IIT MUMBAI: These paths have led to far-off places

AMAN

CHA

UDHU

RY

Alumni of the Indian Institutes of Technology have made a name for themselves in the US and in India. They still have some

way to go in other countries. But there are several who have takenthe road less travelled to establish Brand IIT and Brand India.

Parthasarathi Swami reports.

Tales of aDistant Diaspora

IF YOU FIND yourself in any hi-tech con-ference in Silicon Valley, you can bepardoned if you feel that somebody

has turned back the clock. Alumni of theIndian Institutes of Technology — IITians— are everywhere. Yechoor squabbleswith Shiva in one corner over a bridge handthat the latter misplayed 25 years ago.(“You should have discarded the seven of diamonds.”)

Murari is telling Yusufi that the choiceof play for the 1984 Spring festival was allwrong. (“If we had put up Sleuth, wewould have walked away with the BestPlay. Rhinoceros was a disaster.”)

Arundhati is giggling with Shobha overwhat happened during the finals of thetable tennis mixed doubles in 1977. (“I amtelling you, it was an accident.” The term‘wardrobe malfunction’ had not been

coined in those days.)In San Jose or Sunnyvale, or away from

the Valley in Boston or Buffalo, such meet-ings give a sense of déjà vu. You are trans-ported back in time to Hostel No 7 or LalluHall. (That’s shorthand for the imposingLala Lajpat Rai Hall of Residence.) “ForIITians, many parts of the US — particular-ly in academic institutions — are a homeaway from home,” says Shivanand Kanavi,

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the author of Sand to Silicon: The AmazingStory of Digital Technology, which tracesmany IIT successes in the US.

“There is a social infrastructure inplace,” adds Kanavi, who trained as a the-oretical physicist at IIT Mumbai, IIT Kanpurand Northeastern University, Boston. Atthe Dallas labs of Texas Instruments (TI),there are hundreds of Indians. More thanhalf of them are from IIT. “I don’t know theexact number, but there are a lot,” saysBiswadip (Bobby) Mitra, managing directorof TI India. Mitra is himself a PhD inComputer Science from IIT Kharagpur.

“IITs and IITians are now recognised,”says Rajat Gupta, former MD of McKinsey& Co, and a mechanical engineer from IITDelhi. “It is our objective to make IIT asstrong a brand as Harvard or Stanford.”

That’s possible now not just as a resultof the success of the IITians, but alsobecause the India Story is today widelyaccepted. The institutions in a country cannever acquire universal respect unless thecountry itself is held in high esteem. IfIITians are India’s foremost brand ambas-sadors today, they too are gaining from thefact that India has emerged as one of themajor engines of the world economy.

The US, with its concentration ofIITians, is tried-and-tested territory. Thesame is not true of many other countrieswhere the IITs are unknown and India itselfnot very high on the radar screen.

“There are no other IITians in Brazil, atleast none that I know of,” says AmitBhaya (Electrical Engineering, Kharagpur,1981). “And there are only about fiveIndian families in Rio, mostly attached tothe University. Bhaya, who did his PhDfrom the University of California, Berkeley,is working at the Federal University of Riode Janeiro.

“Most senior business leaders I havemet and worked with in Japan and

China have not heardof the IITs,” saysMilind Yedkar(Chemical, Mumbai,1982). Yedkar hasbeen living in Shanghaifor the past threeyears and is handlingthe direct marketingfor enterprise productsof Dell in China andHong Kong.

It can be very diffi-cult. For a stranger in astrange land, the problems range from thetrivial to the almost impossible. “I remem-ber when I had just moved to Japan, oneof my friends came to visit me at home,”says Sanjeev Sinha (Physics, Kanpur,1995). “He looked around and the firstthing he asked me was whether I had a petdog. ‘How can I keep one,’ I retorted. ‘I ambarely able to feed myself decently.’ Hepointed to a packet of biscuits. I had foundthem delicious - and expensive. The pack-et was covered with Chinese charactersand had no telltale signs. ‘They are dog bis-cuits,’ said he.” Well, Japan has the largestnumber of branded fashion stores for dogs.Sinha hadn’t shopped there. But he gavethem a wide berth after that.

