Click to play videoNew Delhi: The Indian Institute of Technology is one of India’s most prestigious colleges and IITians feel brains, big bucks and jobs at MNCs sets them apart from the others in the rat race.
That may sound a bit materialistic. But IITians have been told to nudge their social conscience by President Abdul Kalam. An opinion that is shared by fellow students from colleges out of the IIT league.
“Mostly they try and crack the JE because they know that once they get in, they will get an assured job. After an IIT degree, they will go for an MBA because an IIT-IIM combination get the highest pay,” says Aditya a student of NIT, Nagpur.
However, off-camera the students said that the mandate for IIT was to churn out the best engineers - not social workers. And the packed curriculum ensures that there's no time for activism of any kind. But it's perhaps the system that they enter that's actually nipping any activism in the bud.
"Students are better at being led than at leading. It's the coaching that they undergo to crack the IIT JEE that makes them this way. They have been told that if you want to succeed, you need to do what you're told. And at that impressionable age, if that's the lesson you learn,” says Dean (AIR), IIT Powai, Proffesor Pradipta Banerji.
But IITians beg to differ. Their version of the story pegs it on pragmatism not materialism.
“Who'll listen to a student? I'll make my money and then come back and do something for the country,” says a student of IIT Powai, Prateek.
There's a tacit admission that IITians are materialistic, selfserving. But with it, there's also a promise that along with the wealth that inevitably follows the IIT tag, will come social awakening and awareness. Until then we just have to wait.
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