December 2003

• Mood Indigo ... theme this year goes very well with the biodiversity of the campus. "In a new, eco-friendly avtaar, the theme of Mood Indigo-2003 is ‘In Bloom’ as it celebrates the beauty of nature," says student organiser, Ram Kakkad. However, in 1971, when the first Mood Indigo was held in Powai, the campus was dusty brown and barren with few trees. Today, it looks like a mini-forest, that attracts monkeys, leopards and even crocodiles. Besides its usual competitions, the fest this time has something for television and Bollywood buffs. It will host the India Quiz and TV Quiz (where students will be grilled on the saas-bahu legends). There’s also a new event, where posters will have to be designed for 'Z'-grade Bollywood flicks, movies at the very bottom of the heap. Rahul da Cunha’s play, Class of '84, will also be staged, plus the regular rock show. For the adventurous lot, there’s aquagames and even extreme sports like wall climbing and rappelling.
  • Brown and barren in 1971 , IIT is ‘ In Bloom ’ this year - Mumbai Newsline
  • Masti at mood - Indian Express
  • At Mood-I, poetry tickles the funny bone - Mumbai Newsline
  • From Powai, to the world - Indian Express
• Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay, is setting up a technology business incubator (TBI) for creating intellectual property (IP) innovations in areas including mechanics, chemical, aerospace and information technology (IT). “We are forming a society that will promote creativity. TBI will act as an incubator and ensure commercial application of the technology,” IIT Bombay director Ashok Misra told eFE. The department of science and technology, ministry of communications and information technology along with IIT Bombay have committed Rs 5 crore for TBI besides donations from foundations. “We are looking at early-stage venture capitalists/ start-up funds to invest in TBI,” Dr Misra said ... more.
  
• About 500 IIT alumni met at the Indian Institute of Technology, Powai, on Monday (Dec. 15) to protest against the murder of the IITian and young idealist Satyendra Kumar Dubey. The crux of the meeting was mainly a plea to IIT alumni to take the cue from Satyendra Dubey and prevent his death from being in vain. One of the suggestions that emerged was the creation of a pan-IIT counselling centre for whistleblowers, where alumni who want to expose corruption can be advised and the matter can be taken up jointly with the support of a huge fraternity rather than one person going for it by himself/herself. The main speakers included Ashok Misra, director, IIT Bombay; S.K. Dube, director, IIT Kharagpur; Shailesh Gandhi, chairman, IIT Bombay Alumni Association; Deepak Satwalekar, IIT Bombay alumnus and head of HDFC Insurance, journalist Sucheta Dalal, writer Dilip D’souza and student representatives of various IITs. Mr Misra began the discussion by saying that Satyendra Dubey was only following the path that IIT stands for—progress without corruption. "One of the basic values we teach and learn at IIT is regard for merit," he said. "And we hope that every alumnus upholds this value. We like to believe that all of us can change a little bit of the system, and that all the little changes can add up to a big change." ... more.
  
• IIT engineer stood up to highway corruption, shot dead in Bihar ... The next time a promising young engineer sees corruption and mismanagement in a Government project he’s working on, chances are he will think twice, thrice, several times, before complaining to the political and bureaucratic establishment. For, 31-year-old Satyendra Kumar Dubey did that, he sent his letter to the Prime Minister’s Office—and now he’s dead, killed by "unidentified assailants" in Gaya, Bihar last week. Dubey, a 1994 civil engineering graduate from IIT Kanpur, was Deputy General Manager in the Centre’s National Highway Authority of India working on the 60-km Aurangabad-Barachatti segment of the Golden Quadrilateral in Bihar with headquarters in Koderma, Jharkhand. On November 11, 2002, the Prime Minister’s Office received his letter addressed to the Prime Minister himself. In the letter, a copy of which is with The Sunday Express, Dubey called the PM’s highway showpiece "a dream project of unparalleled importance to the nation." And then highlighted several instances of what he called "loot of public money" and "poor implementation." Dubey requested his name be kept secret but at the same time, he let his identity known ... Dubey’s letter is riddled with signatures and scribbles of officials indicating it was a classic case of a file going into babudom’s endless orbit ... Dubey’s request for anonymity was apparently ignored by the PMO ... more.
  • Online petition drive
  • http://www.skdubeyfoundation.org/
  • Click here for more news ...
    
• With new water supply schemes envisaged by the State government falling far short of demand, India's financial capital will face a severe water shortage in the next 15 years, says an alarming new study by an environmental group. Painting a grim view of a parched Mumbai, the study by the New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) foresees a huge gap between demand and supply of water ... The CSE in association with the BMC has published a Rainwater Harvesting Manual complete with case studies for implementation by individuals and institutions. The manual was released at a function organised by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Alumni Association at Powai recently ... more.
  
• Just when residents of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) campus in Powai were getting used to leopards prowling in their backyards, they received a croc shock on Sunday night. At around 8.30 pm, just when a colourful procession of about 200 devotees of Lord Ayyappa was scheduled to pass through the lakeside road, residents of a building housing IIT staffers noticed a 9-foot crocodile in their garden. Apparently, it had crawled out of the adjoining Powai Lake and lazily crossed a 15-feet wide road before settling down, somewhat confused, in the garden. The procession was diverted to an inner route and the authorities informed. ‘‘At the IIT control room, we were alerted about a crocodile in H1-Building. This is the second time I’ve seen a magarmach in recent times,’’ said IIT security guard Ratnakant Kohli ... more. Plus ... Croc numbers are up in Powai Lake - Mumbai Newsline.
  
• HRD minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi ... gaining total control of the two world-class educational systems we have in the country, the IITs and the IIMs. History has been conquered, school syllabi have been vanquished, now only the best of Indian higher education remains to be quelled. If he hasn't succeeded fully yet, it certainly hasn't been for lack of trying. For the first time in history, ministry bureaucrats sit on IIT boards ... Dr Joshi wants to bring the IITs and IIMs down to the level of other institutes ... more.
  
• NCR has launched a cash machine conceived and designed specifically for the Indian market. The NCR EasyPoint 57i (Asan) will enable banks in India to give many more account holders access to ATMs without incurring huge capital or operational costs, says the vendor. Based on technology designed to meet Indian infrastructural challenges, Asan's small size and low running costs are intended to accommodate the largely untapped non-urban areas, as well as to open up opportunities in newer urban locations such as corporate offices and factories, newly emerging multiplexes and malls and branch extensions. Developed with consumer-research-based design inputs from the Industrial Design Center at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai (IIT-B), the machine has been put through its paces in live pilot trials with leading domestic banks ... more.
  
• Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, whose brands include Sheraton, Westin and W hotels, on Monday named Vasant Prabhu (BTech ME '81) as Chief Financial Officer ...  Mr Prabhu will remain at his current post as CFO of Safeway, one of the largest food retailers in the US, until the end of the year. The California-based company said a search was under way for his replacement. Mr Prabhu was previously CFO for Pepsi-Cola International. He was also president of the information and media group at The McGraw Hill Companies, a $1bn division with more than 4,000 employees. Mr Prabhu holds degrees from the University of Chicago and the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay. Starwood operates more than 740 properties in more than 80 countries and has 105,000 employees at properties that it owns and manages ... more.
  • Starwood Names Vasant M. Prabhu Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
  • Safeway's CFO resigns to join Starwood Hotels - San Francisco Chronicle
    
• The Rise Of India - Business Week, December 8, 2003. Growth is only just starting, but the country's brainpower is already reshaping Corporate America ... Tech luminary Andrew S. Grove, CEO of Intel Corp., warns that "it's a very valid question" to ask whether America could eventually lose its overwhelming dominance in IT, just as it did in electronics manufacturing ... But there's also a far more positive view -- that harnessing Indian brainpower will greatly boost American tech and services leadership by filling a big projected shortfall in skilled labor as baby boomers retire ... Whether you regard the trend as disruptive or benefical, one thing is clear. Corporate America no longer feels it can afford to ignore India ... India also is working to assure that it will be able to meet future demand for knowledge workers at home and abroad. India produces 3.1 million college graduates a year, but that's expected to double by 2010. The number of engineering colleges is slated to grow 50%, to nearly 1,600, in four years. Of course, not all are good enough to produce the world-class grads of elite schools like the IITs, which accepted just 3,500 of 178,000 applicants last year. So there's a growing movement to boost faculty salaries and reach more students nationwide through broadcasts. India's rich diaspora population is chipping in, too ... Meanwhile, the six IIT campuses are tapping alumni for donations and research links with Stanford, Purdue, and other top science universities. "Our mission is to become one of the leading science institutions in the world," says director Ashok Mishra of IIT-Bombay, which has raised $16 million from alumni in the past five years ... more.

November 2003

• Recent news stories featuring the IITs or IITians ...

