IIT Hostel Life not a luxury??!!!

Hostel elections just round the corner and candidates come to our rooms for ground work and campaigning asking us what we want to change in our hostel life.

People say that if you can survive an IIT hostel life, you can survive any place in the world.
So, what do we infer from this phrase? That hostel life in IIT is so bad that enduring that is the worst that can happen to you from a habitat perspective?

Well, for me, staying in an IIT hostel is like staying at a country club as a permanent resident.

True the mess food may not be upto the 'maa ke haath ka khaana' or even 'domino's ke chef ke haath ka khaana', true that the cleaner only comes once a week to clean your room, true you need to do share your bathroom and toilets with other 30 people staying on your floor, and true that bliss is punctured by exams and compulsory attendance.

But the below standards stop there.

Other than that, IIT hostel life is a life of luxury.

1. Freedom and Independence: True that these were the two space ships in the movie Armageddon, these two words capture the mindset of every person living in Room No. XXX at Hostel No. X at IIT. No tension, no responsibilities, no answerability at all. You dont have to get up to help your mother do chores. You can pretty much live the way you want to. The 12ftx10ft abode is yours and yours truly.

2. Electricity and water without bill payments: Uninterrupted supply of electricity. Thanks to the deemed status of 'Temples of higher education' IITs enjoy an uninterrupted supply of water and electricity. Each hostel pays close to INR 1L in electricity bills, (the numbers coming down thanks to Energy GC). You can charge, keep anything you want on for how much ever time. I forget the last time I had switched off my laptop (except for the mandatory restart for updates installations). No one questions you on this.

3. Toilets and Bathrooms: IITians dont bathe for days on end, and hence its very improbably that at any point of the day you find any two of the three cubicles shared by 30 people filled. You never have to stand in line, you get hot water in the tap and even the bathrooms get cleaned twice a day. So even if you have soiled them dont worry, in a maximum of 12 hours someone will come and clean them. The only downside is the pigeons that annoy you especially when your half asleep in the morning.

4. Food Options: Go out at whatever time you want. No curfew. Atleast for IIT Bombay a plethora of food options both inside the campus and outside the campus available. In the mess too you pay hardly Rs.40 for four meals in a day. Your canteen is open from 6pm to 3am serving fresh best selling parathas. Domino's, Pizza Hut, Subway, Laxmi, everything delivers to your hostel and calls out your name when they arrive.

5. Internet option: High speed lan connection with DC++ that can last you for your life's entertainment. Apart from lan ban, its the fastest internet connectivity you can get in India.

6. Hostel Facilities: Gym, Football ground, cricket nets, pool table, foosball lounge, any newspaper, tv room, computer room, frisbee ground, volleyball ground, all sports equipments are available for the use of any hostelite. And this is available in all the hostels along with the other facilities that the institute provides.

7. Getting your work done: You always have juniors who will go fill your bottle, get your clothes from the laundry, get your order from the canteen, move around your furniture, in short 'help' you with anything you want just because you give good 'fundaes'.

8. Keep you socially entertained: Events happening at the hostel and the institute level, all festivals, make you feel at the epicentre of all activity in the universe. You are culturally catered to with not just your culture but with all cultures.

9. People around you: Through this country club you meet people from such diverse geographical backgrounds that, atleast for me, I know I do not need a hotel room in any state of the country.

10. Feedback to improve: Over and above all this semester after semester people come and ask, 'How do we make this better, do you have any ideas?'

Coming to the final one month of my stay at the country club called Hostel 3, I am sure I am going to miss this luxurious life.

From being a self-proclaimed 'ghaati' in the first year and a half to a 'lazy-to-go-home-that-is-half-an-hour-away' person lets hope that I learn to move on.

Cheers!

Brain Gain 2 of 2 (For Indian universities and students)

So, here's the continuation from the previous post on the Foreign University Bill passes by the UPA cabinet.

In the previous post we looked at what is the upside and downside that the foreign universities have with this opportunity.

II) From the Indian university's perspective:
The various factors to be considered here are - student quality, faculty quality, placement companies' quality and the overall system quality.
From the system point of view, enough has been talked about the increase in transparency in the system and the competition will encourage the Indian universities to up the ante on their efforts to increase the level of infrastructure, faculty, etc.

a) Tier I colleges:
In the short run I do not see any problem faced by them in any of the factors. Students will still want to go for these temples of higher education as the brand will not be compromised and anyways I don't think the top tier foreign schools will come into India. The good and senior faculty that is already present in these institutes will not move or be poached over as currently they do get grants, research space, and a name that they have built because of the institute. The companies also will stick to these institutes as the student quality does still remain same.

b) Tier II Colleges:
These colleges are going to be affected. There are students to fill in the vacancies for the current students that move onto the foreign university. But the very good faculty of these colleges will definitely be poached away. The better pay, better infrastructure, better brand name and in some cases better responsibility will play a huge factor in the very good faculty moving to the foreign university.
Now, its not as though India is a faculty generating machine that can compensate for this faculty vacancy, however with the better education system overall, there might be an impetus to faculty as a career option.
The companies coming on these campuses for recruitment will definitely look at going to the foreign university campus also for the same job profile.

III) For the Indian student:
Win Win situation.
Better quality and more quantity,. With the structure of education at the foreign university, Indian students will have lot of flexibility in courses and course structures. Also the availability of better infrastructure hand in hand with a better brand is a huge thumbs up. This is a great opportunity for quality education. It is the students that are the biggest gainers of this policy.

So, on the whole, it is a great opportunity for the receivers of education and hence the country in general. Maybe from the onset we might not get the very huge/big universities to open up their campuses in India, but I do hope that as and when time passes even they will follow suit.

