IIT-B students defer protest

Students of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, (IIT Bombay) have planned a series of non-violent protests against the IIT Council’s new admission proposal. A boycott of classes, initially planned for September 23, has now been postponed to October 14.

A group called iitians.org on social networking site Facebook is spearheading the protests. “We are requesting not just the IITs, but also students of classes 11 and 12 from other colleges, professors and teachers to join our protest,” said an IIT student associated with the group. The group’s main concern is that the quality of IITs would be affected by the new proposal and lead to an untested selection process.

Other IITs have not been actively involved in the movement due to the fact that their examinations are on and their placement season is approaching. “I have supported the cause on Facebook, but cannot go beyond that due to the ongoing examinations,” said an IIT Kharagpur student.

Though IIT Delhi has not registered any official protest, scrapping of IIT-JEE is the talk across the campus.

“We will boycott classes. We may also resort to wearing black shirts and not having mess food as a part of our non-violent protests. The protests will continue until the necessary changes are made. We want to send a strong message to the IIT Council,” said an IIT-Bombay student who did not wish to be named.

The much-debated proposals of the IIT Council chaired by Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal, which include scrapping of the IIT-JEE examination, having a common entrance test and giving equal weight to Class XII board examination results, will be implemented from 2013-14.

An IIT Bombay student said: “The move that has been introduced is definitely not the best one. There are very few people who are interested in engineering. A special aptitude is clearly required for getting into an IIT, which cannot be achieved merely by scoring good marks in Class XII. The new system is also not free of problems.”

The alumni, too, have been involved in the protests. “Examinations are going on in several IITs and that is why it was pushed out to October 14. The call is for boycotting classrooms in spirit; the classes can still be held in ground, labs, people can give exams, study for exams, study outside class room. We and the students will be writing mails to all professors, MP, MLAs, seniors, government and any email/address we can get hold of,” said an ex-IIT Kharagpur student associated with the protests.

The sentiment shared by most of the students is that as IIT JEE is an application based exam in synchronization with engineering requirement, giving 75 per cent weightage to XII exam which is more of a rote learning will impact the kind of student intake.

The inclusion of social science subjects like history, geography etc in the Scholastic Aptitude Test(SAT) is a move that is detested by students.

One student said, “It is totally non sense to include social sciences in IIT entrance. For engineering, logical and analytical brains are required. Those interested in social sciences can pursue it separately.” He also added that rather than providing poor brilliant students with free IIT coaching so that they can also clear it, Sibal is destroying the already institutionalized pattern of exam doing away with even the elite brilliant students.