“What is he complaining about?” asksPankaj Mithel (Metallurgy, Kharagpur,1981). “He ate dog biscuits; I ate the dog.”Mithel has just returned from China.Supreme self-confidence and an English-Chinese dictionary can leave you withproblems on the menu.

It could be more serious. AmitabhaChatterjee (Electrical, Delhi, 1993) talksabout working in 55ºC sandstorms inFahud (Oman). He was a field engineerwith Schlumberger. “It was the highestpaying job on campus.” Understandably

so. Fahud was just thebeginning.

“In 1998, I got marriedand was transferred to amarried location so I couldtake my wife with me,”says Chatterjee. “I foundmyself in Deir Ez Zor,which is a small Syrian vil-lage close to Iraq. Mynew bride got the shockof her life. But lucksmiled and suddenly,after spending only two

months there, I was asked to move to PortSaid in Egypt.

“I worked in Egypt for about three yearsbefore getting transferred to Maturin inEast Venezuela. This was a truly unforget-table location. The complete contrast ofcultures (compared to West Asia), the cap-tivating beauty of Venezuelan women, thefantastic greenery that engulfed every-thing, and the nine months of rain everyyear were new to my wife and me.

“The one thing Venezuela didn’t havewas law and order. It was quite normal forarmed robbers to enter a restaurant (themost expensive one in the town at that),make all the diners lie on the floor facedown, take everything from wallets to carkeys, and drive away.

“Finally in 2002, the revolution againstHugo Chavez began and things went frombad to worse. It started with food disap-pearing from the shelves in supermarkets,and finally to firing and fighting on thestreets. When the airlines threatened toshut down their flights to Caracas, weescaped leaving everything behind.”

Jimmy Ghaswala (Civil, Kharagpur,1981) is living a reasonably sedentary lifein Perth, Western Australia, right now. Buthis first job was as project engineer withthe Engineering Construction Corporationin Mumbai. “We were deputed toBaghdad,” says Ghaswala. “Our companywas constructing the headquarters forSaddam Hussain’s Iraqi police. (This was inthe days before Saddam was anointedcard-carrying member of the Axis of Evil.)The Iran-Iraq war was at its height.Baghdad was being shelled regularly. Thesite was full of young graduate engineers(as the married guys were happy to stay athome). We worked long and hard duringthe week and partied hard on Fridays (theonly day off).” Life was a bomb. You only

Sanjeev Sinha / Antarctica

Magimai Mathew / Switzerland

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J.K. Chandra, Delhi-based consultant to realestate developer DLF, hasan unusual qualification.He is the first IITian. "Iwasn't Roll No 1, or any-thing like that," he says."I was in Civil Engineeringand there were others indepartments alphabetical-ly ahead. But I was thefirst person to get thedegree from former PrimeMinister, the late

Jawaharlal Nehru."Chandra is from IIT Kharagpur, the country's oldest IIT, whichwas flagged off in 1950. He was at the head of the queue toreceive his degree because of his academic performance; hetopped the batch. It was perhaps easier in those days; the firstbatch, when the session commenced in August 1951 had only224 freshers. IIT Kharagpur started with 42 teachers and 10department.Chandra's story highlights two things. First, the IITs are younginstitutes. While Chandra and his batchmates are still around totell us of the early days at IIT, at Harvard, for example, the orig-inal nine students who made up the first batch of the institute(there was only one teacher) are long dead and buried. Harvardis now celebrating its 370th anniversary. The fact that IITianshave achieved so much in so little time is a tribute to theirexcellence.As the first product of an institution that has achieved recogni-tion all over the world, Chandra would have been lionised as anicon in any other country. Here, he thrives in relative anonymi-ty. He will not be attending the PanIIT jamboree in Mumbai inDecember. The organising committee was surprised to hearabout him.There are many such IITians who don't flash their academic