  	"[MIT] is run by an IIT Kanpur mafia" - Business Standard, Nov. 17, 2003
  	Indian-born CEO gives dirt its due - Times of India, Nov. 20, 2003
  	ISRO to develop reusable launch vehicles - The Hindu, Nov. 22, 2003
  	TCS Chief - "An Irresistable Offshore Tide For Jobs" - BusinessWeek
  	Clinton charm intact as he starts India visit - NewKerala.com
  	India develops underwater robot - Xinhuanet.com

   
• The reigning champions of the BBC's University Challenge programme have suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of a team of electrical engineers from India. The team of mature students from Birkbeck College, part of the University of London, had been confident of an easy victory but were crushed 150 points to 85 by a younger team from the Indian Institute of Technology based in Madras. Birkbeck's defeat on the show - broadcast to millions on the BBC World satellite television service - was all the more bruising for national pride because so many of the questions were about British culture and history. The Indian team scored well on subjects including English royalty, Sherlock Holmes, the Booker Prize and T.S. Eliot, and bagged most of the crucial starter questions. Birkbeck's confidence was rocked when the Indian team raced to a 45-0 lead. For a while it looked as if the British team might not score at all ... more.

  	IIT Madras team crushes British quiz champions - Newindpress, Nov. 23, 2003
  	IIT crushes UK quiz champions - Economic Times, Nov. 23, 2003

   
• Godrej & Boyce collaborates with IIT Bombay to beef up its design process ... Godrej & Boyce is bringing together manufacturing, design and marketing to consolidate its presence in the office furniture market. "Creating appeal" is more than just a phrase from the mission statement tacked on the office walls. For office furniture maker Godrej & Boyce, it’s becoming a way of life. The Rs. 1,400-crore company, which also makes home furniture and consumer durables, has changed a lot over the past decade. Market situations do that to a company. In the last three years, the office furniture market has seen increasing competition from international players, including the $ 2.06 billion American firm, Haworth, Malaysia’s Bristol and Chinese brand UB. ... New product development has also been speeded up. From two new products every year earlier, Godrej is now up to six or seven annually. It is also working closely with the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, to beef up its design process ... more.
  
• The India Business Club at MIT announced the Global Indus Innovators awards for 2003 ... amongst the winners are several IITians, including Chaitan Khosla (BTech ChE '85) of Stanford and Surya Mallapragada (BTech ChE '93) of Iowa State. The 2003 Awards Ceremony will be held in MIT's Wong Auditorium on November 25th with Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway as the Keynote speaker, followed by Desh Deshpande, Chairman of Sycamore Networks who will moderate the Q&A session ... more.
  
• "Do we need more IITs?"- Rediff.com. "... The conversion of the REC into the 'deemed university' NIT is to streamline management ... somewhat like an IIT-lite. ... The ministry of education is increasing its control over the institutes. For example, it has decided to manage the alumni donations to the IITs through a central fund, in spite of opposition from potential donors. ... The IITs are currently going through a particularly difficult period regarding faculty retention and infrastructure. Although they do a great job at training undergraduates, they haven't done as well as research universities. Wouldn't creation of more IITs, without adequate investment in the existing ones, dilute their brand name? ... should the increase be in the number of technology schools, such as IITs and NITs, or in some other manner? ... more.
  
• Aman Motwane (BTech ME '73) is on a tour to promote his book titled "The Power of Wisdom" which tries to answer the question - "How do some individuals get everything that life has to offer so easily - love, happiness, prosperity, courage, inner strength - while others struggle?" Known in some circles as "the unguru," Motwane's words have been quoted by Oprah Winfrey and repeated by Tom Peters, and his advice taken to heart by thousands of business owners, managers and career counselors ... more.
  
• "It doesn’t hit you till you leave the campus" says Hemen Godbole. The IIT Bombay team wowed the PanIIT audience at the Bay Area Diwali Dhamaka 2003 with performances which were "like thunderstorms in a desert". A 35-strong contingent put in six weeks of hard practice to make it all happen. "Bay to Bombay" sung to an uplifting score from Top Gun, narrated the life and times of Veeru, an IBCD (IIT-Baap, Confused Desi). Outsourced by his dad to IITB, a grudging Veeru discovers himself – and his lady love – while on campus  ... more.
  
• BBC News, Nov 3, 2003: "Cartoon fame for Indian tech school" - The world famous Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) have made their way into Dilbert, the enormously popular comic strip about the corporate world. Mr Adams, who began drawing cartoons in the 1980s while working in a telecommunications company, said he has several friends who graduated from IIT. "I have known several IIT graduates over the years. The character Asok is named after an ex co-worker from my days in the tech world," he told BBC News Online. "I thought it would be a funny contrast to have Asok come from the most competitive school system in the world only to find out that intelligence doesn't always help in the workplace." Asked how IIT graduates differed from engineering graduates from all over the world, Mr Adams said: "They are smarter" ... more.
  
• The animated buzz (at the NASSCOM meeting) turned to a hush as Charles Philip Arthur George, 55, better known as the Prince of Wales, walked into the Crystal Room of Mumbai's Taj Mahal Hotel Tuesday morning ... (IIT Bombay alumnus) Ashank Desai (MTech ME '74), Chairman, Mastek, a multinational IT applications outsourcing company ... helped develop the software for the London traffic decongestion programme ... there are no tollbooths, gantries or barriers; drivers do not have to stop ... Professor Krithi Ramamritham of IIT Bombay, and head of the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, ... spoke on 'IT for Development.' "Even simple technologies can provide significant benefits to rural communities," he said. Some of the projects at IIT Bombay include Devanagari text inputs for the Internet, multilingual community fora for rural areas, speech interfaces, and cheap but tough instruments to assess water quality ... As for the laughter, that came when the Prince told Ashank Desai: "You've cleaned up London's congestion. What about Mumbai?" ... more.


• "Chennai villages ride the IT wave" ... Bringing the information technology and its benefits to rural India is one of the biggest challenges for advocates of wider usage of IT in India. About 70 crore (700 million) people live in India's villages and they have at times no access to education or telephones. But one group, led by Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala, a professor at the department of electrical engineering in the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, is showing how it can be done ... n-Logue focuses on providing and operating telecom and Internet services only in small towns and rural areas of India. To prevent dilution of focus, its charter bars it from carrying out operations in urban areas. n-Logue believes that there is a large rural market in India for such services, and that it must be tapped differently from that in urban areas. "There is a need to overcome the technology barrier and build a sustainable business model. For that you need an organisation that thinks and acts rural, as opposed to being an organisation with an urban mindset," says Professor Jhunjhunwala ... more.
  
• "The technology institutes are India’s best brand ambassadors. Set up IITs overseas, leverage India’s educational wherewithal," says Prashant Agarwal in the Indian Express on Nov 1, 2003. "IITians have scored as much success abroad (think of Rajat Gupta, Arun Sarin, Vinod Khosla) as they have at home (think of N.R. Narayanamurthy, Yogi Deveshwar, Vindi Banga). In the US, Canada and Europe, IITians are in positions of importance. The question is: if IITians can thrive abroad, might not IIT itself ? ... American and British universities have been expanding abroad to increase their influence and, not insignificantly, bank balance ... Why not the same fate for IIT ? By setting up IITs in, say, the Middle East or southeast Asia, India can quietly export its values. Host countries would have much to gain and would encourage an IIT’s arrival ... more.

October 2003

• India’s top academic institutions, the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), may soon set up branches in other cities ... As far as the IITs are concerned, while 190,000 students wrote the joint entrance examination last year, 4,400 made it to one of the seven institutes. The move, an HRD ministry official said, was intended to improve the standards of technical and professional education in the country ... more.
  
• It's a long way from Mahboobnagar in Andhra Pradesh to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It's an equally long distance from being a graduate of IIT, Kanpur to being recognised as the co-founder of the Auto-ID Center - a research consortium headquartered at MIT with 103 company sponsors and six university affiliates. For Sanjay Sarma, 35-year-old associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, it's been an eventful journey; Time magazine, in a story on technologies of the future early this month, featured Auto-ID centre and its work in Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) ... more.
  
• Satish Korde, a president with the WPP group, the world’s leading communications service providers which has major brands ... was instrumental in the development of Young & Rubicam's proprietary global consumer study dedicated to how brands are built and managed ... And now even as he sees his alma mater IIT graduating into a global brand, for him it still remains the ultimate frontier ... more.
  
• Milind Dange, a veteran of product engineering with such leading companies as DaimlerChrysler, has joined Sea Ray Boat Group as its new vice president of product development and engineering (PD&E) ... Dange holds a bachelor of science degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay as well as a master of science in structures from the University of Cincinnati and an MBA from the University of Michigan ... more.
  
