Last week I was at the PAN IIT meet. During one of the sessions on entrepreneurship, there were many questions on the role of IITs in nurturing entrepreneurial skills among its students. A few people were even skeptical about the interest among IITians in setting up their own firms. Having seen such kind of bashings for the last five years, here is what I have to say.
If the meeting is about political awareness, then they claim that IITs are not doing enough to nurture political awareness among students. If it is about environmental protection, they point out at each and every thing done at IIT and examine how environmentally unfriendly it is. If it is entrepreneurship, they point to the lack of diversity {of business thought} among students at IITs and how that has prevented them from becoming global business leaders overnight. If it is about social service, they point out towards the lack of courses in social sciences for an engineer at IIT.
And they do all this sitting in the CLT, at the center of IITM.
Fine, we understand and accept your ideas. But it is better that you try understanding us too. IITs have not been set up to do all sorts of these things, from political awareness to social sciences. A host of other institutions are there to officially '”train” you in such things.
IITs have been set up for providing technological leadership, and they are good at doing that. That does not mean all of us do engineering design alone. There are quite a few of us who have excelled in one or more of the things in the list above. It is not because IITs have trained them to. It is because of their own personal interest coupled with the confidence and thought leadership that IIT life has provided them with.
Dear friends, next time you come to CLT to bash us out for not having produced world class musicians and painters, please bear this in mind.
