In the midst of such a galaxy of the good and the great, perhaps it’s appropriate that I should share a story that I heard from a distinguished alumnus of IIT Bombay-- one of the successful politicians I just referred to--Manohar Parrikar, who, at the time, was the Chief Minister of Goa. I remember the setting well. It was at a leadership conference in Goa that I had convened during my tenure as President of the Confederation of Indian Industries. Parrikar was sharing the dais with other political luminaries far better know than him, and frankly we had invited him since he headed the state that was hosting us. But through his quiet and substantial eloquence, he stole the thunder from everyone else.
He told the story of a village, but in hindsight, it is also the story of what the IITs were created to accomplish. Parrikar comes from a little Goan village called Parra. When he was a young boy, Parra was famous for the quality of its watermelons. People would come from miles away, to buy this very special and luscious fruit. But the very best watermelons of each crop never found their way to market. These prize fruits were reserved for the village children. Every harvest, the children would be allowed to gorge on the best watermelons of the crop, subject only to one condition. (Pause) They could not throw away the seeds. All the seeds had to be carefully collected in a basket, and kept to be used for the next crop – which, needless to say was as superlative as the last one.
There was a second half to the story: Parrikar said that something happened to those superlative seeds. Circumstances changed. Watermelon prices rose, and one day, the focus changed from nurturing local excellence to maximizing returns for the growers. The best watermelons went straight to the market. The children’s watermelon feasts came to an end. The profits were great. But as the demand went up, Parra’s reputation went down. Parrikar paused and quietly ended his story by saying: “Today, no watermelons can be found in Parra.”
There was pindrop silence in the room, and I could feel the chill run down the spines of everyone in the audience.
To me this story epitomizes everything that IIT stands for. It encapsulates the essence of why Jawaharlal Nehru created the IITs, and underlines the depth of his prescience and foresight. The IITs have preserved, nurtured and developed the seeds of India’s brightest intellects, and the crop from those seeds is today in global demand. The IITs have created a brand that epitomizes excellence, a brand that is exclusive, rarified and occupies a peak of its own.
So am I telling this story to make the claim that you must jealously preserve the IIT brand and reserve its fruits? Certainly that would be an obvious application of this story. However, I’m going to be contrarian, and use this story to ask a different question. In Parra, the seeds were not protected and hence were lost. But I want to ask, in our protectionist zeal, could we lose sight of another objective of the creation of the IITs, these great institutions of learning—which was to educate and empower larger and larger numbers of our growing and youthful population?
In IIT you have a brand that represents excellence and exclusivity. Could exclusiveness also mean inaccessibility? Could a rarefied atmosphere lead to an ivory tower mentality, a disconnect from changed realities. And, could that enviable peak that you occupy become a jealously guarded orchard, high on a hilltop, useful not to the village but just to the privileged few who have swipe card access? In short, like the watermelons of Parra, does your very success carry within it the seeds of a larger failure? And are your quality seeds in danger of not being able to meet the needs of their place of origin?
I do believe that there is a great debate that should be raging within the IITs today. The IITs were part of a broader vision that excellence in education has a vital impact on a struggling society. A high quality education produces a better quality of life for all citizens. It nurtures innovation. It fosters gender equality, and impacts the quality of future generations. Above all excellence in education is a great cultural leveler, because it makes merit the major driver of success, and it can transform a society from a hierarchy based on birth to a meritocracy based on ability, to the great benefit of the nation at large. All of you are wonderful examples of this. It was for all these lofty goals, and not just to churn out Nobel prize winners that the IITs were created.
But can the 20th century model deliver on these goals in the twenty-first century? Jawaharlal Nehru described the IITs as representing “India’s urges, India’s future in the making, symbols of the changes that are coming.” Are our IITs today symbols of the changes that are happening? In the 1950s, when India did not have even 2 world class engineering colleges, it was a great leap forward that the 224 students of the first batch at the first IIT at Kharagpur got access to a world class education. Today, as I read recently, at least 12000 of the students who appeared for the last IIT JEE were good enough to meet the most exacting standards of the IITs. But only around 4000 could get the education they merited. Is that enough for the new India, for the country of a billion dreams?
And is even 12000 the true measure of our meritocracy? A few years ago, on a visit to Patna I met an amazing man, a mathematics teacher called Anand Kumar. Every year he scouts the villages of Bihar and picks up the 30 brightest high school youngsters he can find. They often come from rural landless families, well below the poverty line. He brings them to Patna, houses and feeds them, and trains them for the IIT entrance exam. In the year I met him, out of his 30 trainees, 26 had got into the IITs on their own merits. Last year his hit rate was 28 out of 30! And he’s hoping for a perfect score next year. We have Sachin Tendulkars who grow up playing cricket in the gullies of Dadar, and we have potential Narayana Murthy’s languishing in the villages of UP and Bihar. If they all received the nurturing that the lucky 30 got, the 12000 could well become 12 lakhs or 12 crores. How will we channelise the potential of these youngsters? They don’t need quotas or special treatment. What they do need is support and inputs to compete on equal terms with those more privileged – and educational opportunities commensurate with their talent. How can IITs in the India of today claim to serve the best and the brightest, if a million youngsters do not have the good fortune of a mentor like Mr Anand Kumar?
