But getting into an IIT, says Tripathi, is now “much more competitive than in the Sixties”. Students from urban areas, he points out, spend thousands of rupees preparing for IIT entrance exams, something which backward area students can’t do.

“Even if you put a backward caste person into IIT, he needs to have years of education before—how does he become backward then? The challenge is to uplift the economically backward, irrespective of their caste,” he says.

Tripathi and his batchmates are pooling in $10,000 each and hope that “if the momentum picks up” among IIT’s global alumni, they would be able to collect a couple of million dollars within months.

One alumnus is already running a similar preparatory school for engineering aspirants in Rai Bareli. Pawan Kumar, chairman of IIT-Kanpur Alumni Association, Delhi-based Dilip Williams, Suman Sarin in the Middle-East and some others across the globe are championing the cause.

While some alumni are proposing that the prep schools be set up within IIT campuses in the country, Tripathi believes that would defeat the purpose. “Aspirants in backward areas won’t be able to leave their villages and spend so much money staying outside, especially when they have to keep the home fires burning as well,” he says.