IIT - Autonomy without Accountability

There is a much-hyped tug of war being played out in media between HRD and IITs about JEE. IITs don't want to tamper with their tried-and-tested formula. Why change something which has been working well all these years? HRD, however, intends to shake the status quo, and democratize the admission process, by any which way.

The IIT fraternity is more or less united in bashing HRD. How dare they, these good-for-nothing politicians, enter the hallowed precincts of the academic mecca without leaving their shoes out? They have already done enough damage, haven't they, by opening God-knows-how-many IITs in every little town of India. Now they are hell bent on breaking the very backbone of IIT system!

Well, it's a pity that after more than 50 years JEE remains the backbone of IITs. To say the least, it's a failure. One could go ahead and say that IITs as a whole involve a systematic theft of public money. Where is the taxpayers' money going? Where is the ROI? Where is the accountability? What the hell is happening?

IITs' ready-made explanation that expat alumni are pumping money back to economy is, well, lame. It's like shooting first and deciding the target later. The system has clearly deserted its stated responsibilities and have been pandering to the ambition of the bania* class. It's a failure, if not an outright scam. And scam it surely is, if you ask me. Nothing has been working well all these years. It's high time this titanic of a  failure was acknowledged. It's high time something was done about it.

May be we are racially infertile when it comes to technical innovation. May be IITs can't be reasonably held responsible for it. May be they can't be held responsible alone. May be our education system needs wholesale overhaul. They alone can't help too much. Even in that case, when the issue is not lack of intention but lack of competence, what justifies what they have been demanding - autonomy without accountability, and boatloads of subsidies?

There is no shying away from the fact that these institutes have hardly been known for their accomplishments in technology. They might be a fantastic names to have in your CV, to network, to prepare for CAT, to recruit or to get recruited, but they are anonymous in the world of technology. There might have a few exceptions, but exceptions only prove the rule. There are questions to answer - why the same students do better abroad? How many students who come through JEE aspire to complete their masters or doctorate from IITs? How many of them stick to their discipline? And how many don't? Why the IIT management is so acutely touchy about the entrance exam and not so about their archaic pedagogical practices? Given the degree of autonomy and the quality of students they manage to intake, not to mention the number, their output is nothing short of pathetic.

But the booming market and the skyrocketing starting packages have kept these issues hidden under the carpet. Indian middle class is too backward to make an educated inquiry about what goes on in campus; or perhaps too busy feeling proud and dreaming big. Besides, Indian media have more urgent issues to cry about. This is a happening place, by God's grace. You get to see five star scams everyday on TV. Who has time to count how many men (and women) of technical consequence have been produced by these institutes in about 300 years of their combined history? How many Nobel laureates walk in those sacred corridors? Which IIT APJ Abdul Kalam is from? 

IITs do have their success stories. I remember a few myself, and most of them someone selling something, now on internet. The rare ones include the legend of Infosys, the idea whose time had come in 1990s. I don't know what Infosys stands for - business of technology or technology of business. At this point the only exception coming to my mind is the firm where I had started my career - Geometric - since they started with an innovation in CAD-CAM as their USP. Anyway, in the classic genre, one of the most memorable stories involved his highness Mr. Rajat Gupta, who has fallen from great highness height. I will come to him later, but my definition of success will stick the objectives of IIT - to promote technical innovation. Sounds rather out of tune in 2012, isn't?

Coming back to our dear Lucifer, no IITian could truly believe that what he did was an aberration. He was not wrong as such, he was just not discreet enough. Or he was bit unlucky, poor chap. Remember your lab courses; fraud is practically taught there. While seniors teach you to speak foul language so that you could survive in the real world, the lab assistants harass you till you learn to make wise adjustments with readings to survive their scrutiny. Aberration! What the hell are we talking about! Our integrity is regularly sold cheap, and it's a well known fact in market. Witty they might be, but ask any walking female in DU, and she will tell you that the last word she will associate with the IITians is character. Too bad! Even from her standards!