• No political posting in IITs, IIMs: Joshi - "Union HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi today reassured technocrats that institutes like the IIT or the IIM will always be managed by professionals ... Panel to help add five more IITs - The government is setting up a committee to select five colleges across India to be converted into Indian Institutes of Technology, Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi said. Addressing the alumni of the National Institute of Technoloy, Warangal, Dr Joshi pointed out that such conversion was a slow process to be carried out in a phased manner.
  
• The Wealth of (Other) Nations - "... maybe, just maybe, companies in Silicon Valley should take a look at new approaches to business that are emerging in places such as India, China and Russia and stop worrying so much about the Next Big Thing. Maybe hot Chinese technology companies like Alibaba, Shanda, 3721 and C Trip are not just shameless, low-cost rip-offs of U.S. companies like eBay, Google or Expedia. Maybe the Russian problem-solving technique known as TRIZ, recently profiled in Wired Magazine, actually makes sense. Maybe the Indian Institute of Technology, described on CBS "60 Minutes" as a mix of Harvard, Princeton and MIT, might be a hotbed of new management theories for all those Indian IT outsourcing giants" ... more.
  
• Village Kiosks Bridge India's Digital Divide - Washington Post, October 12, 2003: Two years ago, after graduating from high school at the top of her class, Sukanya Sakkarai put aside her dreams of college and resigned herself to the fate of most young women in this farming village of trampled earth and mud-brick houses: marriage to a stranger in a match arranged by her parents. Then the Information Age arrived on her doorstep. Life hasn't been the same for Sakkarai, or her village, since ... "If it's entrepreneur-driven, people will pride themselves on making it successful," said Ashok Jhunjhunwala, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras who helped develop the wireless system that undergirds the slowly evolving network ... Central to the effort is Wireless Local Loop technology, which provides cheap, relatively fast Internet connections to fiber-optic cables as far as 18 miles away ... more. Also see "Giving telecom a Midas touch" about IIT-M alumnus Shirish Purohit who heads up Midas, a company which is making voice and data links affordable in rural India by offering Wireless in Local Loop based corDECT technology ... more.
  
• As Bill Gates had noted in his speech at IIT50, IIT Bombay continues to be the "lair of the leopard". The latest news is a bout the 13th leopard caught by the forest department  ...  "Female intruder in IIT boys hostel". Most of the other leopards have been caught in Powai, Thane, Borivli, Goregaon and other places where there have been sightings and killings. This does not include the number of traps annually laid by the IIT within its campus, where the spotted cat routinely prowls.
  
• "Asok the Great: IIT-made" - Times of India, October 11, 2003: "... And US presidential candidate Gen Wesley Clark wants to offer them automatic American citizenship. For the uber-geek, alpha-nerd IITian, already giddy with praise, being featured in Scott Adams’ comic strip Dilbert is the latest accolade. On two successive days last month, Adams referred to India’s famed school, sending IITians into transports of self-congratulatory delight about brand building, even if the strip was a breezy swipe at the desi geniuses. Adams brings in IIT through Asok, a character after an Indian engineer with the same name he knew during his days as a techie with Pacific Bell in the late 1980s ... "I mean, when you meet guys from Harvard, they will tell you within five minutes that they graduated from Harvard. With the IIT guys, you have to ask." The realisation, he says, led to his throwing in IIT into his widely-read comic strip, now syndicated in more than 2,000 publications. "Probably half my social circle is Indian," says Adams, whose Dilbert brand now generates about $200 million in annual revenues, as good as an IITian led company ... more.
  

• John Dvorak in PC Magazine - Killing the Company Dept.: Outsourcing is a double-edged sword - twice as easy to cut yourself on! So the move to outsource nearly everything to India and China is questionable, yet for competitive reasons, companies often have little choice. But you have to wonder how much companies will suffer. ... Not all outsourcing is bad or embarrassing. Using Russians to do high-level coding, for example, has always seemed like a good idea to me ... But India gets the attention. Numerous companies and consortiums are putting together so-called design centers in India to exploit graduates from the Indian Institute of Technology, a school that considers itself on a par with or even better than MIT and other U.S. engineering- and science-oriented institutions. The graduates of IIT are all over Silicon Valley, but many want to go back to India eventually. India is gearing up to be the world leader in IC design. ... I hate to be a skeptic, but I have to ask whether there are that many qualified and talented designers in India. Can every company have thousands on staff and move out of its own country, where apparently nobody can design a circuit? This, to me, looks like an exercise in bean counting. "By spending $300 million we can save $400 million ..." ... more.
  
• "We’re a nation of immigrants. We should be encouraging every person from the Indian Institute of Technology that comes to this country to stay in this country. Become an American citizen. Join with us. Make a great company. Let’s all be wealthy and prosperous and happy together. Immigration has a vital part to play in that process." Democratic Presidential candidate Gen. Wesley Clark ... more.
  
• Prof. S. P. Sukhatme, Chairman, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board, India and Professor Emeritus and Former Director of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, will deliver the Keynote Address at the "Colloqium on Energy" at Washington University in St. Louis on October 31.  Prof. Sukhatme will speak the need for alternative energy options for India, including the solar option and the nuclear option ... more.
  
• The October issue of MIT's "Technology Review" highlights the TR100, a list of 100 innovators 35 or younger whose technologies are poised to make a dramatic impact on our world. Amongst those named is IIT Bombay alumnus Balaji Narasimhan (BTech ChE '92). Dr. Narasimhan's research is focused on preventing common world-wide diseases such as tetanus and diphtheria. These illnesses currently require four to five injections to build up a subject’s immunity, a fact that is particularly troublesome in populations with limited access to health care. Narasimhan, an associate professor at Iowa State University, is trying to achieve the same effects with a single dose, by encapsulating vaccines in specially tailored biodegradable polymers ... more.
  
• Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announced on Wednesday that the government has decided to set up five more Indian Institutes of Technology by upgrading existing academic institutions that have the necessary promise and potential. Speaking after inaugurating the new building of the department of biological sciences and bio-engineering at the IIT Kanpur, the prime minister sought private sectors participation and contributions from IIT alumni for this purpose. The next big revolution, Vajpayee said, will unfold in the bio-technology sector and it would touch the lives of ordinary people in ways that cannot be fully imagined today. "We must not lag behind others in this revolution. Indeed, India should aspire to be one of the leaders," the prime minister said. Vajpayee said IITs have achieved the purpose of providing world-class technology education at a low cost to the brightest students of the country and they have become the magnet of the most intelligent and most ambitious students who have made a mark in the industry and management in India and outside. Vajpayee said there was an urgent need to expand the overall size of the IIT system in view of the growing population.
  • Five new IITs in the offing: PM - Indian Express
  • PM announces setting up of five more IITs - Economic Times
    
• There can be only one boss: Rahul Bajaj - Times of India / Economic Times. Rahul Bajaj may not blow his own trumpet but despite the bureaucracy involved in running IIT Mumbai, he has been able to bring about one change. As the chairman of the institute, he can now permit the director of the institute to go abroad on three trips a year. "It is ironical that the director sanctions the foreign trips of hundreds of professors but he himself is dependent on the HRD ministry for his trips. I asked the government why they had appointed me or any chairman if the chairman cannot approve these trips. So, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi has agreed that thrice a year the director can go abroad with the permission of the chairman. Subsequent to that, he will require the ministry's approval. Of course, the papers haven't reached us yet." ... more.
  

September 2003

• "Yes Mumbai, you can be another Shanghai" - Indian Express, Sep 23, 2003. "It's a question that’s raised often, and according to many, it’s just plain unfair: Can Mumbai be a Shanghai? Yes, it can, and that’s critical to India because Shanghai’s transformation into a first-world city was the dragonhead of China’s rapid growth in the 90s. That’s the emphatic bottom line of a seminal report on Mumbai’s future made public on Tuesday by consulting firm McKinsey and presented to Maharashtra Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde. The chief minister immediately announced a task force headed by chief secretary Ajit Nimbalkar ... The sobering fact of course is that the state government boasts a debt of about Rs 83,000 crore and is forever appealing for Central funding. That doesn’t seem to matter. Nor does the fact that only about Rs 1,000 crore comes back to Mumbai from the Rs 40,000 crore that the city contributes in revenue every year. "The money is right here,’’ declared Ranjit Pandit, Managing Director McKinsey. ‘‘We just need to channelise it." But the culture of dependency stuck with Shinde as he glanced at the Prime Minister’s special representative Sudheendra Kulkarni (BTech CivE '84). "We have requested the PM to grant Mumbai Rs 18,000 crore."  ... more.
  
• "Sudheendra Kulkarni: A lateral mover from left to right" - ... Atal Bihari Vajpayee set up his second Prime Minister's Office in 1998 ... it is Sudheendra Kulkarni (IIT Bombay BTech CivE '84) whose rise has been nothing short of meteoric ... Kulkarni's colleagues from those days remember him as courteous and soft-spoken who had read Marx and Lenin well enough to internalise their lessons. ... For someone so committed to socialism ... Kulkarni internalised the RSS's values and identified himself enough with the Sangh to write resolutions for meetings of the national executive ... Many of his ideas have been co-opted officially by PMO. Linking the idea of India by roads through the Golden Quadrilateral was his idea that was fleshed out by others in PMO. ... Lateral entry into the Sangh doesn't usually take you very far. Kulkarni's rise, however, suggests that hard work can take you anywhere ... more.
  
