IIT students ask government to provide them girlfriends

Kharagpur. Male students of IITscollege?” Ritesh argued, “I have found out about the college fees of many ‘normal universities in India and they are ridiculously low.
Then why are we being targeted even though we have to go through various hardships as compared to a non-engineering graduate?”
Not just the male students, even the female students of IITs agree that they should be compensated for spending four prime years of
their life in an environment that is anything but ‘normal.
The girl students too want a boyfriend who can appreciate the color of their salwar-kameez without thinking about the HTML code of
that color. have asked the government to keep a girlfriend ready for each of them once they graduate out of
the prestigious technological institutes. This was done after government decided to recover money from IIT students that was spent
by the government on their education. Students say that if the government wants to recover the cost incurred, they wanted to
recover the life lost.
“If they invest money for these four years, we invest our lives,” Ritesh Raj, a third year student at IIT Kharagpur said, “We have to
satisfy ourselves with Facebook girls even as our non-IITian school friends hang around with real girls in the real world. There are
not enough girls out here where the government has kept us captive for full four years!”
“If the government wants to recover money, we want to recover our golden years!” he added.
Earlier this month, HRD Minister Kapil Sibal had announced that IITs had agreed upon a proposal that made it incumbent upon the
general category IIT graduates to pay back the money that the government incurs on their education as soon as they find a job after
passing out. Students belonging to the reserved categories were kept out of this rule.
“We have no problems if they give a girlfriend each to the reserved category students too,” Ritesh claimed, “But those, who are being
asked to pay money, must get a girlfriend. This is the easiest way to compensate us for the life that we lose in these four years.”
Ritesh said that ideally the students should be compensated for various things such as living away from their family, eating mess
food, getting exposed to weirdoes, and becoming internet trolls � the commonly acknowledged negative effects of spending four
years in an engineering college � but the students have asked for something that was “workable”.
“Can the government claim that those students who study in non-engineering colleges pay up the full cost incurred by the....

Read More

IITs go extra mile to draw top-class faculty; offer start-up grants of Rs 1 cr E

MUMBAI|KOLKATA: Last month, when IIT Kanpur
opened its overseas office in New York - the first of
its kind across any IIT- fund-raising was one of the
drivers behind the move. The other was faculty
hiring.
Nearly 60% of the institute's faculty comes from
North America, and the NYC office will be involved
in reaching out to such potential candidates,
encouraging them to apply and help address their
concerns.
It shows just how seriously the Indian Institutes of
Technology (IITs) are taking their hiring efforts.
From start-up grants that can go up to Rs 1 crore,
incentive schemes funded by donor money, special
young faculty awards and job scouting for spouses
to setting up faculty search committees and fast-
tracking the hiring process, the premier engineering
institutes are going all out to get the best and the
brightest on their rolls.
According to recent data, over 40% of the teaching
slots in the older IITs are lying vacant. Recruitments
have not kept pace with the huge expansion in the
number of seats because of the 27% OBC quota
implementation. The teacher-student ratio at most of
the older IITs averages 1:15, as compared to the
ideal 1:10 ratio.
However, reaching the optimal faculty numbers will
take between five and 10 years. Right now, quality is
critical to the IITs at Mumbai, Kanpur, Roorkee,
Delhi, Kharagpur, Chennai and Hyderabad. In the
meantime, they are tapping global networks, beefing
up infrastructure and focusing more on research to
attract and maintain a steady flow of good faculty.
In the past 10 months, IIT Kanpur has offered two to
three top-notch candidates start-up grants of as
much as Rs 1 crore, up from the usual Rs 25 lakh.
During this time, it has made offers to 50
candidates, of whom some 30 have joined. "We have
to think of ways to circumvent the fact that we have
pay scale constraints," says Indranil Manna,
director, IIT Kanpur.
IITs are focusing on research prospects, which
academics often give more importance to than
compensation. IIT Roorkee, for instance, has
invested Rs 185 crore in research infrastructure in
the past two years to attract potential candidates. An
initial research grant of Rs 10 lakh is given to every
individual who joins, says IIT-R director Pradipta
Banerji. In the past few months, three faculty
members have submitted proposals worth Rs 3.5
crore, which they will get.
IIT Kharagpur is toeing a similar line. The institute
has increased the faculty start-up grant from Rs 5
lakh to Rs 28 lakh, which is now given within a
month compared with six to 12 months earlier. "We
are also giving total grants of Rs 14 crore for special
research that is competitive and collaborative. If we
see a huge interest in this, we will increase the
overall quantum of grants next year," says PP
Chakarabarti, director, IIT Kharagpur.
IIT Roorkee has created a global network of
researchers and foreign faculty members to give
leads on bright candidates willing to relocate and
work in India.
It has also formalised a network of faculty search
committees and fast-tracked the hiring process to
close it within a month, one-sixth the time it took
earlier. At IIT Delhi, faculty members routinely reach
out to potential hires while conducting overseas
seminars or conferences. Candidates are regularly
interviewed over Skype.
"Our Young Fellow Incentive Scheme, funded by
donor money, gives up to 50 fellows per year, an
additional Rs 1.2 lakh over and above their salary.
It's for candidates who do outstanding research or
bring something unique to the department," says
IIT-D director RK Shevgaonkar. IIT Bombay too has a
young faculty award to all assistant professors for
the first four years. The institute has steamlined and
decentralised the hiring process and departments are
quite active in faculty search, says director Devang
Khakhar.
At IIT Madras, director Bhaskar Ramamurthi says
they making it possible for new faculty members to
access a Rs 1 lakh grant for professional
development much earlier than they did before.
"These faculty need to attend international
conferences and be heard in their peer group. We
are trying to facilitate that," says Ramamurthi.
Institutes are also addressing housing concerns. IITs
like the ones at Chennai and Kanpur are focusing on
better housing on campus, growing vertically where
land is at a premium. They are also trying to create
opportunities for spouses both within the institute
as well as finding them jobs nearby. While some are
inducting spouses with PhDs as scientists, others are
placing them in administrative roles, automation
cells, hostels, computer centres and even schools.

