Toilet money

I am a graduate of an IIT (Class of 1976) and got my post-graduate degree (1978) from another IIT. I have visited the campuses (campi?) of IITs at Chennai, Kanpur, Mumbai and Delhi (the last, as late as yesterday evening). My visits to these places always do much to bring forth a lot of memories afresh. Obviously, I have driven to pen my thoughts down the next morning!

My first encounter with an IIT toilet was in June/July 1971 when I had gone in for the so-called counseling session. I must admit that I got counseled to join civil engineering at an IIT rather than opt for more glamorous stream(s) in a state engineering college (College of Engineering, Guindy, in the days prior to it becoming Anna University). This was my first encounter with IIT toilets, their smell. That was a unique experience.

But, as it turned out, that unique experience became a unique-yet-everyday experience, in the hostels of IIT (two hostels, at least seven hostel toilet blocks) and a number of toilet blocks serving our lecture halls, classrooms and laboratories. The smell is universal.

That was one of the reasons I wanted to do my post-graduate studies at another institution, and perchance it turned out to be another IIT (I had the option of IISc also). The story was the same, you will notice as it unfolds below.

 At one of the IITs, there was an entrance test and an interview and the candidates for the interview were accommodated in one of the hostels for two days (for the successful candidates). And, there appeared the toilet smell! That was the foretaste (?) of what I was going to experience and it must have deterred me, but did not. Learn why below.

I must tell you that in the summer of 1976 I had gone for interviews at three IITs, University of Roorkee and IISc. What was so universal was all the toilets had that unmistakable smell of intelligence, of brilliance.

Perhaps I should have tried for IIMs, but alas it wasn’t to be. That IIT smell and I are connected by an umbilical cord, so to say. IIMs may also have had the smell of intelligence, but of a different flavor. I could not take that chance.

So, it became a difficult task to use toilet-smell as a differentiator amongst the various institutions. I chose one, and my two-year long experience it turned out no worse than my experience the previous five years. Thank God for that!

Now, to what happened yesterday. I had some work in one of the so-called Learned Academies. Its office is situated in, no points for guessing, a building on an IIT campus. And, that smell followed me there too! Now, you can understand the strong statement of connection between me and that smell.

I had to find the reason why all the IIT toilets smell the same. Beyond JEE (even in its modified form) the IITs have only a faux / ersatz platform that connects them all, the Pan-IIT Forum. For all the talk of being united and all that they could not get the government to grant Rs. 30 lakhs (or is it Rs. 15 lakhs?) for a toilet block, a la at the  Planning Commission (a back of the envelope calculation shows the total outgo in the range of Rs. 2,500 crores, 16 IITs combined). Before the government would forego such a huge sum of money (away from the pockets of all the shareholders – not stakeholders, please understand - in the government) it would want some studies done by some reputed consultants.

This is when the IIT Council jumped in. The IITs can offer internal-consultancy work to themselves (at 2%, the total fess comes to Rs. 50 crores). With the fees divvied up amongst all the IITs (with a significant premium for the more established ones – I am taking care of my alma mater), there should be no complaints about the smell of intelligence in IIT toilets.  

Now, I understand why IITs want to be government institutions. They want to retain that toilet smell so that they can continue to work on toilet technology (having many labs for the work within the campus is irresistible to the researchers!). And, the public pays for easing yourself, as the euphemism goes.

Vive la IIT Toilet Smell!

Raghuram Ekambaram