Click to play videoMumbai: The fresh young graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology are the toast of the engineering world, both at home and abroad.
They are India's hottest export and it is said that the IITs have produced more millionaires per capita than any other undergraduate institution in the world.
However, the elite IITian now finds himself in the dock, placed there by none other than the President of India himself.
At the IIT's Global Convention held in Mumbai last week, President APJ Abdul Kalam said, "The value addition of IIT is very low for its students. The knowledge products and intellectual properties added by IITians are minimal."
The President's uncomfortable observations about the IITian's contribution to his country - or the lack of it - brings into focus disturbing trends in the institute.
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- IIT-Bombay sees around 1,500 graduates every year, but it is estimated that over 50 per cent of them go abroad to work, mostly to the United States.
- There were an estimated 25,000 IIT alumni in the US in 2003. That number is expected to be higher now.
- A University of California study found that 10 per cent of all start-ups in the Silicon Valley between 1995 and 1998 were by Indians, most of whom had come from the IIT system.
Not surprisingly, IITs are far from forthcoming about the number of their alumni who go abroad to study and work, even though the IIT clique knows that this is an open secret.
Says an IIT alumnus and now the editor of Financial Express, Sandipan Deb, "That is a failure of the Indian industry. You know all these things and then you are hired to look after a boiler or something. That is highly frustrating."
There's no denying the country's IITs have almost single-handedly put India's intellect on the global map, but when the country's President thinks it is sorely underrepresented on the Indian one, it may be a reminder for the IITs to put their achievements in perspective.
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