Sanjay Dani CSE @ 05:28 PM

Dear friends,

Thanks for all the encouraging comments! Keep up the enthu!!

More importantly, thanks for the patience while it takes a little longer to make the discussion forums and alumni registration available on this site. We do have a dedicated server ready that we will shortly cut over to. For the techies, it is a Sparc box with Solaris 9, Apache, SSL, movable type and mySQL.

The IIT50 function this past weekend in the silicon valley was a great event. More than 2000 alumni participated. You can check out the media coverage under www.siliconvalley.com, www.rediff.com, www.expressindia.com and www.timesofindia.com.

The IIT brand that the new pan-IIT movement is promoting is a huge success right off the bat! Everyone I talked to was more than welcoming of ITBHUites. I didn't feel any "apartheid", so please relax. Let's be secure, proud and self-confident -- not like we have ever lacked these qualities! :-)

A frequent personal reaction from many attendees was how come ITBHU, part of the JEE system for decades, is still not an IIT while Guwahati and Roorkee were created/incorporated into the IIT system?

The good news is our continued, natural association with IITs is reciprocated. The not so good news is that the main factor against ITBHU's transformation into an autonomous IIT is (you guessed it!) politics. On second thought, I think we can collectively influence the politics in the decision making of the Government of India. Any ITBHU alumni and GoI insiders, from the civil services or political offices, out there who would like to guide us?

I had an opprotunity to interact briefly with the deputy director of IIT Roorkee. He was kind enough to give an insight into the IIT-ization process. Besides the obvious criteria of educational excellence, which our institute has no problem fulfilling, the creation of the new state of Uttaranchal was a political godsend for Roorkee. That Uttar Pradesh already has an IIT in Kanpur works against ITBHU. Unfortunately, the HRD Minister MM Joshi did not make it to the function so we couldn't ask this question of him.

I see these challenges as a lightening rod for us to rally around. So here is our action plan based on the comments and informal discussions:

1. Let's continue to organize ourselves, whether the online forums on this site or the already existing local gatherings at various locations. I do not foresee a problem consolidating all such gatherings under a single umbrella in the near future. Organizations facilitate interactions and opinion forming like this one. They also facilitate fund-raising. Both are keys to our dual goals of strengthening the quality of the institute as well as branding it as an IIT.
   
2. The organizational efforts will lend credence to the dialogue that some of us are going to initiate with the institute director.
   
3. Similarly, we will open up a dialogue with the office of the HRD Minister MM Joshi for the GoI's buy-in.
   

If any of you have interesting ideas to help coordinate the above two discussions or a special in with those constituenices, please drop us an email.

Cheers from the silicon valley,
Sanjay Dani