Brain Gain (Part I - An outsider's perspective)

In 2008, Atlanta based Georgia Tech University bought 250acres of land near Hyderabad. (Source: Times of India)
Duke University's Fuqua School of Business—which has a tie-up with the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, for a corporate program—plans to expand its reach in India. (Source: Wall Street Journal)
Imperial College, Duke College, Georgia Tech and Schulich School of Business (York University) — are among those who have so far met senior officials in the HRD ministry and spoken of setting up a full-fledged campus. (Source: Times of India)

The UPA Cabinet has cleared the Foreign Education (Regulation of Entry and Operation) Bill which would further require Parliamentary nod to be turned into a law which would facilitate the globally renowned foreign institutes to set up campuses in India to cater to the higher education system.

So what does this mean for the stake holders?

Aneesh Jain and I spent the night in coming up with an amateur's outlook on this.

Lets break this up in the following way:
I) From the foreign university's perspective:
a) Top of the line engineering and business schools
b) Second tier engineering and business schools

II) From the Indian university's point of view
a) Tier I universities
b)Tuer II universities

III) From the Indian student's perspective

So lets start.

I) From the foreign university's perspective:
India with its burgeoning middle class and expected to reach its demographic dividend in the next 5-10 years, is a huge market for education. Also wide scale top-of-line quality education is limited and hence the need is definitely there. So it is a huge untapped market that these universities are looking to capture.

a) I really do not see it why the best of the best foreign universities will look at opening campuses here. Not that they have a dirth of students. Also, opening up more campuses, i.e. increasing intake means compromising on the quality of students and hence they would rather hold on to the brand name they already have and give this a miss.
However, what might be interesting to see is if they go ahead to open specialized research facilities that would also sponsor exchange programs.
Similar story here for the normal MBA programs. But, wait a minute, this might have a huge effect for the Executive MBA programs. Now, opening up a small campus in India just to cater to executive mba and coming up with procedures and a system to facilitate holding some part of the course here and some part at the mother campus will definitely increase the number of applicants from those executives who cannot take much time off work. So, I think these universities should look at this opportunity.

b) These universities have everything to gain. Any course, not just engineering and business, will attract large amount of student applications, as these universities will be fees wise marginally more than the private universities and quality-brand wise way more better. So, for them it makes full sense to come into the country all guns blazing. Also with the monetary and infrastructure backing these universities will be able to attract good faculty, the hiring of which will none-the-less be done centrally through the mother campus.

With regards to the research centre strategy:
I see that in the short term for the generic research that goes on, foreign universities engaging in this in their Indian campuses is a good step. There is access to widespread student crowd which will chip in and these generic researches no longer attract huge industry funds and hence doing this research in India is a cost effective way of maintaining the research.
I see the mother campuses holding on the specialized research capabilities due to access to quality faculty, quality researchers and the funds.
However, in the long term, I see the foreign centres moving towards setting up of a specialty research clinic in campuses around the world in lieu with the area's specialty.

....continued in the next post.

Till then do pour in your thoughts on this move from this angle.

Sex, Sexuality and Sexism

This post is in response to a challenge extended by Varun Bhalla. The sissy that he is, he is just not ready to accept that I can pull off a blog on sex.

Well, this one is dedicated to you, Varun.

So, let me start with one of the most controversial statements made by Varun, and mind you he makes this statement whenever you ask him about his lust life.

'You have sex with a person, not with a male or a female, its always a person at the recieving end'.


For all those who know Varun, this might not be a surprise, poor guy still is very much confused with his sexuality.

So, what do we define as sexuality.

I think sexuality is more of an attitude. Its like a mindset (very much like the 'entrepreneurial' mindset). Its an outlook on how comfortable you are with the way you are.

If your a guy and dont mind taking facials (the beauty ones), pedicures, etc. you are defined as a metrosexual. Its a soft way of saying, yes, I am not confident of my looks and hence need to improve them. How gay is that!!

That brings us to homosexuality.
Dont get me wrong. I completely support it. (After four years in a female-deprived institute like this, you kind of have no other choice but to)
This makes me wonder what the dialogue at the start of this post actually means. Is it something that we need to laugh off, or is it really the case that you do sleep with a person. Kantaben from KHNH was truly shocked at this notion, but when S&S repeated them on stage for Filmfare Awards, everyone seemed to laugh it off. Hypocrites!!
I'm going to leave this to your own judgement.
As far as my opinion goes, the person really matters. You dont have 'OMG sex!!!' with anyone, its only with a particular person (if your lucky then many particular people), and this drives in the concept more.
Even though a guy may be able to do just about anything to a female, as long as he doesnt find the person he is looking for in those moments, it just remains a routine. (Dont get ideas that I am getting this out of experience, I'm not so lucky :P)

So, when Varun said that line, even though I laughed it off on hearing it for the first time, think again.

Pour in your thoughts, would be interesting to see.

Hello World!

Hey Guys,

This moment marks the start of my blogging.

For the last three years, I have wondered when would be the opportune moment to start blogging. If only I would have not listened to Piyush Chandak I would have made this start earlier.

Then when MNIK released, Saurabh Jain started blogging, and then it hit me. If this guy can start a blog, its high time for me.

None-the-less it has taken me quite some time figuring out what the first post should be. I decided to start with what is always started, Hello World!

Welcome to my blog. I know it's not going to be like many of my friends' blogs or any literary masterpieces, but its going to be MY pieces, and be sure to pick them up when you find them. Once you put those pieces together, you get an insight into this fragmented mind of mine.

Enjoy!