credentials at every opportunity. True, many of them, beingolder generation, were not part of the technology wave. Untilthe mid-seventies, there were no calculators on campus.Budding engineers had to make do with slide-rules where theircounterparts now use palmtops.These IITians - more than 200,000 of them - make up the man-ufacturing backbone of Indian industry. Some have forayed intoother sectors, where too they have made a mark. They are notnecessarily in the limelight. Unlike in the West, Indians do notbelieve in self-promotion.There are many IITians you will have heard of. But you may nothave heard that they are IITians. The roll call includes UnionMinister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh, former ChiefMinister of Goa Manohar Parrikar, ITC chairman and former CIIpresident Y.C. Deveshwar, N.R. Narayana Murthy and NandanNilekani of Infosys, R. Gopalakrishnan and Ravi Kant of theTata Group…There are some who say that there should be many more CEOsfrom the IITs. They contend that if you look at the Whartonalumni at the helm of Indian companies, you get just as manyluminaries. Ajit Ranade, chairman of the IIT Bombay AlumniAssociation and part of the organising committee of PanIIT2006, says that the perception is a bit distorted because Indianeducational institutions have never kept track of their alumni."In the West, you are part of the alumni drive from the very dayyou join as a freshman," he says. "They have to do it. It's theway they organise their funding."Besides, the scions of Indian business families, who end up asCEOs, find it easier to go to Wharton, Harvard or Stanford. Youneed a basic minimum intelligence, of course. And you have topass a token test or two. But if you are a full-fee-paying stu-dent, you can be 100 per cent sure you will be accommodat-ed. It there's a hitch, make an endowment. Says Ranade: "TheIITs are probably the only educational institutions in the worldwhere you can't buy your way in." That's another reason forthe strength of the brand.

THE INDIA STORY

Deveshwar doesn't wear his academiccredentials on his sleeve

hoped that it didn’t have your name writ-ten on it.

Subodh Raje (Agriculture, Kharagpur,1979) was also in the thick of things inFreetown, Sierra Leone. “Rebellion wasrife,” he says. “In the later stages, boy sol-diers would strut around with guns.” Therecame a point when it got too dangerous.Raje came back to India. But, like GeneralMacArthur, he will return.

War seems the adventurous IITian’s lot.Raje, however, points to a problem peculiarto Sierra Leone. “We had to iron all clothesbefore wearing them,” he remembers.“There is a fly that can leave its eggs onthe damp clothes. These eggs penetrate

the skin and mature insidethe body. Once grown thefly drills a hole in the bodyto come out. This isextremely painful. It’scalled the Timbu fly.”

Not everyone finds him-self in a warzone, or thevictim of cutaneous infesta-tion with furuncular lesions.Rupal Majumdar (Electrical,Mumbai, 1989; MTech inCommunications, 1991) is working for UBSin Zurich, Switzerland. This is a civilisedcountry, a land of watchmakers andgnomes. There are no flies on the Swiss.

They are very conscious of time outhere. “All appointments are kept on thedot,” says Majumdar. “My appointmentswith my doctor have got cancelled more

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Jimmy Ghaswala with son Tyrone,daughter Shalayne and wife Armin/ Australia

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than once because I reached three minuteslate and the doctor had moved on to thenext patient.”

Rupal’s wife Jyoti Majumdar (Electrical,Mumbai, 1990) has more such experiencesto narrate of a country that lives by therules of civilised society. “Washing is anissue,” she says. “People mostly live inapartments, as we do. The laundry is typi-cally in the cellar, and there can be exten-sive rules on how these washing and dry-ing machines should be used. You cannotwash after 10 pm or on Sundays. And,most importantly, you have to follow thetimetable of who is allowed to wash onwhich days of the week between whichhours.” Adds she: “The Swiss are cleanli-ness freaks.”

Does antiseptic environment promotecreativity and entrepreneurship, keyweapons in the IITian’s armoury? HarryLime (Orson Welles) in Graham Greenethriller The Third Man sees it one way: “InSwitzerland they had brotherly love; theyhad 500 years of democracy and peace.And what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Mathew Magimai Doss (ComputerScience, Chennai, 1999) sees it very differ-ently. “Switzerland is one of the bestplaces to do research,” he says. Doss com-pleted his PhD in speech research at IDIAPResearch Institute, Martigny, in 2005 andcontinued with the institute subsequently.

Doss got to Switzerland through a veryconscious decision. “During my research(at Chennai), I found the speech researchdone at IDIAP interesting,” he says. “I con-tacted the director of the institute aboutthe possibility of pursuing my PhD there.”It worked out fine.

