Jaane kya hoga … kya hoga … kya pata

Jaane kya hoga … kya hoga … kya pata

The days are gone now when the IITs were considered to be the places where any student would study peacefully in his own room without any disturbance and use the facilities of the department for research. People always blame the students that they neglect studies here in the institute. No one even cares to give it a thought as to why the students are behaving like this. I will tell you how the students here in IITs become like they are seen by the professors. The first year is the year when after 2 or 3 years of hard work a student leaves home for the first time to come to IIT and fulfil his dream of doing research oriented studies. This is what we are best at but in the first year. First few weeks pass by with almost full attendance. In those weeks a lot happens in the hostels which affects the freshies to a great extent. Any freshie coming to IIT knows that in the end he will be surely getting a job in the final year with a very high package. What he doesn’t know outside the insti that those jobs are not from the tech sector of jobs. They are completely different kind of jobs requiring completely different skills altogether. So the first thing happening in the hostels at the mess table is that the freshie just out of curiosity brings a glass for a senior and then asks him about the job scenario. The scenario presented to him shocks the tender mind of a fast maturing brain. And the scenario presented is not a fake one but the truth. The scenario as it stands now is that if one wants to work in India with the aspirations of high paying job in the tech field (barring a few streams) then he would have to remain jobless. Thus the natural question in the young mind comes to be how to get the high paying job which (what the hell) requires some skills completely different from the tech skills being imparted to him in the insti. And thus the freshies are also inducted into the non tech brigade from the first year. Only in third year do those freshies realize that the advice of the seniors in the first year itself had helped them to be in a position to get a good job. The tech interest which should have been groomed from the first year by means of interaction in various research projects doesnot happen. The course structure forces you to study the strict pattern of courses with no emphasis on research. The first interaction with research for any student here at IITB comes in the third year in the form of a seminar. But thanks to the insti the seminar has half the credits in comparison to a theory course. Why will I do any research oriented study if it has very less impact on my grades? So again the insti loses out on many young minds where the seeds of research had survived the flooding in the monsoons but gets crushed in the winter. So the crop now consists only of a few plants struggling to insulate itself from the blinding heat of the insti just so that they can get abroad to realize their dreams of MS or PhD.