I seriously doubt the authenticity of this article and see this as an attention seeking attempt by the author rather than trying to identify the crux of the problem. I am myself an IIT Bombay pass-out of 2010 batch, Chemical Engineering and am currently a student at PGDM, IIM Ahemdabad. Moreover, my room-mate at IIT belonged to the ST category and to this day is one of my closest friends in life. Also, I belong to what the author calls ‘upper cast’, though I do not believe in casteism.
I would like to rebut the following concerns raised by the author.
1. Regarding Faculty. Professors are supportive to anyone who approaches them with any kind of problem – academic or personal. Also, for all such issues, every IIT has a Counsellor as well, whose job is to entertain distressed students. All professors who I had interacted with were highly intellectual people. Most of them were PhDs from best foreign universities. Almost all of them are very open minded and prejudices such as caste, gender, etc dont exist in their dictionary.
Also, already IITs have a shortage of 33% of the faculty. How do you think in such a scenario the each faculty member can devote extra time, etc for each ST/SC student
2. Grading. Relative grading system only means that a person getting more marks will get a better grade. So, I can get a 10/10 grade even if I get 60 marks out of 100, if I have the highest marks. Regarding the example given above, it is impossible that a student will fail the course on getting 60 marks. No faculty sets the grading standards so tough.
Some may say the grading should not be relative. For that my answer is that IITs are supposed to produce working professionals, who will be judged relatively at their workplace.
3. Regarding Research. IITs do produce cutting edge research by Indian standards. Most IITians who opt for research, pursue their PhD abroad because the research opportunities and funds in India are limited. After completion of their higher studies, they come back to India to give back to the nation. Those who remain abroad have become successful entrepreneurs, researchers and scholars and give back to the nation by giving huge grants in the name of alumni funds to various Indian institutes, not only IITs. Interestingly, these funds have also been used to fund special scholarships, reserved only for ST/SC students.
4. Regarding English Medium. The author has himself written this article in English. Why has he not written it in Hindi as well for those who can’t read English. I don’t see a link on the page which directs me to the Hindi translation. Hindi or other regional languages do not have the vocabulary for a vast number of engineering text. 90% of the engineering research papers published in the world in English. For those who are weak in English, every IIT conducts a 2-month program before the start of the course to help them free of cost.
5. Regarding toughness of IIT-JEE and the IIT curriculum. Needless to say that IIT has created a name for itself only because people who been through this system know what toughness is and are respected for this quality. If you make the IIT system lenient, IITs will loose their image and will become just like any other college by the corner.
6. Cast and Income. Finally, the author is promoting casteism by this article itself by correlating cast with income. I accept that the percentage of poor people may be more amongst certain castes but it is completely wrong to say that every person in a so-called “higher” caste has a higher income level. Especially taking the case of the SC/ST students in IITs, the income level of most of them is good.
7. Facilities for SC/ST students at IIT. Irrespective of their income, all SC/ST students enjoy monthly pocket money of Rs 1500/-. They also enjoy free text books. And they are also exempt from any tuition fee i.e. they only need to pay for the mess at IIT.
8. Reason for casteism. Casteism is not one-sided. It is not the responsibility of a specific caste to create a society free of castes. It is a common responsibility of all and such misleading articles as above only add fuel to casteism. Playing the blame game will not help.
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