Bhaya in Brazil has also stuck to aca-demics. With an 18-year lead time overDoss, he has obviously crossed muchwider terrain. His choice of Brazil was real-ly a result of narrowing options. Hear it in

his own words: “Duringthe years that I was doingmy PhD from theUniversity of California(UC) at Berkeley, I devel-oped a big circle of LatinAmerican friends. Theeighties were also a periodof much student politicalactivity. A couple of closefriends went as activistsand volunteers to work inNicaragua and ElSalvador. So there wasquite a lot of momentum towards goingand spending time somewhere in LatinAmerica… The Federal University in Riooffered me a fellowship. I thought that if Ididn’t go then, as a young man, I wouldprobably end up never going. So I did, andI have been there ever since.”

For some - like Ghaswala andChatterjee - it was where their jobs tookthem. And there are those who spun thewheel of chance. Raje found an appoint-ment ad for the National ConfectionaryCompany (Natco), Sierra Leone, in a news-paper. “I had no one to recommend me,”he says.

Sujit Sarkar (Electrical, Kharagpur,1989) saw an advertisement in leadingmorning newspaper The Times of India. Hehas been adventurous; it was for a job inKingston, Jamaica - a place not really onthe map for most Indians but for its rumand runs. (Former West Indies cricket cap-tain Garry Sobers made his 365 not out atSabina Park here.)

“An application was good enough foran offer,” says Sarkar. “There were nointerviews, no problems. For a decade, Ihave overseen design and development ofmajor public sector IT projects for theGovernment of Jamaica.”

Sinha in Japan also credits his peregri-nations to the Times. “While working inMumbai in 1995, flipping through the

paper, an interesting job postingfrom Japan stood out.They were looking for PhDsfor a job in ArtificialIntelligence. I applied. I land-ed the job. It was great fun.”

Some IITians, who begantheir careers in India, wentabroad to both replenish thefamily warchest and toensure that they had a family

left at the end of the day. Santosh Kothare(Chemical, Kharagpur, 1981) joined BharatPetroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) a fewmonths after graduation. “However, after10 years of BPCL, I realised that my workwas encroaching on my family responsibil-ities and goals,” he says. “The almost rou-tine 12-hours-per-day and seven-days-per-week schedule made it difficult to meet myson. I was afraid he would start calling meuncle.

“Fortunately, a colleague of mine whowas working in Saudi Arabia contacted meabout a job offer with an attractive salaryand proper work timings. So I left BPCL tojoin the Saudi Arabian Marketing &Refining Company in June 1993, planningto return in four years.”

Not that it was all smooth sailing.“When I landed in Saudi, I was informed atimmigration that the company did not existanymore,” remembers Kothare. “It hadbeen handed over to Saudi Aramco thatmorning. There was still a berth for me.But, because of the uncertain future fol-lowing the management change, I wasexpecting to return within a month to mysecure BPCL job. The feel of my first half-month’s pay, however, was adequatemotivation to stick it out. It was more thanI had seen in my entire 11-year career.”

Subodh Raje had started his own busi-ness initially. That didn’t work. “So I decid-ed to take up a job overseas to tide overthe financial crisis,” says he. This took himto Freetown, where he joined Natco. “Iwas responsible for developing newprocesses for the manufacture of productssuch as bubblegum and two-colour lol-lipops,” he says. Before that starts sound-ing absurd, he explains that even getting ascrew of a particular threading size wasvery difficult in this country of boy soldiersand rebel wars.

Subodh Raje / Sierra Leone

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Meherally Mahmud / Pakistan

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“If you wanted to make money, youhad to go abroad,” says J.K. Chandra, thecountry’s first IITian (see Box: The IndiaStory). “You must remember that IITiansdid not always enjoy the image they donow.” Chandra has spent several years inthe Gulf and is now back in India as a con-sultant with the DLF group.

Chandra says that salaries were pathet-ic and choices were limited. “Even then weknew IIT was a great place,” he says. “Butthe outside world had to realise that.” Inmany ways, Chandra & Co had a job verysimilar to today’s Distant Diaspora.