Coming to the least talked - the curriculum, which was dated even a decade back. Thanks to the killer combo of inertia and hubris, it's unlikely to change without twisting arms. The bania breed is opening e-shops and reaping rewards of soaring sensex, bringing random glory to all and sundry - their alma mater, their schools, their family, their friends and their pets. What is there to complain about? What else do you want? Why to change? Any change in entrance exam is likely to keep out the Kota and bring inside bunch of rustics who have no idea how the world works. They will waste lots of time time in useless things before realizing the truth. What good will come out of that! 

Many IITians would hate to admit that IIT is a moribund system, which needs to be reformed to be revived. The prospect of being ordinary, and earning reputation again, and again, from zero, is dreary. For me, what was dreary was my encounter with IIT Delhi, where I always felt out of place, and I have been waiting for a change. However, the choice of change is rather weird. Even the harshest critic will concede JEE was the only thing that was good in the system. Not just good, anyone who has taken this exam knows how beautiful, beautiful, that exam used to be. Let's hope that the removal of JEE will serve a purpose. It will warn the people who are in charge, the fat headed lot, that the next change is waiting at the next corner. And that could rock chairs and kick asses. So mend ways; in no circumstance autonomy can be gifted without accountability. 

I wish they wake up. They better wake up now. Throw water if they don't. Or acid for all I care.

* the closest desi word for bourgeois. As I had written long ago in this blog, in post-1992 India, we all live in market and we are all bania. It has no reference to a particular caste per se.  

Shanghai - Not a Movie Review

Shanghai is for adults only.

At this point I must clarify - though pornography etc are rated, apparently for adults only, they are majorly patronized by minors and sophomores. In all likelihood, they are made mainly for non-adults. The restriction is, I believe, just a marketing ploy.

Shanghai is adult in adult-like way. That's why, perhaps, kids might not be able to appreciate it. You don't have to challenge their sense of thrill or appeal to their juvenile curiosity by imposing fake restrictions. This film is not very filmy, and could taste rather bland to those who are used to spices. It's an ordinary movie in which, to the utter dismay of audience, nothing dramatic takes place. No revenge, no redemption, no catharsis, not even gunshots. Besides, Shanghai is a world without heroes; mere survival takes all. And there is no justice, no explanation, and no escape. Worse, there is no "The End" to it. The script ends but the story goes on; inside your mind, and outside the theater, the story goes on. It's not unlikely that the your own multiplex was part of the story. You couldn't muster courage to order popcorn in the interval.

Shanghai is a scary movie.

Again it's time to clarify - though horror flicks typically involve cartloads of ghosts and gore, they don't really scare. The better ones manage to shock or disgust. Others just bore. The fault lies in their premise - that death is inherently horrible, and there can be nothing more horrible than a horrible death. For starters, I doubt that death is inherently horrible. And I have no doubt that a horrible life is by no means less horrible than a horrible death. A horror movie ought to depict life in its gory details, without offering escape or even hope of escape. From that point of view, life itself seems horrible, and our existence terribly lonely and helplessly futile.

The individuals in Shanghai are horribly lonely. And why not? Their relationships, with anyone or anything, are fragmented, contractual, and often disposable. They are either uprooted or being uprooted, all of them. They are condemned to live with strangers. And they themselves live like strangers all through their lives. Meanwhile, world around them changes faster than they could get a hang of it. They run breathless only to find out the ground beneath their feet has turned into a treadmill. Life goes on humiliating the weak and outsmarting others, making one feel perpetually betrayed and cheaply traded. Even destruction is reduced to a mere job. Ironically, but not unusually, one is killed by the very people who one fights for.

Final Comments

To me, Shanghai was like an underground Fight Club, where I had gone to get punched in my gut. I did get punched, and it did hurt for a while. I enjoyed the pain too while it lasted, but the punch had landed at wrong place. And that left me a bit upset.  

In the final analysis, the movie fails in bringing home the horrors of mindless development. Instead, it strays into the easy path of showing how corrupt our politicians are. As if we didn't know!

As if we didn't know that it was inspired by Costa-Gavras' masterpiece 'Z', which is a classic political thriller. Unfortunately for Shanghai, Z is a film about systematic suppression of freedom of expression under junta-rule and not about wholesale destruction under the aegis of economic development. Dibakar Banerjee, one of the most intelligent film-makers of Hindi Cinema, manages to localize the story well, but fails to fit into perspective.