President Pratibha Patil, has proposed an all women IIT in Amravati.
'an all women IIT'!!!!!???!!
'Amravati'??!!
Let me first try to understand what 'an all women IIT' would mean, from all the perspectives that i can possibly comprehend.
The first thought is - more women will be IITians.
and now i think - why aren't more women IITians already? After distinctly and consistently having performed better than the boys in the CBSE Class 12th examinations in the science stream - do the women suddenly get scared of the men at the centres of the IIT entrance examinations??!! One of the reasons, i suppose, could be the difference in the number of male and female students pursuing higher education. Is this because there are a whole lot of all men colleges and no women colleges?? I'm sure not.It's possibly because the social conditioning that we recieve pressurises men to get into competitive proffesional courses that will help them get well paying jobs more than women. However over the past decade the number of women making it into the IITs has increased distinctly. So, maybe its a sign of a changing social mind set.Will opening an institute for women encourage this change in social mindset? It is most likely to give out a message supporting education for women. With an IIT clearly reserved for women, many might take the initial education leading them to the level at which they can avail the reservation.
Here the establishment of this institute will be a happy moment if viewed under the topic of women empowerment of my development communication syllabus.
For the current number of seats in the 7 IITs the number of women even appearing for the entrance is less than half of the number men. A common obeservation in many engineering scools in India is that the number of women is very rarely even close to half the number of men.
-This year out of the 626 students pursuing undergraduate courses at IIT Delhi, 83 are women.
-At the existing 7 IITs about 10% of the overall strength are women.
There are 8 new IITs sanctioned under the 11th 5 yr plan. The all women IIT that has been proposed is meant to be besides these 8. Ensuring a higher standard in terms of resources allocated to these IITs might be an imporatnt reason as to why there are going to be 8 new 'IITs', and not just 8 new 'technological institutes'. The standard of teachers if fought hard enough for, might just continue to remain upto its current standard. But a lack of quality incentives might just bring out a major problem as to where the government will find quality faculty for the 8 new IITs besides also the all women IIT.
Finding a way of ensuring that the present quality of students will be maintained - i give up on this one.
Even if all the women studying currently in the IITs (who have made it through on merit) were to be sent off to study at the all women IIT there would be seats for a lot many more. And at the common entrance exam for the IITs more women would have to be taken as opposed to a number of boys who might have faired better.Unless if we agreed to convert the other IITs into all men IITs.Obviously, competition would eventually suffer, as would merit.
The current 7 IITs are recognised as a brand which get a respectable ranking when placed along side some of the extremely good universities internationally.
It would be much fairer, if the new institutes, including the all women IIT could be created after ensuring that a few technological institutes attained the same standard as that of which the IITs boast , rather than creating 'IITs' that cannot match up to the standard that they are expected to maintain.
Considering the compromise on the quality of education provided in the top institutes of India, under the topic 'Education' in my development communication syllabus, the new all women IIT doesn't seem like the best idea.
I'm personally only too happy that Montek Singh Ahluwalia has rejected the proposal of an all women IIT.
And Amravati is in Maharashtra in the Vidarbha district.President Pratibha Patil's former Lok Sabha constituency.
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1 comment:
good argument.
but maybe an all women engineering college in u.p/m.p/bihar might actually be good idea. a whole lot of parents who have real and imaginary fears with respect to girls might actually be encouraged to push their girls into engineering.
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