“What were the options?” asks for-

mer CMD of Videsh Sanchar Nigam S.K.Gupta. “It was the IAS (IndianAdministrative Service) or the US.” TheIndian Institutes of Management and MNCscame later. Incidentally, Gupta says he is inthe happy position of being both an IITianand not one. When he passed out ofRoorkee, it was a common-or-garden engi-neering college. (It is a greybeard com-pared to the IITs, however; in October2006, it completed 160 years.) In 2001,an Act of Parliament made it the seventhIIT. “We have the best of both worlds,”says Gupta enigmatically.

Meherally Mahmud Bhingraj had to cre-ate his own world. “I got where I am due

to a great gal I met in Mumbai,” hesays. “She was from Pakistan. Wemet. We talked. We met again andtalked again. We got married. Wedid not perhaps care about the polit-ical implications.”

Mahmud (that’s the name heuses) says getting his wife Indian cit-izenship was proving difficult. “Weboth needed to have the same pass-port eventually.” So he tried doing it

the other way around. “I made a trip toPakistan and found that they were willingto grant me legal citizenship,” he says. “SoI made the move.”

“There is another way to look at it,” headds. “I got to where I am due to destiny.”Mashallah. Bhaya in Brazil would probablysay Que Sera, Sera. (He is fluent in Spanishtoo, though Portuguese is the official lan-guage of his adopted country.)

But depending on destiny is not stan-dard IITian practice. And it is certainly notso for those who venture abroad. “The IITis a sort of sieve,” says

Veerendra K. Jaitly, a Delhi-based con-sultant with Cisco, who did Electronicsfrom Kharagpur and joined the Indian Navy.

Jaitly spent 18 months in the UK. Thatgave him a totally different perspective, hesays. So after the first screening process -the Joint Entrance Examination - eliminatesmuch of the chaff, the stay abroad acts asa second order permeable membrane. Andfurther fractionation gives you those whoventure into uncharted waters — a differ-ent breed of IITian altogether.

But are these people at the cutting edge

What does America really think of the IITian? To answer thatquestion, you can either turn to the talking heads - the wisemen always ready with sound-bites on any subject under thesun. Or you can check out what is possibly a better measure -the popular cartoonist.Scott Adams' Dilbert appears in 2,500 newspapers worldwidein 65 countries and 19 languages. Amid the many characters isAsok, an intern from IIT. "I had a friend with that name,"Adams told India Now in an exclusive interview in Phoenix,Arizona. "He neglected to tell me that the usual spelling isAshok, not Asok. I've heard from approximately 200 millionIndians telling me I spelled it wrong."Adams says that Asok's character is faithfully modelled on anIndian colleague of his at Pacific Bell. But that was severalyears ago. Asok is brilliant. But he is also very naïve. He getstaken for a ride by most of his colleagues.

That's a true picture of the IITian inCorporate America 20 years ago. For themost part, IITians went to the US for fur-ther studies and were quickly assimilatedin the academic community. But many ofthose who went to work were body-shopped there by IT service companies.For most of them, that's all they did -work. "They were really naïve. They spenthours in their cubicles and the rest of time

in their chummeries," says Bharat Desai, chairman and CEO ofthe Troy (Michigan)-based Syntel, which began life as a staffingcompany way back in 1980.Adams says that while Asok has become quite popular with hisfans, many Indians tell him that he no longer portrays the cor-rect picture. The IITian in America has become savvy. Some areCEOs of huge concerns. Others have set up their own business-es, listed entities worth billions of dollars. The dotcom boomsaw many IITians - with their technology background - make itto the big league. Among the stars are Pavan Nigam ofHealtheon, Desh Deshpande of Sycamore, Pradeep Sindhu ofJuniper Networks and Arjun Malhotra of Headstrong."I guess I will have to create a new character more in keepingwith the times," says Adams. This time he will check out thespelling more carefully.

HOT STUFF

Sujit Sarkar / Jamaica

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of Brand IIT really achieving something?Says Sinha in Tokyo: “Ten years backwhen I got into a taxi, if the driver recog-nised me as an Indian, the first questionwould be: Are you a cook in a curry shop?A diplomatic driver would talk about hislove for chicken curry and naan but won-der how we could eat curry all the time. Afew years from now, the same driver willask me if I work in IT and comment on howgood Indians are in mathematics.”

