IIT Madness

IIT Madness
Originally uploaded by The Last Paladin

I hardly read Telugu news paper now a days because news is brought directly in to my email by Yahoo! Mail. Today afternoon, I went to Madhuri restaurant in my locality. I wanted to pick up a Telugu news paper and read the head lines.

I saw some papers there and was searching a for news paper. I thought they were all yellow pages. OMG! They are all regular news papers. The front page was occupied by a full-page advertisement by Chaitanya Coaching Center. Gosh! News paper has turned yellow pages today. And to my surprise, it was not just one news paper, there were more than one. That is the IIT Madness.

For those who don’t know what IIT is, IIT is the premier engineering and technology institute in India. There are only seven IITs in India now. The yearly entrance exam is a real battle and high pressure one for the IIT aspirants.

Coaching students for IIT entrance is a big business in India. Especially in Andhra Pradesh, people are mad about Engineering degrees and IIT. And so are the coaching centers, they make really huge money by coaching students. The advertisement was about the ranks achieved by students of the coaching center. And it occupied the front page of the highest read Telugu dialy news paper.

I like their caption, మా లక్ష్యం స్పష్టం, మా మార్గం సుస్పష్టం. Our goal is clear, our path is even more – Getting your kid an admission in IIT. But there were many incidents of suicides by students because of high pressure they handle. Getting an admission is prestigious and it roughly means getting a nice job with million rupee salary in an MNC after the course, unless one screws up one’s life big time in IIT.

Yes! We are mad about IIT, we are mad about software jobs. Thomas Friedman put it wonderfully in his book – he advised his kids, “Girls, finish your homework, people in China and India are starving for your jobs”.