IIT Coaching in India

The recent addition to the “Indian CXOs of MNCs" list, which is already quite crowded, has been Arvind Krishna. He graduated from an IIT and then went on to do a PhD in the USA.

Both considered as the Holy Grail of success according to Indian parents, who like many other parents across the world just want a good future for their children. But may be go a little over the top to fulfil “their dreams”. Is that wrong?

Dont think so. In a country where getting a confirmed Railway ticket is a dreaded thing, establishing the right foot towards a successful career requires some serious determination (on the part of the parents).

That’s how teenagers from small cities flock to a place called Kota, where some businessmen have cracked the right strategy to appease parents that whoever studies in this magic place gets a seat in the mich revered IITs.

They have Physics, Chemistry and Maths classes taught by “rank-holders” to confine the dreams of the boy-who has just finished his board exams (class 10th), who was thinking of playing a tournament with his neighbourhood friends, who was thinking of proposing that girl from his previous tution, who was so excited to come to High School.

So after a long “motivation” lecture by the principal of the coaching centre, they were allocated in batches to respective classrooms. By this time he had made some friends and also catched up on the exact method on getting out of the hostel at night. He got his new books and thought now he has got rid off the unwanted boring subjects and would like to study his favourite subject, Physics.

First day, Physics class — The teacher came and introduced(read as bragged) himself. Then class started… the teacher went on writing few questions, gave some time to the students to solve, then went away. 2 minutes back he came back, some of his over-enthusiastic disciple had solved the question.

The teacher was not impressed with his “disciple”. According to him the way he solved would be too long by the “IIT standards”. He went on to solve the same problem in 8 different ways where he can save those precious 30 seconds by not actually solving the problem.

But wait, where is the Physics in it? He put few values from the MCQ answers and then manipulated the question. Guess what nobody battered an eye as he solved, not because they were attentive listening to the teacher but they were “pretending” to listen and understand.

May be one amongst them would definitely go on to be a CEO, but not a Physicist, not a Chemist, not a Mathematician.