Sunday, January 13, 2008

IIIT for IIT

The Andhra Pradesh CM has laid the foundation for an Indian Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) at Basar in Adilabad district.

The IIIT is a supposedly compensation for shifting the proposed Indian Institute of technology (IIT) to Medak.

Now, to the interesting part of this article -

Addressing a public meeting, he said the IIIT would be more useful than the
IIT, as many students from backward Adilabad district would benefit. If the IIT
had been established here, only a couple of students would have got seats.

Now, I have been to Basar as recently as November 2007. Its a peaceful place with the Godavari flowing nearby and the life of the people is linked with the Sharada temple. The people are nice and simple who would have every reason to believe the CM. And the opportunity to unleash some unrelated bull-shit has not been foregone by the CM.

But dear sir, there are a few doubting thomases in this world. Hence I checked the website of the IIIT at Allahabad, because that is the model I presume will be followed here. What does it say?

Entrance to these courses is through the All-India Entrance Examination
conducted by CBSE.


OK? Now, what is the means of admission to IITs? The JEE right?

Now,

1. Can this be a valid appeasement? - take an IIIT for an IIT. Why not an NIT? The purpose of asking this is - how does an Information technology institute replace an engineering institute? Even if it does, was this "replacement" IIIT shifted from somewhere else? And if so, what will that place get?

2. How can the CM guarantee in the scenario of competitive exams the proportion of students who will clear the entrance exams (JEE/AIEEE whatever)? What if more students from Adilabad clear JEE in comparison to their counterparts from Medak and show the proverbial middle finger to the CM? Will he revert the proposed IIT back to Basar?

3. Most importantly, since when has clearing competitive exams become an inter-district competition? I thought it was mostly about the achievement of the self.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dear Deepak:


I am not sure how you came to the conclusion that Gujarati food spread outside Gujarat. You will struggle to find a Gujarati resteraunt outside Gujarat, barring in Maharashtra. Hence, please explain how you came to this conclusion.

As far as south Indian food, the place where south Indian food suceededed most is Maharashtra. Outside Maharashtra, there are very few South Indian resteraunts. Pune alone has far more SI resteraunts than Delhi.

Acutally, south Indian food succeded essentially in Maharashtra as a cuisine which people eat in their day to day life. Outside Maharashtra, you will not find a single state where south Indian food is eaten as regularly or habitually as Maharashtra.

You may not believe what I mean: just do the following. Check how many Udupi resteraunts you find in Delhi,Kolkata, Lucknow, Patna, Jaipur, Chandigarh-and then compare it with Pune. Pune alone will have far more resteraunts than these cities put together. Through out Northern and Eastern India, south Indian resteraunts are few and far in between. Even in Gujarat, there are very few south Indian resteraunts. Notice, I said: very few, NOT none. They are there, but compared to Maharashtra, very very few.

Don't see what you see in Maharashtra and extrapolate it to the whole of India: there are more south Indian resteraunts in Mumbai than in Delhi and Kolkata and other n.Indian cities combined. Same goes for Pune.

Basically, people in Maharashtra were open to experimentation and eating other cuisines. For this reason, Udupi resteraunts suceeded only in Maharashtra.

You will find very few (not None) Udupiwallahs outside this state. You will also find very few south Indian resteraunts in other states comparitively, especially in West Bengal and Orissa and Punjab.

Udupi resteraunts were largely unsuccessful outside Maharashtra.

The real reason for lack of success of Marathi food is the same as that of the lack of success of south Indian food outside Maharashtra: people in those states were not willing to eat other cusines. Even today, in Chandigarh, there are very few non-Punjabi resteraunts.

Hope this clarifies the matter. Will write about this later.

Unknown said...

Hahah :D

A IIIT is a completely different thing from an IIT. And the remark made by the CM is a very coloured one. IITs aren't made to benefit regions, they are made to benefit the country. How can one conclude that the local students might not be attracted to IIT and want to study harder?