It’s a great pleasure for me to bring this report of the inaugural meeting of the IITB Alumni Association Gujarat Chapter held on 22nd July, Saturday in Gandhinagar at the Dhirubhai Ambani – Institute of Information and Communications Technology (DA-IICT).

Having been in Gujarat for more than four years now, I had been waiting for an IITB Alumni meet. When in finally happened, the enthusiasm from alumni, old and new showed. More than 90 Alumni and some Alumni attended the event from other IITs as well. The total attendance along with wife and kids was over 150. There were so many dignitaries from IITB itself – Prof. Ashok Misra (Director), Prof. Dipan Ghosh (DD), Prof. S.C. Sahasrabudhe (now Director of DA-IICT), Prof. D.B. Phatak and Prof. Pradipta Banerjee (Dean, Alumni Affairs).

The event started with tea – where people were so excited to see each other, especially when they were meeting old dept. mates or wing mates or hostel mates. What was really great was to see so many oldies – from batches of ‘69, ’71, ’75 and the likes! In fact, partly due to the fact that Gujarat lacks the IT industry altogether, there was few Alumni from the recent batches. And not unexpectedly the majority of the oldies were running their own businesses – from exports to textiles to financial and engineering consultancies, to manufacturing units! All of them were sharing stories and reminiscing about the good old days at IIT Bombay! In fact, as a ’65 batch Alumnus commented to me – he said that the earlier batches need such reunions to relive their exhilarating college years unlike probably the new pass-outs like me!

Prof. Misra shared some exciting current happenings at IIT Bombay – the alliance with Monash University of Australia for a joint research academy, IITB being chosen as the model by UN for a series of African Institute of Science and Technology, the doubling of doctoral candidates. The announcement of a full-fledged IITB Campus at Gandhinagar was particularly remarkable – the IIT Bombay team led by the Director had met the Gujarat Govt. team just the previous day - talks are on with the Govt. of Gujarat for the land and the first academic year is expected to begin next year itself (initially for another campus). Gujarat needs exactly this kind of an impetus in higher technical sector and I sincerely hope that many students from Gujarat will benefit from this.

Mr. Ashank Desai (CEO, Mastek) shared with everyone the grand plans for PAN-IIT meet in December (www.paniit2006.org) – this event will for the first time focus on IITians role in nation building in a big way. This will be the first PANIIT meet at Bombay and needs the participation of all IITians to make it a grand success. Prof. D.B. Phatak shared with us the IITB Golden Jubilation plans which start next year from July and will go on till 2008, marking IITB’s 50 years. A large number of infrastructural projects from new hostels to a new Indoor Stadium to research labs have been planned. The Alumni were urged to donate to IITB – and any amount large or small is very much welcome.

A panel discussion moderated by Dr. Ajit Ranade (President IITBAA) figuring alumni such as Mr. Alexander Luke (GSFC), Prof. Navalgund (Director SAC, ISRO), Mr. Shailesh Gandhi (Chairman RTI Group) was held on the relevant topic of “How can IITians help in Nation-building?” A number of suggestions were given by the panel – from rural development to using RTI, to focusing on ethics in the public domain to developing primary education, from getting students to take an interest in Space applications to entrepreneurship. The audience participated vociferously in the discussion – some emotional topics such as brain drain of IITians, IITians in politics were also raised by the audience. The brain-drain point was countered effectively enough when it was pointed out IITians abroad not only contribute large sums of money but have helped set up companies and play a bit role in getting technology to India. In fact now a lot of people are coming back and with the exposure that they have, they will be able to do big things.

The IITBAA CEO Milind Gokhale then informed the alumni about the structure and nature of the IITBAA – it’s a Section-25 company (not-for-profit) body registered in India. All donations to it are 50% IT-exempt. All the chapters in India (Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Gujarat etc.) are a part of this official body. The Gujarat Chapter of the IITB Alumni Association was also launched officially and alumni were exhorted to become lifetime members of the IITBAA to become a part of this chapter. An ad-hoc executive committee has also been setup whose two main jobs are to get all alumni in Gujarat registered and to soon set up a democratic process for choosing the executive members.

And being a part of the ad-hoc executive committee, I request all alumni in Gujarat to register themselves as lifetime members of IITBAA, and to take an active interest in the events that will be happening very soon (alumni reading this outside Gujarat are requested to inform alumni in Gujarat of the above).

The Alumni meet ended with a dinner – which was held in the beautiful Club House of DA-IICT. As was expected dinner stretched on till late in the night with people catching up, networking, making future plans to meet and generally enjoying themselves.

On behalf of the Alumni in Gujarat, I would like to thank the IITBAA and DA-IICT for its wonderful organization. And we all hope that the Gujarat chapter will become a vibrant and nodal chapter.

Here’s looking forward to IITB Alumni meets, events and activities in Gujarat,

Vardan Kabra
(IITB/H2/Meta/2002)
Surat

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