will unshackle the IITs from the government’s whims.

8401!

Should one celebrate one's 8401 st rotation around the earth's axis?

Well, I have no reason to.