Read More

IIT Delhi to develop low-cost healthcare

NEW DELHI: India's premier medical
college and hospital, All India Institute of
Medical Sciences, got a new director on
Friday with the appointment of Dr MC
Misra. Till now, Misra was the head of the
institute's trauma centre.
Dr Misra (61) is known as a leading surgeon
and is also credited with developing the
AIIMS Trauma centre into a model of care
for emergency services in the country.
Speaking to TOI soon after taking over as
the AIIMS director, Misra said, "My aim
will be to make AIIMS more patient-
friendly. Computerization of patient
records, capacity building to ease
admissions and reducing the waiting time
for surgeries and procedures will be the
priority."
The new director also plans to enter into
partnerships with engineering institutes like
IIT Delhi to develop low-cost healthcare
devices. "We already have a 'Stanford India
Bio-design' project going on in which three
top universities of the world-Stanford, IIT
and AIIMS-are collaborating to develop low-
cost stents. In the future, we will have more
such partnerships," he added.
Dr Misra joined AIIMS in the 1980's and
became the head of the surgery department
13 years later in 1993. He took over as the
AIIMS Trauma centre chief in 2006. At
least 10 prominent doctors, from AIIMS as
well as overseas, were in line for the
director's post but Misra was always a
frontrunner. The former director of AIIMS ,
Dr R C Deka, retired on September 30.
Misra's name was forwarded to the PMO
last month by the institute body of AIIMS
that is headed by union health minister
Ghulam Nabi Azad.
Four other candidates in the fray, who were
shortlisted by the search-cum-selection
committee, were Dr Y K Gupta who heads
the pharmacology department, Dr V K Paul
who heads the paediatrics department, Dr
Balram Airon who heads cardio-thoracic
and vascular surgery, and Dr S K Acharya
who heads the gastroenterology department.

Read More

Rendezvous, IIT Delhi

http://www.rendezvous-iitd.com/
Rendezvous is the annual cultural festival of IIT
Delhi; an amalgamation of art, activities and
attractions.

Read More

Hoobastank @ Rendezvous'13, IIT Delhi

'The Reason' sensation, HOOBASTANK, is
returning back to India, giving you another
'reason' to attend Rendezvous this year.
Continuing the legacy of international
headliners @ IITD, from Malefice in '09,
Textures in '10 to Cypher16 last year, and
Hoobastank is cherry on pie this year. The Band
best-known for songs such as "The Reason",
"Crawling in the Dark" and "If I were you" and
their 2012 album, 'Fight or Flight', plays at
Rendezvous'13 to promote their discography,
and obviously to make nerdy geeks and junta to
head bang all through the night.
The Core team for Rendezvous had been
working for almost a year now, spending
sleepless nights to give world reasons to attend
the Cultural Extravaganza and all that
pinpointed to this and Hoobastank was the
perfect reason to not miss Rendezvous at any
cost.
Hoobastank performs in the Open Air Theatre,
IITD whichhas a capacity of over 10,000, this October
18th.
Get your RDV number, Register yourself here.
Coming up, more reasons to attend
Rendezvous'13!!
Watch Hoobastank's composition: The Reason

Read More

DRDO's hiring drive takes a hit due budget cuts

BANGALORE: Hiring of about 350 scientists and
engineers by state-run Defence Research and
Development Organisation (DRDO) has been delayed
by the austerity measures of the Union finance
ministry, a senior official said.
"Though the (350) posts have been cleared by the
prime minister's office (PMO), recruitment has been
put on hold due to a cut in budgetary allocation for
us this fiscal year (2013-14 ) by the finance
ministry," DRDO recruitment and assessment centre
chairman DN Reddy said on the sidelines of a
conference here.
Admitting that the research body has a shortage of
400 scientists and engineers, Reddy said fresh hiring
may not take place till the general election, which
will be held next year. "We got clearance from the
PMO but not from the finance ministry due to
austerity drive. We hope to get the ministry's
approval after the elections.
This is the first time we are affected by the austerity
drive," Reddy said at the two-day National
Conference on Condition Monitoring, organised by
DRDO's Bangalore-based Gas Turbine Research
Establishment (GTRE) and the Condition Monitoring
Society of India (CMSI). Union Finance Minister P
Chidambaram had recently directed all Central
ministries to prune their plan expenditure for fiscal
year 2014 to ensure that the budgeted fiscal deficit
does not cross the targeted 4.8% of the GDP. About
70-90 senior scientists retire every year from the
organisation's R&D centres.
"The freeze on hiring will delay current and new
projects in missile technology, aerospace ,
electronics warfare like radars, armaments and
protective and life-supporting equipment for the
armed forces," said Reddy. DRDO visits 18 institutes,
including 16 IITs, IISc in Bangalore and Defence
Institute of Advance Technology in Pune, for campus
hiring of about 100 students in December every
year.

Read More