• At the rather desolate looking Institute of Engineers auditorium in Haji Ali, a small group of men and women meet on the last Saturday of every month. After samosas and piping hot chai, there’s a guest lecture and discussion on an eclectic range of subjects. Should the speaker sound pedantic, they shout him down. The lecture has to have a practical edge. It’s the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumni meet, gaining strength and decibel levels as it powers ahead. Ram Jethmalani and former chief vigilance commissioner N Vittal have pitched in, as has Dr Bishnu Pradhan of MediaLab Asia ... But when an IIT adda convenes, can action be far behind? They’ve done six Sundays of water conservation at the Maharashtra Nature Park and a meeting with Rajendra Singh, Magsaysay award winner of Rajasthan’s great rainwater harvesting story. They also spent a day at the Karnala bird sanctuary  ... more.
  
• "The lair of the leopard: The IIT Campus" - "Do not wander around alone in the campus woods late at night. Carry a heavy stick if you really have to. And most important: Watch out for leopards! It’s been two weeks now that this strange circular is being distributed in classrooms, labs and student hostels of the lush campus of the Indian Institute of Technology at Powai. It’s no surprise for professors and students, considering several leopards from the neighbouring Sanjay Gandhi National Park have been spotted in the campus. Four of the big cats have been trapped alive by IIT security men over the last two months. The latest was trapped on September 14 ... more.
  
• "Why should poor Indians subsidise the IITian, asks Rahul Bajaj" - Economic Times, September 18, 2003. "Is it ethical that bright Indian students who receive subsidised education at the IITs, just go abroad and do not pay for their education? That is the question that Rahul Bajaj, chairman, IIT Bombay, posed at the IIT academic council meeting. Conservative estimates show that every year up to 50 per cent of IIT’s graduating class either go abroad, pursue higher studies in management or appear for the civil service examination ... Mr Bajaj suggests a system whereby those students who are going abroad for higher studies or with jobs, should pay the IITs the actual cost of an IIT education within five years of graduating" ... more.
  
• Should the poor subsidise the IITians? - Economic Times, September 19, 2003. "Here are the statistics. The IITs, which are completely funded by the government, are able to recover only 35-40 per cent of costs from fees. The average IIT undergraduate student pays anywhere between Rs 10,000 and 16,000 per semester: about Rs 40,000 a year. While the cost incurred for an average undergraduate student-degree year is, at the very least, Rs 1 lakh" ... more. Also see - "Dilbert takes a dig at IIT" - India Abroad and Asok the Great: IIT-made - Times of India.
  
• The syndicated cartoon strip "Dilbert" featured the Indian Institute of Technology on Sep 15th and Sep 16th, 2003 ... Asok turns out to be an IITian ! Scott Adams pokes fun at IIT alums by having Asok say that "Luckily, I'm an IIT graduate, mentally superior to most people on earth ..." Click here to purchase coffee mugs, T-shirts, framed prints and other collateral featuring this cartoon strip (© United Feature Syndicate Inc.). Also see - "Dilbert takes a dig at IIT" - India Abroad and Asok the Great: IIT-made - Times of India.
  
• "Dilbert takes a dig at IIT" - India Abroad, September 26, 2003.

• Cutting-edge Dilbert hits out at Indian techies - Times of India, Sep 15, 2003
  ... Till Dilbert struck, it was hosannahs all the way. ... A co-anchor on CBS 60 Minutes
  had gone on to describe IIT Bombay thus: “Put Harvard, MIT and Princeton ...

  Dilbert pokes fun at IIT grads - Economic Times, Sep 15, 2003
  ... job losses to Indian techies has found a place even in the famous cartoon strip Dilbert,
  the latest of which (September 15, 2003) goes on to take a dig at IIT ...
  

• Seeking to tap overseas market for Indian education as well as check brain drain, the government proposes to set up Indian Institute of Technology centres in Singapore, Mauritius, Sri Lanka and West Asian and South East Asian countries. The setting up of IIT campuses abroad have found favour with several expert committees, which felt that only institutions with good brand equity can help promote Indian education abroad. The issue was considered at length at a recent meeting of the Council of IITs in New Delhi where Union Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi suggested early submission of the report of the review committee looking into this aspect, an official release said on Monday night ... more.
  
  Press release - Press Information Bureau of India, Sep 15, 2003: IIT TO SET SHOP ABROAD
   
• Newindpress, September 11, 2003 - Warangal Regional Engineering College, recently upgraded as National Institute of Technology (NIT), a deemed university, will be made an IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) Centre in two years. Addressing mediapersons here on Wednesday after assuming charge as the director of the NIT, Prof Deba Kumar Tripathy said that the Warangal college was included in the list of NITs, which would soon be made into IITs. The Central Government has decided to upgrade five of the 17 selected NITs in the country into IIT centres, he explained adding that it would take two more years for Warangal NIT to get the status of IIT. Speaking on the educational standards, he said IIT pattern had already been introduced in the REC and under-graduate and post-graduate courses had been revamped in the current academic year. The annual examination pattern in B Tech and MBA courses was replaced with semester system, he said. Similarly, grading system was introduced just like in the IITs, he said ... more.
  
• HRD Minister Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi was the Chief Guest at the 40th Convocation of IIT Madras. In his address, he said that "... the objective of IITs becoming world renowned technological Institutions has been realized. Their highly successful alumni all over the world have brought an added aura and brand equity to the IIT name ... many of you are eagerly looking forward to pursue your higher education in other reputed universities abroad, I hope a strong sense of national feeling, a spirit of patriotic fervour reminiscent of the golden era of freedom struggle will fire your enthusiasm and bring most of you back to help solve many of the unsolved challenges and problems specific to our country ... more.
  
• Times of India, September 10, 2003 - Recently, when six versions of the Sobig worm wreaked havoc on Miscrosoft systems worldwide, the decade-old debate between Microsoft and Linux users in India was reopened. Academicians who swear by free software are finding more students and colleagues ready to join their movement post-Sobig. Students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Powai, for instance, took the revolutionary step of isolating Windows completely into a separate subnet, where they have to come in through a Linux firewall, after the virus attacks last month. "A sizable percentage of users have switched to Linux since last month.While student usage earlier showed a Microsoft versus Linux ratio of 80:20, now Linux usage has shot up to make it 50:50, and it’s still growing,’" said G. Sivakumar, head of Computer Centre, IIT. "Now we plan to guard against virus attacks by isolating Windows users in departments and residences of IIT" ... more.
  
• ExpressIndia, September 3, 2003 - "Green Gods" - "At Powai lake, the ‘Save Powai Lake Team’ of Indian Institute of Technology decided to make Ganpati idols from the clay-like soil of the lake. ‘‘This way, we have followed the eco-principle of what you take from Nature, you return it back without spoiling the environment,’’ said IIT’s Public Relations Officer, Aruna Thosar-Dixit" ... more.
  
• IIT Bombay alumnus S. M. Singla (BTech CivE '65), a member of the Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE), has taken over as Member Staff, Railway Board, and ex-officio Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of Railways. He was previously the General Manager, Western Railway, Mumbai, and Chief Engineer, Northern Railway, and General Manager of South Central Railway. He is also a graduate of the Manchester Business School ... more.

August 2003

• IIT Bombay student Gaurav Porwal speaks out on Rediff.com on the occasion of Independence Day... "India has to get rid of this chalta-hai attitude" - "India has brainpower, economic stability, but what it lacks is innovation. Today, India cannot be termed a developing nation. It is more than that ... I plan to study bio-technology and become a techno-entrepreneur engaged in drug development ...  I am proud of Indian culture, especially the bonds we enjoy with our family. We must retain this and not blindly follow the West" ... more.
  
• Times of India, August 13, 2003 - IIT Bombay alumnus Raj Gupta (BTech ME '67) said that "Rohm & Haas expects much from India" ... "You can't challenge him on the speed with which he makes decisions. In just four years, he was responsible for 35 acquisitions across the globe. In India, this would definitely have earned him the sobriquet of takeover king.  But this India-born chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of $6 billion US chemical giant Rohm & Haas is no mood to talk about takeovers. "Globally, we are now consolidating our operations. At the moment, we are not looking at any acquisitions ... the Indian company is also planning to undertake collaborative research with premier educational institutions such as Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). Gupta, who is an alumni of IIT, Mumbai, has had preliminary discussions on the matter ... His strategies have paid dividends. After he took over as the chairman and CEO in 1999, his company's market captilisation rose from $5 billion to $8 billion in the Wall-Street. Gupta, who has now been elected as the chairman of the prestigious American Chemistry Council, joined Rohm and Haas as a financial analyst in 1971. In December, 1998, he was elected to the board of directors ... more.
  
