What's wrong with the IITs

(Written originally in 2024, mildly edited)

I've been teaching for 30 years at a top old IIT in a top-ranked department. I can confidently say that the best students I have witnessed were between c. 1995 and 2006. The ones from my vintage (mid 80s) and some years later have done quite well academically and as entrepreneurs. Several things have made things go down.

There are many poor decisions made at IITs due to incompetent, timid and unimaginative leadership, but in the past, the faculty's ability, personal contact with the students and above all, the students' enterprise together were able to maintain a high-enough standard that was the envy of even top departments in top universities across the globe. (At least at the undergrad level in the top departments of the old IITs). [A Turing award winner whom I hosted in 1997 confessed to me that he thought CMU had great undergrads, but after meeting about 20+ of my students said he would have to revise that opinion.]

First, the media played up IITs to the extent that the number of candidates writing the entrance exam became too large to handle with a "subjective exam". In the name of making JEE correction tractable, they went MCQ ("objective" only in that no one objects to it). What this meant was that questions became tests of speed, less analytical and creative (think Berkeley series Physics), and much more formulaic. Pattern-matching templates gave a huge fillip to the already huge and powerful coaching industry. Kota became a bigger problem than the so-called ills that everyone blamed on "quota".

The students we saw within IIT, except a few in the top ranks, tended to be burnt-out, and often had to be deschooled (qv Ivan Illich). The motivation changed -- parents invested in their children so that they could get huge pay packages. And the pay for select jobs kept going up. What the outside world, and the world of WhatsApp Uncles did not know or want to know, was that such high-paid jobs only came to a few. But the media and IITs' PR machines only bruited the top-line numbers.

JEE aspirant numbers swelled even more, and the exam became a filtering MCQ exam followed by an old-style test administered to a more manageable number. This would in time morph into an MCQ test followed by another MCQ test. However, even at this point both stages of JEE were managed by the IITs.]

Then came Arjun Singh and the 27% quota for OBCs (quickly modified to be OBC-Non Creamy Layer). Simultaneously many new IITs were established, only 2 of which have done quite well in their first 15 years: those at Hyderabad and Gandhinagar, both because of locational advantages and visionary first directors. To protect the number of general category students taken in, the overall intake went up by 54%. This increase was effected over a 3 year period, but it nevertheless had several deleterious effects on the IITs.

Among the many problems with the sudden increase were that these were not planned in terms of resources. The old IITs were looking to invest in research programmes (and more high-quality PhDs). Instead they were doubly saddled with an increase in class sizes in their own institute (without concomitant hostel and classroom facilities) as well as teaching and mentoring duties in the new IITs.  

The situation with the new IITs was worse. Typically, the HRD bureaucrats did the ass-backwards thing of enrolling students first, then slowly hiring a director, then worrying about curricula, and then planning a campus, and then hiring faculty. There is another problem that is more touchy to discuss, and that is the distribution of students being taken in due to the nature of quotas. [This deserves a separate post]. The main problem is not the usually articulated "fairness" issue, which is just voicing upper caste privilege, but rather that an increasing number of students being selected are less and less prepared for a college education compared with their peers who have had many more privileges during their schooling years. (And given that IIT is now a "brand name" that can vault them to a much higher salary level, these less privileged group will never even consider foregoing the opportunities... and why should they?) The IIT faculty have scarcely recognised these huge changes in the intake, and not been able to modify their expectations or their approach in teaching. It is hard to change course, it is hard to change courses; it is hard to correct courses, it is hard to course-correct.

The pressures that these relatively disadvantaged students face (many are first generation college students, many come from modest backgrounds, and their parents and families have bet the bank on them) are huge, and the cause for many to suffer anxiety and depression.

Worse was to come. JEE's popularity had so distorted school education that many (well-meaning) activists decided that the school system could only be reformed by changing JEE. This narrow interventionist approach seemed to ignore societal obsessions, media stories of the huge salaries from international companies (mainly financial, information technology, and consultancies), the IIT "brand" story, the dwindling growth in high-paying technical jobs across different industries, and that schooling was deteriorating for other reasons.

Kapil Sibal's tenure brought more turmoil, when he proposed that Class XII exams would be given due weightage in the selection process. The JEE "mains" examination was taken out of IITs' purview (they anyway lacked the ability to run the exam at the new scale) and only JEE advanced (itself a far too big MCQ exam) remained in their domain.

Then came Mr Modi's EWS quota (EWS qualification was then pegged at Rs 8 lakh max salary of the parents) ostensible of 10%, but which translates to a 25% increase in student intake, to protect the number of general category students. The EWS quota is also perversely interpreted -- as non-SC, non-ST, non-OBC-NCL students. This was also accompanied by many more new IITs (now 23), and also a supernumerary intake of women students so that they form 20% of the undergrad population. From a societal perspective, each of these steps may be unexceptionable, in fact the stated objectives are laudable. But expanding good education and making it accessible to the relatively disadvantaged is perhaps not best achieved by thrusting it onto a few well-performing institutions that are struggling to keep pace with the top universities in the world (due to lack of funds, and a disastrous nipping, by the likes of MM Joshi during his tenure as HRD Minister, of alumni endowments for the IITs. Remember Bharat Shiksha Kosh, wound up in 2004 with a teeny corpus?)

