Badge of IIT is talent, not privilege or caste: IIT Kanpur staff

Expressing anguish over the proposal for OBC reservations in premier institutions, 125 teachers from IIT Kanpur...

Expressing anguish over the proposal for OBC reservations in premier institutions, 125 teachers from IIT Kanpur, have written to the president and the prime minister that “introduction of privileges accruing only to members of particular castes would be a travesty.”

They say they fear that in the absence of objective criteria for determining backwardness, such privileges will “seemingly be granted in perpetuity.”

They have urged President A P J Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to “do everything you can to preserve the IITs.”

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Giving the example of Satyendra K Dubey, an alumnus whose murder while working on a highway project gained national attention, the professors say that most students overcome poverty, bad schools, and adverse circumstances for the right to admission.

“Many of them also belong to OBCs; how many, we cannot say, because the admission is blind to caste and indeed to every other criterion except ability. Thus the distinguishing mark of IIT students is not wealth, privilege, or birth, but dedication and talent,” the letter says.

The letter says the institute has doubled intake of students and is already short of teachers because few applicants meet its exacting standards of academic excellence.

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