There are also very persuasive arguments for the status quo. As a businessman, I am well aware of the importance of preserving a brand. I also know how long it takes to create institutions, that IITs of quality do not spring full blown out of sheer aspiration. I know that good teachers don’t grow on trees. I know that the concerns about dilution of excellence and quality are genuine and the sheer practical difficulties of scaling up the IIT model daunting.
With so much to be said on both sides, how can we arrive at the right thing to do? Perhhaps the IITs could take a leaf out of the Mahabharata. We all know Krishna’s advice to Arjuna when, on the eve of the great battle, he lost heart and did not want to fight those he loved and revered. Krishna told him to follow his Dharma and not worry about the consequences. I know that over the years, and particularly in preparation for the Golden jubilee, many committees of IITians have been formed for various purposes, including the discussion of future roadmaps. Some of these groups could well ponder on what is the true Dharma of an IIT in the world of today. Is it only to protect a brand? Is it only to ensure excellence? Is it to conquer the world or is it about spreading the seed throughout India. Whatever the answer, you have to arrive at a clear statement of your Dharma keeping the broadest of perspectives in mind. Once you are clear on the Dharma, the right course of action will automatically present itself.
Lest I be accused of not having a view of my own, let me tell you I do have a view. I believe that an IIT is not just an institution, a place of brick and mortar. Rather it is an idea that ability deserves excellence and that excellence in education needs to reach all who merit it. And I believe that the Dharma of an IIT is to be the Constant Gardener of India’s technological future – to spread excellence as far as it can go without compromising on quality. And I believe you should not remain islands of excellence--the time has come to be a tsunami that inundates the whole of India. If you define your Dharma as spreading accessible excellence, then the ways to nurture and spread the seeds are many. Let me be consistent in my use of the metaphor of seeds and gardening, and suggest four possible routes.
You could simply ‘sow the field’ wider and deeper by creating more campuses perhaps using the wonders of technology to create virtual campuses. In our own small way, we are planning to create a Mahindra College of Engineering, which envisions five geographically dispersed campuses, each one of which will have a particular discipline, or two disciplines in which it will develop distinctive competence. But all campuses, through state of the art technology, will be networked and will benefit from the collective competencies through virtual classrooms and networked knowledge management. I’m sure that IIT could achieve this orientation faster and better than we could.
Second, let’s consider the technique of ‘grafting,’ adding your skills to existing institutions to upgrade them to IIT standards. I know that there was a programme to upgrade certain Regional Engineering Colleges that met particular criteria, to the status and brand of an IIT. I’m not sure how rapidly that plan is progressing and whether it is being passionately fostered by existing IIT’s, which are the only ones with the wherewithal to make this initiative succeed.
Third, you could employ ‘hybrid’ techniques to create joint programmes with other institutions. During my days in university in Boston, I recall how enthusiastically the great institutions of learning there collaborated on permitting students to cross-register for related course work; undertook joint teaching courses; and even established joint degree programmes. Such policies here would allow aspiring institutions to raise their standard of teaching in a dramatically brief period of time.
Finally, and most important in my view, you could go undertake ‘intensive irrigation.’ Could a task force examine how IIT could itself encourage or even incubate an army of Anand Kumars, who could establish centres of additional training in many neglected and benighted areas of the country which suffer from poor educational opportunities. I know this is a controversial topic, and will face a barrage of questions such as the role of tuitions in education, and even the role of privatization in coaching. But this is happening, as we all know, in any case, and all I’m suggesting is helping to level the playing field for aspiring IIT candidates in areas where private enterprise may fear to tread. Irrigation could also mean, in a non-controversial manner, the creation of a cadre of great teachers with IIT training, who could be placed with myriad institutions in the country, thus elevating the standards of learning in a widespread manner.
The techniques you could use are many, and these were just some—pardon the pun—‘Seeds of ideas’ or even ‘Food for thought!’
As Gandhiji said “Find the ends and the means will follow.” And the goal here is as simple as giving every deserving Indian child a bite of the watermelon feast.
So in closing let me say that the real contribution of the IITs may just be beginning.
In the city of Valladolid in Spain, where the great explorer Christopher Columbus died, there is a monument honouring him. An interesting feature of the monument is a statue of a lion destroying one of the latin words that had been part of Spain’s motto for centuries. Before Columbus made his voyages, the Spaniards they had reached the outer limits of earth. Their motto was ‘Ne Plus Ultra,’ which means ‘No more beyond.’ The word being torn away by the lion was ‘Ne’ or ‘No’, making the motto read: ‘More beyond.’
The Indian Institutes of Technology helped India discover and establish a new world. Today, I believe they can play another pioneering role, and show us that there is, indeed, ‘More beyond.’
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