• The 41st Convocation of IIT Bombay was held on August 8 ... 1,247 degrees were awarded to successful candidates and Digvijay Raorane won the President of India Gold Medal. Chief Guest Rajiv Gupta (BTech ME '67), CEO of Rohm & Haas, quoting Mahatma Gandhi, urged the young graduates to "be part of the change you want to see in the world". Chairman and Chief Mentor of Infosys Technologies NR Narayana Murthy was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) ... more.
  • Tech grads prepare to take world by storm - Indian Express, Aug 8, 2003
  • The Valley is still green for IITians - Times of India, Aug 8, 2003

  THE IIT BEAR-HUG: The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, held its 41st Convocation on Friday, August 8. On the occasion, IIT-Bombay conferred the Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) degree on Nagavara Ramarao Narayana Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys Technologies. After conferring the degree, Rahul Bajaj, Chairman and MD, Bajaj Auto Ltd and Chairman, IIT-Bombay, said Narayana Murthy and his Infosys team have changed the paradigm of doing business in India. "Infosys has become the benchmark of excellence in performance and corporate governance that any company in India has to contend with," said Bajaj.

  "Minutes after receiving the President of India Gold Medal at the 41st Convocation of the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, on Friday, Digvijay Raorane proudly announced that he's headed to the University of California for a Master's degree in nanotechnology. "If research conditions improve here, I might consider heading back," said the 22-year-old mechanical engineer. Raorane's statement seemed an echo of what IITian Rajiv Gupta, chairperson of Rohm and Haas Company, USA, said a little earlier. "We left the country because of its lack of infrastructure and efficiency," Gupta, who was the chief guest for the function, said. "But such drawbacks should not deter us from our responsibility of uplifting the community to build a stronger India," he added ... Chairman and chief mentor of Infosys Technologies Narayan Murthy was awarded the Degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) by chairman and managing director of Baja Auto Rahul Bajaj ... As many as 1,247 degrees were awarded to successful candidates at various levels at the function. The Institute Gold Medal was awarded to Premal Shah and the Dr Shankar Dayal Sharma Gold Medal for all-round excellence went to Nitin Dewan. Both the bright sparks have secured jobs with consultancy firms in Delhi. Listing the achievements of the institute over the past year, IIT director Ashok Misra said, "We have received Rs 23.7 crores through the sponsored research programmes. This represents a 48 per cent increase over the previous year". To increase industry-academia partnerships the institute is now setting up the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship ... more.
  

• Times of India reports that "The brains are coming back after the drain" ... "It's just a trickle but could be a harbinger of things to come. Some of our best brains are coming back to India after a few years abroad, even as fresh grads are flying westwards. What brings them back? A dream. That's what brought Dr Parag Bhargava, assistant professor, IIT-Kharagpur, back to India. This B Tech from IIT Bombay was clear he would return even as he went to the University of Alabama some 10 years back to do his MS and PhD" ... more.
  
• The Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi ... threw out five senior students from the Aravalli hostel in connection with the ragging (hazing) of a fresher earlier this month. The fresher, Prakash Rajpurohit, left the hostel on August 5 complaining of inhuman ragging and filed a complaint with the police. The decision to expel the students from the hostel was taken after an enquiry committee submitted its interim report, official sources said. The final report will be submitted soon and if the students are found guilty, they may even be expelled from the institute ... taking a serious view of the ragging incident, Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi had asked the IIT authorities to take action against the "guilty" and warned that the ministry "may even close down the hostel" ... more.
  
• The IIT Bombay HF Bay Area Chapter has started a mentoring initiative to increase interaction between alumni and to create a platform for effective sharing of life experiences to benefit fellow alumni. There will be three broad tracks initially on entrepreneurship, careers in non-technology fields like finance and technology management ... more.
  
• A leopard cub has been trapped at the Indian Institute of Technology campus in Mumbai. This is the second time in the last one week when a leopard has been trapped in the campus. On July 28, a male leopard crossed the fence of Sanjay Gandhi National Park. Forest officials finally caught it after laying a trap. Speaking to rediff.com, Major (retd) Rajesh Dhankar, security officer of the IIT campus said, "We used to spot leopards occasionally in 1990s. But since last year, the spotting of leopards by students of IIT has become a common phenomenon. These leopards have multiplied in National park and are not finding prey in those areas. So they cross over to our campus to find prey." IIT is based in the northeast of Mumbai and is surrounded by Powai Lake, Adi Shankaracharya Marg, Kanjurmarg and Sanjay Gandhi National Park National Park. ... Complaining about the lack of facilities, Major (retd) Dhankar said, "We don't have any guns or modern equipments to deal with these leopards. We only have firecrackers to scare them. We burst them whenever they are near our offices." Last year, a 11-year-old boy residing in Kanjurmarg was killed by a leopard ... more.
  • Indian Express, Aug. 4: "Spotted visitor nabbed from IIT Powai campus"
  • Hindustan Times, Aug. 4: "Leopard caught in Powai"
    
• Economist, July 31 - "Cometh the hour, cometh Arun Sarin" : "... Since 1997, the world's largest mobile-phone company has been run by Chris Gent, a flamboyant British dealmaker, who succeeded where every rival failed, and built a truly global, all-wireless empire spanning 28 countries and serving more than 122m customers. Now knighted, Sir Chris is retiring at the tender age of 55. The new chief executive, Arun Sarin, is a quite different model. That is just as well, since he is likely to have to steer the company in a quite different direction. ... Mr Sarin is rather the archetypal international executive. The son of a well-to-do Indian military officer, he went to a military boarding-school, but his mother encouraged him not to follow his father's career. Instead, he took an engineering degree at the Indian Institute of Technology, the country's equivalent of MIT. From there he went to the University of California at Berkeley on a scholarship, to do a further degree in engineering and an MBA. He has lived in America ever since. The main remnants of his origins are an Indian wife (whom he met at Berkeley), a touch of an accent and a passion for cricket, which he shares with Sir Chris. ... Mr Sarin inherits a company in good shape, by the dented standards of international telecoms. ... Mr Sarin appears to be an operating man rather than a dealmaker, but he is working on deals of his own. He has been talking to France's Vivendi Universal about SFR, the French mobile operator that the two companies have been fighting each other to control. However, his main job is more prosaic. ... Whatever choice he goes for, Mr Sarin will need all his knowledge of the American market, and all his considerable charm, to create a coherent position in the rich world's least coherent wireless market" ... more.

July 2003

• An update on old news ... click here for the text of Bill Gates' speech at the IIT50 celebrations on January 17, 2003. "Well, good evening. It's a great honor for me to speak at this jubilee celebration. After all, I'm not 50-years old yet, pretty close, I never graduated from college, yet, although I'm not sure I'll be changing that because I'm a little busy right now, but I get a chance to talk with you about an incredible institution that has really changed the world and has the potential to do even more in the years ahead than it's already done. Rajat asked me to speak and at first my reaction, "Well, I don't speak at many college events. There's more opportunity than there is time." But when I thought about it and I thought about the great things that people from IIT have done at Microsoft, the role that I think IIT can play inside India in tapping into its potential I decided I'd make a very special exception and come here tonight. (Applause.) I was careful to do research for this speech so I went up to the Web site -- the IIT Web site -- and sort of browsed around, and after I did that I thought, well, I'll go to the MIT Web site and browse around just to see, you know, these things seem very similar. And on the MIT Web site the hot news was that the coffee house was closing down because people weren't spending enough money there. (Laughter.) On the IIT Bombay site, though, things were far more interesting. They said that they had caught a leopard on the campus recently. (Laughter, applause.) And that's something these U.S. universities just can't offer in terms of an experience. (Laughter) ..." ... more.
  
• ExpressIndia - July 25 - "... you can navigate Mumbai on the net through a website designed by a team at IIT Bombay - see http://www.cse.iitb.ac.in/navigator. The 'Mumbai Navigator' asks you to select the place of origin and destination. Click ‘Get Plan’ and voila! In front of you are some of the shortest possible ways of reaching your destination, along with the expected travelling time. The route will specify what train to take, what station to get off at and what connecting bus to catch. ... It took an IIT professor to make it a reality. Dr Abhiram Ranade had suggested this as a project to one of his students in the Computer Science department. Over the years, he has worked with three students to see it through. "It was a useful thing to do, and as we worked on the project we found it much more interesting than we had anticipated," says Dr Ranade. The 'interesting' bits were problems they encountered. Like two bus stops with the same name, or the fact that public transport never adheres to a fixed schedule" ... more.
  
