I spent my formative years, much delayed as they were, at IIT Madras in the early to mid '70s, when, if I remember right, even BHU IT had not come into the fold. This post must be read, if read at all, in that perspective.
Those days, each IIT must have had a core catchment area, if you discounted the deluge from Bombay. What I mean is, though there was a significant presence of Bombayites in my class, a majority of us must have come from the four southern states, the regional catchment area. I would imagine that similar scenarios played out at the other IITs also.
Yes, there was some parochialism, even between students of various regions forming a majority in an institution, at least in the beginning. But over the five years we spent, camaraderie came to dominate parochialism. This is not selective memory; though I could have counted twice or thrice as many Tamilians among my friends as classmates from other states or regions, my choice was not coloured by state or regional biases.
Now, with so many IITs coming up, one in almost every state, the catchment area for any institution must be shrinking severely. I am quite certain that the diversity I experienced (for example, I, coming as I was from that semi-urban conclave called Kanchipuram, learnt that Bong was a mildly pejorative term for Bengalis!) will not be available with the mushrooming of so many IITs. Each IIT will the run the risk of being a mono-culture, I am afraid.
How bad that would be is for educationists, sociologists and philosophers to argue. My sole aim in this post is to bring into discussion what I felt is an issue that has not even been mentioned in all the discussions. I admit that I ran the risk of being accused of advancing an elitist argument against setting up of so many IITs. I can only hope those who read this will understand that my argument is based on my fear that we may end up losing our national character of unity-in-diversity and be subsumed by a multitude of diversity-between-unities, no intersection between various severely localized unities.
If the planners can come up with an idea of how to avoid state-size Balkanization of the catchment area of each IIT (God forbid, regional quotas), that will be astart in the right direction.
Raghuram Ekambaram
Those days, each IIT must have had a core catchment area, if you discounted the deluge from Bombay. What I mean is, though there was a significant presence of Bombayites in my class, a majority of us must have come from the four southern states, the regional catchment area. I would imagine that similar scenarios played out at the other IITs also.
Yes, there was some parochialism, even between students of various regions forming a majority in an institution, at least in the beginning. But over the five years we spent, camaraderie came to dominate parochialism. This is not selective memory; though I could have counted twice or thrice as many Tamilians among my friends as classmates from other states or regions, my choice was not coloured by state or regional biases.
Now, with so many IITs coming up, one in almost every state, the catchment area for any institution must be shrinking severely. I am quite certain that the diversity I experienced (for example, I, coming as I was from that semi-urban conclave called Kanchipuram, learnt that Bong was a mildly pejorative term for Bengalis!) will not be available with the mushrooming of so many IITs. Each IIT will the run the risk of being a mono-culture, I am afraid.
How bad that would be is for educationists, sociologists and philosophers to argue. My sole aim in this post is to bring into discussion what I felt is an issue that has not even been mentioned in all the discussions. I admit that I ran the risk of being accused of advancing an elitist argument against setting up of so many IITs. I can only hope those who read this will understand that my argument is based on my fear that we may end up losing our national character of unity-in-diversity and be subsumed by a multitude of diversity-between-unities, no intersection between various severely localized unities.
If the planners can come up with an idea of how to avoid state-size Balkanization of the catchment area of each IIT (God forbid, regional quotas), that will be astart in the right direction.
Raghuram Ekambaram
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