Many echo the same line. “Brand IITdoes not raise Jamaican eyebrows,” saysSarkar. “There is practically no awarenessof the IIT Brand in Perth,” says Ghaswala.“Of course, there is awareness amongstthe Indian community, sometimes evenuncomfortably so. People think thatbecause we passed out from IIT we aresome whiz-bang intellectuals.”

But the lack of recognition is exactly

how it was in the US even as little as adecade ago. Things are changing every-where. As India takes its place on theworld stage, the Indians who are leadingthe globalisation drive are earning respectand accolades. “We are not looking forrecognition and honours,” says Chandra,the first IITian. “But they are coming. Morewill come.”

Are these kudos deserved? Many inIndia see the IITian as a creature with asuper-sized ego. “IITians do not sufferfools gladly,” says Girish Marathe(Mechanical, Kanpur, 1982). Marathe isnow in Bahrain as head of retail banking ofAhli United Bank. “There is much scope forimprovement in the areas of tact and diplo-macy,” he adds. “There is low tolerancefor dealing with ambiguity. IITians haveenormous disdain for people who are notnumerate or quantitatively savvy.”

You wouldn’t expect all IITians to agree

with that. And most of themdon’t. “Yes, we have comeacross people who feel thatIITians are arrogant and lookdown on others,” says RupalMajumdar. “From the ones Iknow and myself I complete-ly disagree. I feel that the onething that we immediatelylearn when we join IIT is thatthere are smarter peoplethan us out there.” The onlynegative, as he sees it, isthat when IITians congre-gate, they go on a nostalgia tripignoring all others around them. Ask anyIITian’s husband or wife; they’d fully agree.

So what do these humble souls whocrunch numbers for breakfast have tooffer? What has IIT taught them thatmakes them so different? You will get two

sorts of answers. Thereare many IITians who aredoing humdrum jobs inIndia. They will talk to youabout their favourite pro-fessors and the high stan-dards of education. Let notambition mock their usefultoil, their homely joys anddestiny obscure. But if youturn to the achievers bothin India and abroad, theanswer is uniform: the reallearning came outside theclassroom or laboratory.

“What the IITs have taught us is farmore than academic knowledge,” saysMarathe. “They have taught us how todeal with alien social situations and off-the-wall personalities. A lot of real world learn-ing happened in late night “bull sessions”where no subject was taboo.”

“Throughout my itinerant life, the traitsand competencies

developed at IIT havestood me well,” says Ghaswala. “The abil-ity to mix with strangers and make friendseasily is priceless, especially when one hasmoved as often as my family and I have.”

Ghaswala talks about other lessonswhich didn’t make much sense at the time.For instance, it was expected at IIT thateveryone would know the names of all thepeople in their hostel, their department andothers they came in contact with. Over afive-year period (the duration of the courseat that time), it totted up to well over1,000 people. “We also learnt the impor-tance of being nice to workers,” saysGhaswala. “I remember that the older messworkers took care of you if you earnedtheir respect.

“It has always fascinated me howimportant these lessons are when it comesto human relationships,” he continues. “Asa young engineer on sites in West Asia, Iwas amazed at how much more productiv-ity I could get out of our workers by justfollowing these two principles.”

“People appreciate the fact that youcan learn their names fast and rememberpersonal details about them,” says Bhaya.

“I think that the generalexperience of hostel living,which entails dealing withpeople who come fromdifferent language andcultural backgrounds, aswell as having very dis-tinct psychological make-ups, is so rich that it pre-pares you for almostanything you encounterlater in life.” AddsSarkar: “Understandingthe heart of theJamaican Rastafarian

Rupal Majumdar with daughter

Ashana / Switzerland

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Milind Yedkar / China

Girish Marathe / Bahrain

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became easier because of exchangingstudy notes and sharing eclectic culturalfeathers in C-wing, top floor of Lala LajpatRai Hall. Our wing had a Telugu, aTamilian, a Malayalee, a

Delhiite, a Mumbaikar and aBengali.” Tolerance of diversity comes nat-urally to the IITian.