• The IIT Bombay Heritage Fund office has moved to a new location ... please stop by and visit us if you are in the Bay Area :

  IIT Bombay Heritage Fund
  21710 Stevens Creek Boulevard
  Suite 225
  Cupertino, CA 95014
  1-408-252-1664

• ExpressIndia - July 22: Puneite Digvijay Raorane has outclassed the rest among the IIT Class of 2003 to emerge as the "most outstanding graduate" from IIT Bombay this year. His CPI (Cumulative Performance Index) for academic performance in all four years is a stupendous 9.89 out of 10 which, according to a certificate issued by IIT Bombay, is the highest among all graduates. Digvijay represented the B Tech (Mech Engg) branch. His performance brings him the coveted President of India's Gold Medal to be presented at the 41st convocation scheduled for August 8. Besides a scholarship for advance research studies at University of California, Berkeley .. more.
  
• IIT Delhi alum becomes head of Coca Cola India ... "A 'Cokehead' made in India ... Coca Cola India’s newly appointed President Sanjiv Gupta ... eats, drinks and sleeps work. Gupta loves talking about himself as a "Delhi boy with Indian values" — which is why he didn’t go abroad for higher academics after graduating from IIT and getting several scholarships. "During my schooldays, my mother used to tell me — son, you are too shy, you have to be aggressive. IIT helped me grow from a boy to a man," Gupta says. Another compelling reason for his fondness for IIT was that he met his wife - a topper in the class - there. Love blossomed during rehearsals for a play called Boy meets Girl where she was the heroine and he played the villain. "My two sons pull my leg even now for this," Gupta says ... more.
  
• Silicon.com, July 23 - "Vodafone's incoming CEO - what can we expect?" ... "At the end of this month Chris Gent will hand over his CEO office at Vodafone to Arun Sarin (BTech IIT Kgp '75). Once the heir apparent to the largest wireless company in the world - AirTouch Communications - he lost his chance to lead when Vodafone bought AirTouch for £42.7 billion in 1999. An interlude as CEO of wireless services provider InfoSpace ended in disaster in January 2001. After taking a few months off, he joined investment banking firm KKR to run a telecom venture fund but doing deals and playing some extra golf weren’t about to satisfy a man who wanted to be running a 'world-beating' organisation. Educated at the elite Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur and the University of California, Berkeley, he emerged from his schooling with a strong background in technology and the tools of modern management. ... For the wireless industry as a whole Sarin’s accession to the top job at Vodafone signals an historical transition. The 20-year entrepreneurial era is drawing to a close. Operations have replaced assets as the industry’s driving force. ... By blending the operational and technical strengths of the old Bell System with the vision and energy of the entrepreneurial era in wireless, Sarin is well positioned at Vodafone to achieve his career-long goal of building a world-beating organisation" ... more.
  
• Hindustan Times, July 20 - "Giving back to the IITs". "There has been a recent flurry of financial support to IITs by alumni both in US and India. ... A casual visit to the IIT Bombay campus will show the impact it has had. The KReSIT building, the Shailesh Mehta school of Management, two new high quality and much needed hostels, and a student activity center are very visible manifestations of this. ... IITs were initially leery of this attention but soon learned to like it. But it apparently did not sit well with the powers-that-be in Delhi. As early as spring of 2000, there were mumblings about the need to control unbridled donations to IITs ... sinister motives were imputed for the acts of charity. I was alarmed enough to bring this to the attention of the Prime Minister at Blair House during his visit to US during the summer of that year. He assured us all in an open meeting that his government was in favor of this charitable activity and we should have no fear of any interference from government. ... It was this backdrop that caused an extreme amount of consternation when the Bharat Sikhsha Kosh was announced ... No IIT was to accept any direct contributions. No donor was to specify how his funds were to be used. Just hand over your money to the nameless/faceless babu in charge of the fund ... one has to welcome the backtracking that has taken place with respect to Bharat Sikhsha Kosh lately, but it leaves one wondering whether it is a real change of heart or just a tactical retreat. I am hoping that it has not done irreparable damage to the movement that was just beginning to build a head of steam ... more.
  
• The 4th Annual Distinguished Alumni Meeting (ADAM), the Inaugural FAN Meeting (FAN) and the Inaugural Faculty Recruitment Initiative Meeting (FRI) were successfully held on June 6 to 8 at Rickey's Hyatt in California. 22 IITB faculty members, 15 distinguished alumni, 25 FAN members (professors from US universities) 25 IITB faculty candidates (PhD students or post-docs at US universities), and 15 IITBHF volunteers attended the event. The primary objective of the meeting was to develop an action plan for IITB faculty and the FAN membership to work together to assist IITB realize its vision of becoming a world-class research university ... more. And click here for pictures from ADAM and FAN 2003.
  
• Financial Times, Mumbai, July 14, 2003: IIT Alumni Trust To Hold IIT 2050 In Dec. With a global vision to create a networking environment which is conducive to the social and professional growth, the PAN IIT Trust set up by IIT alumni across the country, is organising a conclave of IIT alumni called 'IIT 2050' in New Delhi for the first time in the country. President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam will inaugurate the conference on December 21, 2003. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee will deliver the valedictory address on December 22, 2003. The event is being organised by a steering committee chaired by Infosys chairman NR Narayana Murthy and co-chaired by McKinsey managing director Rajat Gupta. Addressing a news conference, Mr Murthy said, "The idea is to bring all the stakeholders "right from government to students" and provide an unified forum to develop a set of objectives for the future." IIT 2050 celebrates the contributions of the IIT community to nation building, science, engineering and business.
  
• NDTV, New Delhi, July 15, 2003: Alumni to set up pan IIT trust. Infosys Chief Narayana Murthy, Hindustan Lever Chairman M S Banga and ITC Chairman Y C Deveshwar have more in common apart from running some of India's most successful orgnaisations. They are all alumni of India's most prestigious educational institutions - the Indian Institutes of Technology or the IITs. And for the first time, high profile IIT alumni across the country are coming together to set up a pan IIT trust, which will flag off its first event in December. "Event in Delhi will bring all stakeholders together including the government, alumni, faculty and students to discuss on how to take the IIT system forward for the next 50 years," said Narayana Murthy, chief mentor, Infosys. There are also speculations that the coming together of top business leaders could translate into huge endowments for the IITs. "Though it's not on the anvil, but it could be a possibility as we move forward," said Rajat Gupta, MD, McKinsey and Co. One concern that has often been raised is the low level of interaction between industry and academic research. Most universities across the world have strong linkages with industry. And while it is unclear at this stage what may finally emerge from the initiative, it will at least lead to a debate on how to replicate the IIT model and create more such centres of excellence across the country.
  
• Soumen Chakrabarti, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay has published a new book titled "Mining the Web: Discovering Knowledge from Hypertext Data." This is one of the first books that actually describes, in detail, the parts of contemporary search engines and how they function and the book reveals a rare glimpse at the inner workings of our favorite search tools. Most commercial search engines guard the details of their innermost operations closely, revealing casual hints here and offhand remarks there, but almost never offering complete information about the "secret sauce" underlying their operations. That's what makes this book so interesting. If you really want to understand how search engines work, this book provides an excellent and fairly detailed explanation of the processes they all use, to one degree or another. The book's not for the technically faint of heart, however ... more.
  
• The Hindu Online, Mumbai, July 14: IIT alumni meet in Delhi. The Pan IIT Trust, set up by the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) alumni across the country, is organising `IIT 2050,' a mega event between December 21 and 22 in Delhi. The President of India, A. P .J. Abdul Kalam, will inaugurate the conference and the Prime Minister of India, Atal Behari Vajpayee, will deliver the valedictory address on December 22. The Minister of Human Resource Development, Minister of Science and Technology and Minister of Ocean Development, Murli Manohar Joshi, will deliver the first keynote address on December 21, 2003. IIT 2050 celebrates the contributions of the IIT community to nation building, science, engineering and business. The genesis for this event lies in the first ever gathering of IIT alumni from across the world held in San Jose, U.S., in January ; an event which generated tremendous response.
  
• IITian Raghuram Rajan (BTech IIT Delhi '85 EE) has been appointed as the Chief Economist of the IMF. Horst Köhler, Managing Director of the IMF decided to appoint Prof. Rajan, a distinguished economist at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, to the position of Economic Counsellor and Director of the Research Department at the IMF. In making this announcement, Mr. Köhler said: "Mr. Rajan has been at the forefront of work on banking and financial sector issues. With his exceptional rise within the economics profession as well as with his extensive experience, Mr. Rajan will bring a strong and proven record of intellectual leadership to the IMF. This will be an asset to develop further the IMF's research program to the leading edge of economic theory and policy. His particular experience in financial sector issues will help strengthen the IMF's role as a center of excellence in macroeconomic and financial sector stability" ... more.

  "IMF picks IITian as Chief Economist" ... Times of India.
  

