Friday, February 03, 2006

Appeal to Support the cause of new IITs

Dear Readers,
Some of you are from ITBHU, some from the IITs, some from the 7 institutes that are in the new-IIT race, and some from others. It is my strong request to all of you to read through the following, for my sake, and support the new IIT petition.

The petition is here, for those who want to open it in a new window/tab while reading the following.

The story so far...
As we all know, some months ago, the Indian government decided to create some new IITs. Since then, a lot of deliberation has gone in this and a committee consisting of leading academicians shortlisted 7 institutes for possible conversion to IITs.

The committee then visited all the institutes and has prepared a report-card of all the institues and will be submitting it to the MHRD soon. The idea is NOT to convert ALL institutes to IIT (if that was so, then this process of evaluation was not necessary!). Instead, depending on the worthiness of the institute, it will be either be converted to an IIT or be put on an IIT-track whereby its progress will be evaluated after some more time to re-evaluate its worthiness of being an IIT.


Why is it important to sign?
Well, there are various reasons.
1. We need more IITians. Read the paragraph in the petition where the Chinese premier talks about how China will have 100 IIT-like institutions in the next few years.
2. Only the institutes that pass the test should be converted, and they should be converted for sure. This will encourage the others to come up to speed and improve their infrastructure with the grants given.
3. Many deserving institutes that were not considered in this round will see the open-ness of the government to convert deserving institutes as an opportunity to strengthen their case and fight their case strongly, thus giving us better engineering colleges.
4. Last but not the least, the decision will be taken by the goverment in the coming week, and this is the time to act!

So dear friends, thanks for reading till here. I strongly suggest you to sign the petition, and ask all your friends to do so.

I am open to discussion, and can be reached at animesh.pathak@cse03.ITBHU.org

Love and Luck,
Animesh

Disclaimer: I am an alumnus of ITBHU, one of the 7 institues proposed to be converted to IIT.

Interesting reads:
http://www.dqindia.com/content/top_stories/2005/105052101.asp (Dataquest Ranking of Engg Schools)
http://www.ias.ac.in/j_archive/currsci/68/9/869/viewpage.html (IAS Assessment of Research Output)
http://us.rediff.com/money/2005/may/25iit.htm (The New IIT Process)
http://www.rediff.com/money/2005/may/23iit1.htm (IT-BHU's Turn?)

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:05 AM

    These online petition are useless.
    Does anyone remebwer Sdubey.??.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, petitions are nowadays a big part of the effort. The Manjunath petition with its 10k+ sigs was a sure way to tell the govt that people care.

    We intend to submit a hardcopy to the relevent people as well.

    -A

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous11:26 PM

    Gaurav ... it is not the petitions are useless, it is the callousness of people and the indifference of the governing ones that is pointless. The then govt tried to play down Dubey for a while but with the 60,000 sig petition, press statements, it couldn't forcing the PM to make a statement (a start) and the supreme court to give an order to CVC to protect whistleblowers (again a start, but not fully effective). After Manjunath, the govt knew better not to try to play it down. At least it is playing to the gallery now (indifference budged a little).

    This issue is not about indifference. The govt has to decide one way or the other. This petition is about giving the govt ammunition to continue with its planned upgrades to IITs by doing in-person lobbying supported by these signatures.

    So please don't join the gallery of the indifferent people. Go sign. Governments do and have to act when people speak. Cynical citizenry is the best gift you can give to the indifferent government. Don't do it!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous3:59 AM

    To me the petitions is like a SPAM where people keep on fwding to others to sign it(just to check out how far it reaches).

    Similar to those "Please fwd it to 10 ppl, it will bring luck to you".

    ...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous9:11 AM

    I wud like tell u abt an incident showing the importance of this petition.
    My VP is an ITBHU alumni. When I forwarded him invitation for bangalore alumni meet, I got no response from him, making it harder for me to mail him any Institute related stuff.
    But when it came to this petition, it was he who forwarded this to me and other BHU fellas here, demanding a signature there.
    What I want to emphasize here is even if these online petitions are *useless*, are u so busy and indifferent not to sign them.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous11:31 AM

    Comments to Animesh's article:

    we don't NEED more IITians, what we need are quality engineers/techies. It's a pity that even WE have come to a stage where we see the two as equivalent. Jumping on to an established brandwagon and trying to get more money isn't going to do us any good unless we clear up the absolute mess we're in (and how we're run). But of course, nooo .. we're not supposed to talk about the shit we're in, because that can "hurt our chances".

    On a more personal note, I would rather tell someone that I'm from BHU and have him give me a "GOD!! where in the world is that?" look, than to lie and say I'm from an IIT (or maybe in the near future, not have to lie). The point I'm trying to make is that I think it's about time we got over a mental block. The reason why almost all of us went to IT BHU was that we weren't smart enough to go to an IIT. Let's face the facts, IT BHU is a place where all the second rung candidates go. Sure, it might have been a centre of excellence at one point of time in the past, but sorry old chums, that's what we are now. And that's just IT, don't even get me started on the rest of BHU. Having said that, I can see why most people would like the idea of severing IT from the rest of BHU and trying to reinvent our image by taking on an established name. Add to that the sense of consolation it brings to hurt egos (at not being able to get into an IIT on their merit), and no wonder we're all sold out on that idea.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous1:39 AM

    Am amazed some have plenty of time to find pretexts to knock down the idea of new IITs, none IMO significant or remotely indicative that they read the petition and have specific points to argue. If the topic doesn't interest you either way or you haven't actually read the petition to form an opinion, try to stay off the trolls. If you stand for quality, make sure it actually comes through in your comments. If you have an intelligent position do share even if you disagree, but please stay off childish knocking down on flimsy grounds like it feels like a chain letter. Just becuase someone says a place is "good" or "bad", doesn't make it so -- in the professional world, they go by independent rankings.

    ReplyDelete