Friday, December 29, 2006

Atanu Dey on PanIIT


Atanu Dey pans the PanIIT meet:

They took the stage for the next hour or so (but seemed interminable) congratulating each other on the “great success the PanIIT 2006” was. Each tried to outdo the other in heaping praise on all and sundry for the great job they have done. It was an orgy of premature congratulations. Their praise for each was only interrupted by references to how great a “brand” IIT was and how they, as the “product” of IITs, were going to “Inspire, Involve, and Transform” the nation, and who knows, perhaps the world, if not the entire universe. They were clearly impressed by their own cleverness in expanding IIT to mean spell the theme of the event.

It was a bit too thick, and I was beginning to feel a little sick. A bunch of self-absorbed inflated egos strutting about the stage sprouting meaningless drivel about how great they and the IITs were soon gets nauseating.

There's a lot more where it came from, and it ain't pretty.

My previous posts on the PanIIT meet are here and here.

2 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    Being an ex-IITian myself, somehow I am not surprised. There is no shortage of people like this who come from the IITs: they make me sick too. On the brighter side, there are also a lot of people like me who come from the IITs, and share the views of the President and have a real sense of how important IITs are in the long run. Sadly such people are less outspoken at these meetings.
    --MK

  2. Anonymous said...

    I was just going through Kalam's speech. Beautiful ! Hightime somebody "pricked the balloons" !

    And I would second what a commenter at another post was saying about IITians being generally oblivious to gender inequality.

    But, I think Atanu Dey is being unfair to Kalam when he compares him with Chopra.

    Of course, I might be mistaken - I've linked to Kalam's speech above and I would be interested in knowing whether you share his opinion. Especially, you are in a better position than me to judge Kalam's statements about nanotechnology.

    Atleast from whatever I've come across till now, Kalam doesn't introduce jargons just to impress. Or may be at IITK, I've heard so many meaningless speeches filled with technological "chopra-woo" that Kalam's speech sounds like coming out of heaven !