• The 2nd Annual IIT Midwest Alumni Conference on "Extending the IIT experience - Building a Lifetime Network" features Padmasree Warrior, CTO, Motorola Inc. as the Keynote Speaker ... click here for event details. A recent Chicago Sun-Times article describes her as follows "A new warrior is leading Motorola Inc.'s ongoing reorganization efforts as it battles the likes of Nokia, Siemens and Samsung for market share and revenue. She's Padmasree Warrior, Motorola's new chief technology officer. She said her name comes from Sanskrit words, with her first name translating as "lotus," but says her last name "is just a word." Before being promoted to be chief technology officer, Warrior did a short stint in Atlanta to run Motorola's energy systems group. She joined the company after receiving her degree in chemical engineering from the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology. "I know Motorola very well. I grew up in the company," she said. She has a master's degree in chemical engineering and semiconductor production from Cornell University, and her first job was as a chemical engineer in Motorola's semiconductor business. Working Woman magazine honored Warrior with its "Women Elevating Science and Technology" award in 2001. She is the highest-ranking woman in Motorola's 75-year history, reporting to chairman Chris Galvin.

June 2003

• Segment on IIT to air on June 22, 2003, as the second segment on CBS Minutes ... the segment about the Indian Institutes of Technology will re-air on "60 Minutes" this Sunday, June 22nd. It is slated to be the second segment in the program ... more - and click here for an abbreviated WEBCAST.
  
• The Chairman and Managing Director of Bajaj Auto Ltd, Mr Rahul Bajaj, a Harvard MBA who was honored with the Padma Bhushan in 2001, has been appointed as Chairman of the Board of Directors of IIT Bombay. It could well be a marriage that'll revolutionise one of India's most prestigious technical institutes - that of technology and business acumen.  He replaces Prof M G K Menon, who had held the post since 1997 and was earlier scientific advisor to the Prime Minister ... The issue of students going abroad is another aspect he feels that needs looking into. "I feel that if IIT's students intend to go abroad within five years of their studies, they will have to make some payment to the institute, which can be used to help those who find it difficult to afford IIT education. I'm not against students going abroad, but if a student leaves the education midway to go abroad, he can be made liable to return the money lent out to him" ... more.
  
• Singapore calling: IIT goes global ... After carving a niche for itself in the country, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is all set to become a world-player by making a foray into Singapore. "This decision was taken at a recent meeting attended by IIT directors from across the country and representatives of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)," informs the spokesperson for IIT Delhi Director RS Sirohi, "While the CII has already initiated talks with the Education Development Board (EDB) in Singapore, the next step is to ensure that students worldwide have access to IIT education." Even as negotiations are on for the setting up of an IIT campus in Singapore, both sides have agreed in principle to the idea of an exchange of educational facilities. "All formal approvals and agreements should be in place by the end of this year," says Neerja Bhatia, coordinator of the CII's Singapore desk ... more.
  
• What is it that sets IIT Kharagpur apart? ... the Centre makes a generous grant to the college every year. The Rs. 100 crore has gone a long way in improving facilities. ... Much before the 1999 Ramarao Committee recommendations and the Central Government's accent on research at technology schools, IIT Kharagpur was on the road to R&D. ... The most astounding success on campus has been the National Semiconductor Corporation-sponsored VLSI (very large-scale integration) lab. One of three such laboratories outside the US, the VLSI lab at Kharagpur has produced 12 cutting-edge chips in the past two years for use by the global infotech market. No other institute in the country has any chip-making facilities. The stamp of an IIT is its sense of national identity besides academic superiority. And it is no coincidence that six of the first seven ranks in the engineering stream-except for BITS Pilani in the fifth position - have gone to these premier institutes ... more.
  
• IITians in the news:
  
  Manohar Parrikar (BTech '78 MetE) became Goa's chief minister, or governor, and ... shied away from culture wars, devoting most of his time to cutting corruption, improving roads and luring high technology companies. In late May, India Today, a newsweekly, studied a host of indicators, including income, literacy levels and investment climate, and then ranked Goa as "India's Best State" ... more.
  
  ALL THE INTERCONNECT wires and metal layers of an Intel Pentium 4 chip ...  as a metal, there will be heat generated ... then there is metal proximity. The density of wires and their proximity cause cross talk effects. And then there are challenges in power management ... CEO Vic Kulkarni (BTech '74 EE), a veteran in the semiconductor and EDA space joined a startup called Frequency Design ... acquired a couple of other startups in these spaces and Sequence Design came into existence ... more.
  
  Vasant K. Prabhu (BTech '81 EE), executive vice president and chief financial officer of Safeway is also the president of Safeway.com, the chain’s newest effort in grabbing what others have dismissed as an impossible market. ... No one spouts the "transformative" rhetoric of the dot-com era. ... Safeway has no such ambitions. Prabhu estimates that online shopping could bring in 3 percent of Safeway’s overall business over the next five years ... more.
  
• Newly updated IIT Bombay Web Directory ... check out the IIT lingo page. Plus archived issues of InsIghT-Y-Point are available on this website at:

  http://www.iitbombay.org/info/ypoint/ypoint0.htm.
  

• The war that was ... lead story in InsIghT-Y-Point on the calm after the storm in IIT Bombay. A settlement has been reached in the brouhaha which began with mass resignations by the entire elected student body ... more. And click here for the entire InsIghT-Y-Point issue dated April 30, 2003 (Vol. V Issue VII). Also read "Flashback to the Strike of 1980" in in InsIghT (Volume V Issue II).

   

• IIT Bombay alumnus Ramesh Advani (BTech '74 EE) was elected Selectman in the small town of Norfolk, Massachusetts. He makes history by becoming the first non-white to be elected in the conservative, white-collar bedroom community of Norfolk, 25 miles southeast of Boston. A Selectman is the small-town equivalent of mayor who forms part of the old-fashioned open-town meeting form of government. Advani acknowledged that his victory was due to "a lot of groundwork I did, talking to a lot of groundwork I did, talking to a lot of people and telling them about my long involvement in the town activities" ... more.
  
• Indian American elected to premier town board in US - Hindustan Times, May 21, 2003

May 2003

• Satish G. Kandlikar, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology, is a self-described "heat-transfer guy." A scientist, he tries to figure out how to heat and cool things most efficiently. The India-born Kandlikar, who earned his doctorate at the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, has also played a little-known role in the United States’ recent wars. He helped perfect the flameless technology used to heat the combat field rations known as MREs, or meals-ready-to-eat -- first used widely during the Persian Gulf War in 1991. As a visiting scientist in 1990, Kandlikar worked at the Department of Defense’s combat-food laboratory in Natick, Mass. He helped develop the water-activated magnesium heater pad that can warm up an MRE to 180 degrees in 4 minutes. "Like it comes out of a hot pot," said Kandlikar, who brought his taste for MRE research to RIT’s thermal analysis and microfluidics lab ... more.
  
• More on the impact of HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi's Bharat Shiksha Kosh: "IIT alumni's payback initiatives run into rough weather" - NewIndpress.
  
• "Kota churns IITians galore" ... Thousands of students these days are gearing up for the IIT entrance exams slated for May 25. The IITs were earlier dominated by students from big cities, but in recent years it's the small town of Kota in Rajasthan that has produced the highest number of successful IIT candidates ... over 30,000 IIT aspirants from across the country now come to Kota every year. In the past three years, the 90 coaching institutes here have produced the maximum number of successful candidates from any one city in the country. Last year, over one-third of the 2,500 students who entered the IITs were coached in Kota. "If we stay at home, it's like running a race alone. But by coming to Kota we get to know where we stand in comparison with the best students in the country," said an IIT aspirant. "For IIT one needs thoroughness, a competitive atmosphere and a confident frame of mind. All three things become available by coming to Kota," revealed another ... more.
  
• "Indian Institutes in trouble" says Nandini Lakshman in Business Standard, May 24. Coming up in June is the "... annual road shows for networking with the old boy’s club — the US-based IIT Bombay Heritage Fund (IBHF). But this time, the 12-year-old IBHF, which has so far raised over $20 million for IIT Bombay, will have a different agenda. The reason? The recent formation of the Bharat Shiksha Kosh (BSK) initiated by Murali Manohar Joshi, Union Minister for Human Resource Development. The ministry’s explanations on why BSK was set up are opaque to say the least: "There is need for achieving excellence and promotion of research and development activities ...  For realising the full potential of our youth, the government is striving to provide access to educational facilities." So how is the BSK affecting both the global and domestic donors? "It is the most asinine thing I ever heard in my life. Donors are making voluntary gifts because of emotional attachment or commitment to the institutes. They will not hand off money to a nameless bureaucrat or a feckless politician. They should use public funds to do what they think needs to be done," says US-based tech entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist, Kanwal Rekhi. Would he consider giving future donations? “Absolutely not. You can kiss the donations good bye if the BSK happens. This will kill the golden goose,” he adds. Other reactions are similar. "We’d rather donate to the American universities we postgraduated from," says yet another US entrepreneur, who studied at IIT Kanpur ... more.
  
