There was one better wing and one bitter wing when my son studied in I I T (M)
There were bad habits even among I I T students who are supposed to be the cream of Indian students!! :sad:
i have been brought up to think like raji above re 'bad habits', 'cream of ..'. the formula being, that you be goody two shoes, avoid girls, keep your nose to the grindstone - and you will be automatically rewarded.
the corollary of the above, is that, failure to follow the regimen, would automatically mean poor grades, expulsion and excommunication.
when none of this happened in iit of my time, i was shocked. the sandhy saying tambram boys, though some did well, did not really top the class. the drug smoking tambrams (yes these were there too) did not necessarily fail, and many of them did better than their orthodox brethren.
i am not endorsing the drug culture but in those days, when a பொட்டலம் of grass was 25 paise, and only as far away as the institute walls bordering the then taramani village, there was a good group of crackheads, approximately 10% of the batch ie about 25 students.
it would be wrong to say that these two groups did not mix. for these could be your neighbours or your lab mates or ones with whom you shared assignments or class notes. as vgane has observed in another post, this was not an indication of how they fared in life.
the most successful ones were not the gold or silver medal winners. many a student, got his primary wind ie the will to succeed only after graduation. add to it, the area of his choice, the country and above a little luck, all contributed to 'success' in whatever form you define. but i would say about 1% 'failed' meaning they did not make it to the comfortable upper class life. in these you find, the misfortunes piled - personal or professional wise, and these are a telling lesson, that no matter how good a youth you have, bad things can happen to unsettle and bring you down.
i do not know whether the andhra 'elite' are any better in their outlook of life. all i was told, is that today's iit students, are the mass products of these coaching institute machines, and even if they are opted for civil engineering, their optional courses of choice are all related to computer software and hardware, and all they are looking to, is a one way ticket to usa. i dont know if this is still true, but a few years ago, iits were the only institutes outside of north america, where microsoft recruited with only a phone interview, and your H1B visa/plane ticket was couriered even before you graduated
i think the iits have a long way to go. an institution's fame is not built on its undergraduates. it is based on the research papers and innovative thinking that it seeds. it is based on the brand name faculites that it is able to attract and keep. it is based on its cohesion and identity in the community where it is situated - the town and the gown phenomenon, which i think, is almost unknown in india.
so till all of the above happens, any talk of iit being the premier institute and cream of the crops, i think, is all, in comparison to oxford stanford mit or harvard, is but an empty boast. it may gladden a few parents' hearts (and even a ticket for premium dowry in andhra. and provide brag material, but that too only within a circle that is not familiar with the world at large and what makes a great institution. but all in all, the quality of the post graduate work and output of all the iits in india, are not even, to the level of tata institutes, bangalore or bombay. unless someone tells me otherwise.
as a community, we have not missed our absence in iits. our children are still going in large numbers, with one way tickets, to far off places, or to nearby singapore. many are even doing undergrad studies in these places. so, for us, the glory of iits has passed.
R.I.P.
eace: 