Sinha says he got his job in Japanbecause of his excursions into “dramatics,painting and a bit of creative writing”.Adds Ghaswala: “Much of what we learntwas non-educational, character-building

stuff. Come to think of it, most of ourgroup picked up hobbies like music, dramaand singing only after coming to IIT.”

In all fairness, this is to the credit of theIIT authorities. It is part of thesystem they have designed. Itmay not be uncommon in theWest. “But it was novel toIndia,” says Chandra in Delhi.“Some professors took part inthese activities; some encour-aged from the background. Forobvious reasons, they prefer toleave the students to think theyare doing it all on their own.Academic inputs are neces-sary. But there are others just as vital.”

If the IITs allow you toexplore other facets of your talents, itmakes for a later work-life balance. “TheSwiss have moved up the ladder from earn-ing to make a living to focussing on thequality of life,” says Jyoti Majumdar.“Positions out here are relatively lessstressful and people less aggressive.”

“Although Australians are hard work-ers, life is much more balanced here than in

India,” says Ghaswala. “In India, we seemto accept that our family life has to take abackseat and we exist only to slave for ouremployer.” Adds Sinha: “People enjoy lifein many ways, both traditional and mod-ern. Downtown Tokyo is about an hourfrom the skiing slopes or the beach.” Thequality of your work depends to a largeextent on the quality of your life.

It would be simplistic to dismiss the IITsas a place where they only taught you tohave fun. Marathe puts it in perspective.“IITs offer the best liberal education inIndia,” he says. “Most IITs have extremelystrong and active Humanities & SocialSciences departments. The courses thesedepartments offer truly broaden your per-spective and set you thinking. Academicknowledge pertaining to core disciplinesalso helps a lot. It has taught us to be ana-lytical and logical, operate from fundamen-tals, question everything, and reduce com-plex situations in terms of clear problems.”

“What we learnt that we use mostoften is to be able to work hard and meettight deadlines without getting too workedup about it,” says Rupal Majumdar. “Call itefficiency, commitment or perseverance;

Come December and Mumbai will see its hotels fill up. From allcorners of the globe, the IITians are returning home for thePanIIT 2006 - the global IIT alumni conference. "We expect thisto be the biggest show ever," says Ashank Desai, Chairman ofPanIIT 2006 and founder-chairman of software companyMastek Ltd.The conference will be held from 23 to 25 December. It will beinaugurated by the President of India A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. PrimeMinister Manmohan Singh will participate in a session on nationbuilding.The nation-building focus is expected to be much more than anairing of opinions. "We have conducted a survey amongstIITians across the world," says Desai. "We asked them,

amongst other things: 'What does nation building mean toyou?'" The responses were: Leveraging technology for address-ing the country's problems (48.7 per cent); Creating profes-sionalism and integrity in business and government (40.2 percent); Global branding of India 30.2 (per cent); and Breedingentrepreneurship (31.3 per cent).Rajat Gupta, former MD of McKinsey & Co, and part of thePanIIT panel, says that some 15-20 per cent of the 300,000students who have graduated from the IITs over the years arenow abroad. "They want to give back," he explains. "This isthe forum to enable them to do so."Is this in some way a compensation for the brain drain? Not atall. Tata Motors MD Ravi Kant, who is an alumnus of IITKharagpur, says that India's IT revolution would not have takenplace without the presence of these IITians abroad. "The CEOof a technology company in India can build up rapport with theCTO (chief technical officer) of a Fortune 500 companybecause both are IITians," explains former CMD of VideshSanchar Nigam Ltd S.K. Gupta, also an IITian.IITians have already given a lot to the IITs, For instance, theShailesh J. Mehta School of Management at IIT Bombay andthe Vinod Gupta School of Management in IIT Kharagpur werelargely funded by the IITians they have been named after."Today, our agenda is much larger," says Desai. PanIIT 2006will unveil several far-reaching initiatives.

DECEMBER'S BOUNTY

From L to R: S.K. Gupta, Desai, Rajat Gupta and Ravi Kant

Santosh Kothare with wife Sangeeta

and son Aakash / Saudi Arabia

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we learnt that the important thing is to getthe work done well, not the time youspend on it. Also the ability to grasp brandnew concepts quickly and to make them fitinto the scheme of things you knowalready. That’s an art or science - call itwhat you will — that we perfected at IIT.”