The current malaise in the IIT systems is largely because of venal, spineless and pliable directors, who kowtow to the ministry, and allow all manner of third-rate bureaucrats dictate policy to them. Their role during the pandemic generally was unimaginative at the most charitable, to bordering on criminally negligent (if one takes a harsh look at their decisions). Anything to stay popular with the bureaucracy and political leadership for their next posting. And to appease a less motivated, less self-aware student body -- that believes, without any basis ,that they are the smartest people in the country, if not on the planet. But who can blame the students, when a nation of 1.5 billion is forced to take advice on how to excel in education from those who have barely passed an exam? Or have failed many times, and peddle dubious theories and advice daily.

After Nehru, Who?

 

(Photo by TS Satyan; discovered in my parents' files)

After Nehru, Who?

Well before the actual decision had to be made, Indira Gandhi, for one, felt it had to be LBS, since he had excellent connections among the senior cabinet members, the experience, the confidence of common people, and was more than acceptable to the rank and file of the party. Moreover , as Home Minister, he held the strings of power.

(Azad and Pant had passed on.)

Morarji never had a chance, despite his pretensions to seniority. Neither did Kamaraj (he knew it), and for all his experience, Babu Jagjivan Ram was not acceptable to many. Krishna Menon was loathed. And Nanda-ji was not the kind of person who could lead the party.

Indira Gandhi's endorsement soured when she felt she was being increasingly sidelined (while in his ministry) from functions that she considered were important in preserving the Nehruvian line.

How Now Brown Cow

 How Now Brown Cow

(Found in a draft note, ... updated to reflect it was from 2017)

I found the following passage in the writings of a distinguished scholar with whom I was interacting last year (but who unfriended me in a huff since our politics differed):

A pre-lingual child who sees a cow "knows" what she sees but cannot tell us what she saw. But an adult saying, "I saw a cow" is not safe from concepts and the ills they are heir to.

I would have blue-pencilled the last sentence, but I was in a generous mood. Given the bovine-related turmoil happening in my land, both then and now, I was inclined to respond:

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road ...

(The story does not end well. It never does nowadays.)

Movies seen in 2026

1. 
   
2. 25.09.2026:  Krzysztof Kieslowski.   Three Colors: Red  (1994)  (seen on Mubi).  Story of a model Valentine and her interaction with a perverse retired judge Joseph.  Valentine meet's Joseph after accidentally running over his pregnant Malinois, Rita (who later has seven pups).   Joseph seems uncaring, when she returns Rita after taking her to the vet.  She discovers Josephs spies on his neighbours phone conversations.  There are many stories intertwined -- Marc and his unfaithful girlfriend, Valentine's relationship with her absent boyfriend Michel, a drug dealer, a married man who is having an affair with another, ... a ferry accident on the English Channel  (Manche( at the end, where 7 survivors are rescued, including Valentine (and the Juliette Binoche character from Three Colors: Blue)
3. 24.09.2026:  Krzysztof Kieslowski.   Three Colors: White (1994) (seen on Mubi)   The story of Karol, a Polish friseur who marries a Frenchwoman (Julie Delpy), but she divorces him since the marriage is not consummated, and throws him out.  He finds his way back to Poland, smuggled in his suitcase on a flight, survives, and then re-establishes himself in Poland, becoming a rich businessman.  And plots his revenge on his ex-wife.   Brilliantly done.  It is funny, and quite elegantly made. 
4. 12.09.2026: Jim Jarmusch.  (2025) Father, Mother, Sister, Brother. (seen on Mubi).  (Tom Waits, Adam Driver, Miyiam Bialik, Cate Blanchett)  --  Funny but cuts close, since the father mooches off his son while living it up.   One daughter is a liar about how well she is doing, and has a lesbian lover, which she hides from her mother (played by the incredible Charlotte Rampling).
5. ___.08.2026:  Christopher Nolan. (2026) The Odyssey   (seen on the big screen Dolby, but not IMAX) -- big spectacle. Well-made though a bit plodding.  Does not ask the big questions, but saddles Odysseus (Matt Damon) with a guilty conscience.  The movie is rich in special effects.  The gods play a smaller role than in the epic.  The Ithaca sequence is much better done in _The Return_ (2024) by Uberto Pasolini starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes.
6. 15.07.2026.  Alain Resnais. (1959) Hiroshima Mon Amour.  (seen on Mubi). Brilliant film about a Frenchwoman in Hiroshima, who hooks up with a Japanese architect. 

