And till now I have not come across any girl who is not going to IIT due to boys after clearing entrance exams.

-Prachi

I was thinking of this ever since they are planning to intro net in rural. [u wrote abt this]

I wont bore you to goto all the 5 whys but lets now see what needs to be done to address the root causes:
1. Promote girls to do science (not really helpful if girls inherently dont want to study science… why force)
2. Promote programs for girls to study for IIT. IIT has similar programs for SC/ ST candidates so same should be done for girls
3. Hard to crack this one s this is more of a social problem
4. Govt can try make engineering attractive to girls

Of all the engineers out there we know that there are not many girls doing engineering as medical courses. Does creating a separate girls IIT help this problem? If I reverse engineer this problem, then this implies that govt is thinking one of the following:
1. Reservation for girls along the line of OBC/ SC/ ST- boy thats is cutting out of the remaining 20% or so “non” reservation left of higher case boys (whatever that means)
2. Females are shy of guys so they do not want to goto “co-ed” colleges – That thinking is so 1960s. This would be a result of 60 year old politicians making decision for younger generation. Is that really helping girls… probably next government decision would be to create a girls only company or saying infosys have girls only departments/ projects
3. … you can add more reasons here

The root cause remains the basic objective of the govt to help the poor of the nation and underprivileged parts of society.. bottom line is how does this help?

I have long since given up any hopes that I had of genuine reforms being injected from the topmost layers of our government structure. Our institutions of excellence were created during a narrow window of opportunity that existed perhaps only for a few years following Independence; this window has long since been nailed shut by votebank politics and our “leaders” who would not hesitate to sell their families in order to get more money in their bank accounts.

What about the panacea of private enterprise? Well, notice how the powerful “non-profit education society” lobby has successfully blocked the entry of foreign education providers. In turn, MIT has recently announced plans to open a satellite campus in Vietnam.

Yes. Vietnam > India (insert appropriate operator overloading here).

It’s a crying shame.

… at least ruling party is very much afraid of coming back to power in the next term.

… new IITs, NITs given INI status => without improving their faculty, infrastructure, regulatory mechanism.

11 worthy directors of NITs were sacked 3 years ago by this same govt on baseless reasons( they were appointed by BJP when brand NIT came into being – and all of them were exlnt ppl to lead such instts)

… just too many premier instt!!

… goal=> VOTE BANK!!…

… (20 IIT, 40 NIT, + Women IIT/NIT ) Reservation++

Whats more interesting is Indian economy seems decently insulated from such dumb decisions and grows at the rate of 9% YoY. Does this mean we can do far better than 9%, if we had a more rational Govt? Whats your expectation? My guess is: 20% growth YoY

-Mahesh
Celebrating Life…