• At first glance, losing MIT's Asian Media Lab looks like a heavy blow. Chances are, however, that now India will make its own advances ... the dream collapsed in New Delhi in early May. MIT announced it was withdrawing from the project ... "MIT didn't add much value," says a source close to the project.  India's tech community is standing behind Shourie, who's known for his extensive experience and honesty. "My respect for Shourie has increased enormously after this," says a senior researcher at IIT-Kanpur. India could still turn this bitter breakup into a victory. MIT is discussing the establishment of another Media Lab Asia with countries such as Singapore, Korea, and China. But in India, the incident has refocused the country's attention on R&D, and some Indians are hoping that it could encourage the establishment of a domestic version of Bell Labs ... more. Related stories include - IIT may step in place of MIT and Shourie denies MIT allegation.
  
• State of the Art hostels inaugurated at IIT Bombay - two new "world class" Hostels 12 and 13 were inaugurated on April 14, 2003. Prof. Ashok Misra, Director, credited the success of the hostel complex to Nandan Nilekani and Architect Hafeez Contractor. The two important features cited were that the hostels were environment friendly as not a tree had been axed to accommodate the buildings to facilitate the construction and that the hostels were handicap-friendly. The dinning hall and the hostel blocks were interconnected at the lower stilts for the convenience of the physically challenged ... more.
  
• The federal team headed by Dr S Shyam Sunder (BTech - IIT Delhi CE '77) which is investigating the World Trade Center disaster says that a government agency which had built the twin towers never performed the fundamental tests needed to determine how the structures would perform in a major fire incident. "'At this point, we don't know why the tests were not done,'' said Dr. Shyam Sunder ... more.
  
• "Network helps S. Asians advance" - Denver Post. Indians, Pakistanis and South Asians are well represented in U.S. technology companies in general ... many of those who graduate from schools like the Indian Institute of Technology - which boasts tighter admission standards than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University - have gravitated to the U.S. To advance even further, South Asian entrepreneurs in Colorado have formed the networking and education group TiE-Rockies ... more.
  
• Recently, IIT Madras lost out on a $10 million donation, and IIT Powai’s Rs 36-crore kitty - proudly built by alumni and well-wishers - which had received Rs 6 crore last year, got no new offerings this year. All thanks to the Bharat Shiksha Kosh (BSK), Union HRD Minister Murli Manohar Joshi’s concept of gurudakshina. The BSK, launched a year ago with a one-time Central Government grant of Rs 1 crore and formally registered in January this year, has put the stops on sending funds directly to one’s alma mater. Instead, all such "tax-free donations" have to be sent to the BSK, Joshi's extra-budgetary kitty, in an apparent effort to ward off propositions of privatisation ... at Mumbai, IIT’s donors have always specified projects, like a school of management and a school of IT ... more.
  
• CBS story headlines the shift of Wall Street jobs to India, with MBA graduates from the Indian Institute of Technology doing what Harvard Business School graduates used to do. "Someone with an MBA from the Indian Institute of Technology and two years experience will make about $12,000 per year. Now contrast that with a Harvard business school graduate who's close to $100,000 or even over $100,000 ... more.
  
• The Indian government incurs Rs 1.5 lakh ($3,000) a year on each student of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), the Lok Sabha was informed today. Though IITs are encouraged to generate internal resources through sponsored research and consultancy, the government continues to be the principal funding source for IITs, Minister of State for Human Resource Development Minister Vallabhbhai Kathiria said in a written reply. It is the considered policy of the government to continue funding the IITs as per the requirement, he said. While some IIT graduates do migrate to other countries for jobs and higher studies, a much larger number of students remain in India serving the nation in various capacities, the Minister said ... more.
  
• The University of Pune (UoP) and IIT Bombay have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to provide for co-operative activities in areas of engineering, social sciences, humanities, bio-technology, nano biotechnology, hyperthermia and cancer therapy. A centre of history and philosophy of science will also be set up in UoP. IIT Bombay and UoP will exchange faculties and researchers besides undertaking joint research projects, seminars and lectures. Libraries, archival resources and computer facilities will be shared to facilitate the research ... more.
  
• The top slot in the IAS/IFS/IPS entrance examinations has been bagged by Ankur Garg, an engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, in his first attempt ... more.
  
• The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs has expressed deep concern over the high number of IIT graduates and MBBS degree holders getting selected to the All-India Civil Services. When people with these professional qualifications joined the central civil services, it was tantamount to "blocking" places for professional degrees and throwing the funds spent on the candidates' professional education "down the drain" ... more.

April 2003

• Forbes magazine named a firm founded by IIT Bombay alumnus Subrah Iyer as #1 on the list of "25 Fastest-Growing Tech companies". WebEx Communications, a leader in Web-based conferencing, is the "fastest growing company in all of techdom" according to Forbes' analysis that screened out tiny and inconsistent companies and firms with big problems. San Jose, Calif.-based WebEx has generated 186% annualized sales growth over the past five years and 72% revenue growth in 2002 to $140 million. WebEx Communications was co-founded by Subreh Iyar and Min Zhu in 1996  ... more.
  
• IIT Bombay celebrated it's 44th Foundation Day and held the Distinguished Alumnus Awards Presentation Ceremony on March 10, 2003. Mr. Gopalakrishnan, Executive Director, Tata Sons Limited, was the Chief Guest on the occasion. Seven IIT Bombay alumni were recognized with Distinguished Alumnus awards this year in recognition of their outstanding contributions in their chosen field: Dr. Arunav Majumdar, Professor and Almy and Agnes Maynard Chair, Mech Engineering, University of California, Berkeley Dr. S. Asokan, Chief Executive, Titanium Project, TATA Steel; Dr. R.K. Bhandari, Director, Centre for Disaster Mitigation & Management Anna University, Tamilnadu; Dr. Chaitan Khosla, Professor, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Stanford; Dr. Sadanand Joshi, President, Joshi Technologies International Inc.; Mr. Ravi Venkatesan, Chairman, Cummins India Ltd. and Dr. Shailesh Mehta, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer, Providian Financial ... more.
  
• In mid-January, prominent alumni of the Indian Institutes of Technology gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their alma mater. The keynote speaker at the celebration was Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who called the IITs "an incredible institution" from whose traditions "the computer industry has benefited greatly." Unusually, the celebration was not held in Kharagpur or even New Delhi, but in Silicon Valley ... Enriching the global economy was not the original intent behind setting up the IITs ... Being world class universities, the IITs need to be managed as such ... For 40 years, India did well with five IITs. Now there are seven, and talk of 10. Plans include significantly increasing the intake of students. Quantity at the cost of quality will sound the death-knell of the IITs ... In the next 50 years, it is for India to catch up with its IITs. That will be an achievement beyond Nehru's wildest dreams ... more.
  
• The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Powai, has notched up yet another first with the inauguration of two hi-tech hostels. They come complete with sky bridges and spacious television-viewing rooms. However, students seem unimpressed. Fourth-year chemical engineering student Tarkeshwar Singh, who lives in the present Hostel 8 (Nandan Nilekani 's old hostel) was quoted as saying, "Where’s the flexibility? ... I don't want my hostel to look like an IT park ..."  The new rooms are smaller, with a cement bed and study table fixed to the ground. Students don’t want to part with wooden beds they can move around at will ... "No stationary furniture ... IITians crave flexibility." The new hostel is huge, with wide corridors, a common cafeteria that can accommodate 1,000 students and television-viewing halls that can seat 700 ... more.
  
• Taiwanese chipmaker VIA has partnered with KReSIT to develop low-cost computers for villages and other rural areas. "Very few people in India need a 2GHz, fully-spec'ed machine. They need a computer for email and web browsing at a price they can afford," said Ben Boyden, VIA's marketing manager for India. The VIA Affordable Computing Lab at the Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology (KReSIT) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Mumbai opens officially Apr. 14. It is the first such facility that VIA is involved in ... more.  And click here for a RealVideo clip from the Times of India.
  
• IIT’s mantra: tough times don’t last, entrepreneurs do - Times of India, April 8, 2003. The depressed job market and the economic downturn meant falling campus recruitments and dipping salaries for students at IIT, Powai. But, IIT-ians are finding ways to fight back. The IIT Entrepreneurship Cell (EC) has become a veritable lifeline, with several students now believing that being your own boss is a great advantage in hard times. One of the main thrusts of EC is the Eureka conference, where students’ business plans compete for top honours in eight business categories. Incubation centres, workshops, marketing, suggestions from colleagues and professors play an important role. Five teams are also sent each year to the Global Startups [at] Singapore meet, where they interact with 1,000 venture capitalists from all around the world, and attend the Global