Observe Reverse

A fantastic discovery. 

I inherited the beautiful KK Hebbar line drawing of a dancer from my parents (signed by the artist, 1962) My father had got the drawing framed ages ago. 

During a recent move, the frame had cracked. Also I wanted to frame it with non-reflective glass, since the faint black line of the dancing figure is too delicate to see against the texture of the paper, especially when light reflects off the glass surface.   

I went to my local framer, who does work to my specifications, with instructions to make a wooden frame with non-reflective glass, all dimensions given with millimetre precision.  I told him that I could not leave the painting with him, but to keep the frame ready and I would come with the painting and its cracked frame, for him to reframe it in my presence. 

Imagine my surprise at what we found whenwe took the line sketch out of it old frame:  these dramatic (unsigned)  studies on the reverse of the sheet. 

I used the old glass as the backing, instead of a wooden/composite board.   Every now and then I look at the dancers on the "other side". 

Moral: always supervise the framing of a painting; for its safety and for pleasant surprises such as this one. 

Peter Brook's Mahabharata at BAM (Majestic Theater) 1987

I have not written about Peter Brook's "Mahabharata", which I saw a month ago at the remodelled Majestic Theater in Brooklyn, spread over three nights (there also was a 9+ hour hour staging).    It stopped well short of greatness.   Arthur Bonner said it was awful! The reviews, too, were generally mixed.  I think it was greatly overrated and tended to become gimmicky.    The first two parts moved well (in pace) and were enjoyable.  The game of dice itself wasn't very well done, and the emotions involved just did not get conveyed.  The third part ("The War") left me disappointed -- there wasn't the vibrancy one expects, especially having been brought up seeing battle scenes in Yakshagana.  The Gita itself was reduced to one minute of whispering between two actors, followed by a cringeworthy one minute of Vishwaroopadarshan -- it was terrible because the actor who played Krishna had a rather pompous affectation (somehow RADA did not go well with Krishna here!).  The conclusion of the play was, to use a popular Americanism, "wimpy".

The play had its moments though.   The theater had been imaginatively modeled, left half stripped down, with a clay stage that had a canal at the back and a pool up front.   The best thing about the play was the sets -- the Indian textiles and handicrafts that were used.   A lot of the stagecraft was imaginative -- the use of space and the stage, but at times got contrived, especially the pyrotechnics.    It (the stagecraft) was fortunately not confined to second-hand renderings of Indian folk theatre and dance drama, but dipped into far-eastern theatre and possibly also African theatre.  

A lot has been written about the multi-ethnic cast.  Initially the variety of accents was  distracting, but I soon found myself enjoying the non-English tones far more than the English ones.  Mallika Sarabhai as Draupadi and the actress who played Gandhari were excellent.  Duryodhana, Karna, Yudhishthira, Bhima and Drona were well acted.    Krishna and, to a lesser extent, Vyasa, definitely not.

I haven't seen Carriere's text (the English version), but not much stood out.  The only scenes which transcended theatre were the scenes where Pandu is cursed by the dying doe, and when Yudhishthira answers Yama's questions at the lake.   The other powerful scenes, such as Kunti's revelation to Karna, come from the epic itself.

On the other hand , the depiction of  supremely tragic moments such as when Yudhishthira replies to Drona that Ashwaththhama (and sotto voce "the elephant") is dead,  or when Krishna breaks every rule of war, led to audience reactions which indicated that they felt that these were (Ollie North style) "neat ideas".  Maybe that is how the US society views war tactics in these Reagan years.

I really cannot recall anything remarkable about the music.  It was not as engaging as in folk Indian theatre, and did not seem inventive rhythmically or melodically. 

No, the play did not have more than "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead".

[Part of a letter to Shouri in 1987]

"Too much democracy"

 "Too Much Democracy"

In an online address the (then) NITI Ayogya CEO (Amitabh Kant) was quoted as saying "India had too much democracy". This caused consternation even in the docile press (also called Godi Media).

In fact he used this phrase twice.

The first time was when he said "Tough reforms are very difficult in the Indian context, we have too much of democracy... You needed political will to carry out these reforms (mining, coal, labour, agriculture) and many more reforms still need to be done." The implication one can draw from his formulation is that these "reforms" (or more accurately, "deforms") need a fundamentally undemocratic political will. Make what you will about whether these changes can be "reforms" in a democracy.

The second time around he used the phrase, Kant claimed he had been quoted out of context. He helpfully tweeted (on the Twitter handle @amitabhk87 on 8th December 2020): "This is definitely not what I said. I was speaking about MEIS scheme & resources being spread thin & need for creating global champions in manufacturing sector."

So if you see disproportionately many resources being lumped in favour of one or two "global champions", why are you shocked? This has been government policy, articulated by the CEO of its in-house "think tank".

(Minor edits to a note written in September 2022)