3 Idiots’ portrayal of the IIT education system is both grossly unfair and untrue. Sandipan Deb in Open:
I cannot help but have my views on 3 Idiots coloured by the fact that I am an IITian. Call it Imperial College of Engineering, call it whatever, but what is obvious is that the film is a comment on the IIT system. And it is a grossly unfair comment.
I went to do engineering because at that time, if you were a middle-class boy and you were good in studies, it was either engineering or medicine that was fore-ordained. There was no other option you even entertained. A native dislike for Biology pushed me towards IIT, and there I went, quite happily. Within days, I discovered that engineering did not interest me in the least, and I spent the next years putting in just enough effort to survive. Professors either reviled me or despaired of me. But I have never had so much fun as I had on that campus.
Yes, our boys and girls are still rammed into the IITs by their parents, whether or not they have any interest or innate talent. Coaching classes turn aspirants into rote-monsters, and often, they end up without any life skills. In the IITs, you encounter characters like Chatur Ramalingam, the desperately competitive mugpot in 3 Idiots, but the truth is that such people rarely ever top their classes. More:
From the Times:
Sujoy Guha, a biomedical engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, believes that the most critical problems are a result of artificial hearts attempting to mimic the real thing.
The human heart has four chambers, but only the left ventricle is responsible for building the pressure that moves blood around the body. Depending on one chamber to do the hard work places this part of an artificial heart under enormous strain.
Dr Guha likens the process to trying to scale a four-foot rise in just one bound. “Do it too often and your knees will give way,” he said. “Much better to use a series of small steps.”
The sudden build-up of pressure inside conventional artificial hearts can also damage blood cells, Dr Guha said. This can lead to clotting and strokes, and means that patients must be given anti-coagulants, which place them at risk of severe bleeding. More:
Dinsa Sachan on the MIT professor and his pioneering research. In the Indian Express:
It is nice to spot a familiar face in a crowd of unknowns. But how do we do that? And why do people who recover sight after years of blindness continue to have problems with perception? These are some of the questions Pawan Sinha and his lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are trying to unfold.
Growing up in the IIT Delhi campus, where his father worked in the administrative section, he went on to get a B.Tech from the institute before moving to the US to pursue a masters degree in artificial intelligence, the subject in which he also earned a doctorate. Then he joined MIT as faculty in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, where he began studying visual perception. “I have always been interested in understanding the roots of intelligence,” he says. “As an amateur artist, I was curious to understand how good painters are able to convey the essence of objects with very few brush strokes. This led to my interest in visual perception and the deeper questions of how our brains make sense of the complex information they get from sensory organs.” Even though he was initially associated with the computer science department, Sinha was fascinated by the workings of the brain and began delving into them. More:
[Click here to visit the Sinha Lab at MIT]
Of the 54 seats reserved for students in the scheduled tribes category in the six new IITs, only seven (that’s 12 per cent) have been filled, writes Pallavi Singh in Mint
With barely a month to go before they begin their new academic session, the six new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), launched by the government this year, are struggling to fill their incoming classes.
Against the backdrop of the government wanting to implement 27% quota for other backward classes (OBCs) in higher educational institutions, the new IITs have been unable to fill seats reserved for tribal students, who, along with scheduled castes (SCs) and OBCs, now add up to more than 50% of caste-based reservations of all available seats.
Chetan Bhagat began writing comedic novels in Hong Kong and has now become the best-selling English-language novelist in India, acquiring almost cult status with young Indian readers. Donald Greenless from Hong Kong in International Herald Tribune:
Until about four years ago, Chetan Bhagat was an investment banker who was distinguished from the suited phalanx of his colleagues in this city’s crowded financial district only by his secret hobby.
While others planned weekend excursions on the golf course, Bhagat, then employed by Goldman Sachs, indulged a passion for writing, laboring in his private time on a racy and comedic little novel about life on the campus of an elite college in his native India.
In the early morning before going to the office he would work on draft after draft of the book, trying to get it right. He did 15 drafts in all. He almost gave up when publishers kept turning him down.
Today, Bhagat is still an investment banker, now with Deutsche Bank. But he has also become the biggest-selling English-language novelist ever in India.
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Posted by jaded mind on the blog helloji.wordpress.com
There are two distinct tribes in India: the one that went to IIT, and the one that did not. If you are wondering, how to tell them apart, I have good news: you do not have to. They would tell you before you can finish your hello. At times all you need is a glance at them, and they are too eager to blurt out, “I am from IIT, and my name is Raju.” And in case you missed the introduction, not to worry. They would repeat the information like the stock ticker: I love Star Wars…I first saw it in IIT…my wife does not get it…she is not from IIT…one day we will have kids…I will send them to IIT…the same IIT I went to…did I tell you I am from IIT?…
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In Harvard Magazine, profile of Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, professor of applied mathematics:
“Just because something is familiar doesn’t mean you understand it. That is the common fallacy that all adults make-and no child ever does,” says Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, England de Valpine professor of applied mathematics. Mahadevan enjoys explaining mathematically the phenomena of everyday life: practicing the old-fashioned method of scientific inquiry called natural philosophy, where one wonders about everything.
…Mahadevan, who grew up in India, tells a traditional story about Krishna where mud becomes metaphor. “In Hindu mythology, Krishna is divine,” he begins. “However, because there was a prophecy that he would overthrow an evil king, his origins when he was a baby were hidden from almost everybody. So when Krishna was born, his mother surreptitiously sent him away to be brought up by a foster mother who didn’t know who he was. As in all mythologies, there were premonitions [of greatness], but growing up with his foster mother, he would go out like all children and play in the mud. One day he started to eat the mud, putting it in his mouth. And his [foster] mother, from afar, said, ‘Don’t do it.’” Krishna kept eating the mud. “Again [she] said, ‘Don’t do it,’ and yet he continued. So she came up to him, and when she opened his mouth to take out the mud, she looked-and she saw the universe.
More: [via 3quarksdaily]