But the biggest thing IIT gives is self-confidence. Says Sinha, “It is the confi-dence to be able to learn and understandany problem or domain in a matter of hoursor days at most.”

Yedkar talks about his own experience:“It was 2000 and I had been enjoying areasonably successful career in supplychain management at Procter & Gamble(P&G) in India and Japan. After a 16-yearbusiness career I made an abrupt change tomarketing and surprised everybody bystarting afresh as a marketing associate foran important brand in P&G Japan. Herewas I throwing away my long experience insales & operations and going head-to-headwith peers in their twenties. I believe mybeing an IITian had a great role to play inthis decision. Five years of pitting intellectsagainst the very best at IIT Mumbai hasgiven me the confidence that I can doalmost anything I chose to.”

Mahmud (NA, Kharagpur, 1976) hadto take a similar gamble. He has set up atextiles business in Karachi, in Pakistan.“People who know I am an engineer thinkmy specialisation was in textiles,” hesays. “At this time, I am considered to besomewhat of an authority in textiles.When all fails, they contact me.”Incidentally, the “NA” against Mahmud’sname stands not for the normal ‘not avail-able’ or ‘not applicable’ but NavalArchitecture. It’s a long way from ships toslips and booms to looms.

Is it a waste, all the money spent on

teaching a youngMahmud to designships? (According to esti-mates, even 25 yearsago, the government wasspending $10,000 to sub-sidise each IIT student’seducation.) Is it also awaste that many IITiansare now abroad and maynot come back?

The guilt feelings, evenif they were there a fewyears ago, don’t exist anylonger. IITians abroad realise- as do their erstwhile critics back home inIndia - that they are doing sterling work forthe country. All over the world, they areadding (perhaps unconsciously) to BrandIIT and Brand India.

Even those who have left the profes-sion - for finance, for management, andeven more unrelated areas - have imbibedthe confidence that is fast becoming partof the Indian psyche. “Initially, after mov-ing to the world of entertainment, I did feelguilty about having squandered the coun-try’s resources which gave me a top-classengineering education,” says Sameer Kohli,who graduated in Mechanical Engineeringfrom IIT Delhi in 1993. “Today I realise IITis not just about an engineering course, itis about the structure and discipline of life.If I, as an individual, can make a differencein the way films and television commercialsare made, then I am sure the country’sinvestment on me is not a write-off.” Kohlihas been involved in the scripting anddirection of Yahaan and Samay — WhenTime Strikes.

When the time does strikes, will theseIITians return to India? In a globalisedworld, they don’t think they need to. And

it all depends. Bhaya, forinstance, has a Brazilian wifeand three children. “The deci-sion to return to India is hard-er than if I had been alone,”he says. He continues to holdan Indian passport, though heis entitled to a Brazilian one.Yedkar too is an Indian citi-zen. “What will bring us backto India is our heart,” he says.“I am keeping my fingerscrossed that the Indian econo-my continues to grow. Thatwill create opportunities for

globally-experienced executives to make ameaningful contribution.”

For the people in West Asia, it is takenfor granted that they will return. “There aretoo many formalities in getting citizenshiphere,” says Marathe. Kothare’s currentambition is to visit more countries. “Iintend to return to India after retirementand shuttle between Mumbai paubhaji andPune bhakarwadi,” he says. (For thosewho need a translation, these are popularethnic fastfoods of the two cities.)

“One is always looking for the nextmove, the next opportunity,” says JyotiMajumdar. “What will bring us back is therealisation that our kids should not missout on what we enjoyed and learnt. India isdefinitely the right training ground. Andthen there’s IIT. It would be fabulous if ourkids were able to qualify for IIT.”Chatterjee is more phlegmatic: “Let’s seewhere life takes me next.”

For Mahmud in Pakistan, returningcould mean just walking across the bor-der. He is the closest of them all physical-ly. But, thanks to the historical baggagein the relationships between the twocountries, he may well be the most dis-tant. He has no intention of returning toIndia; he is not too sure his wife will bewelcome. But, in his book, coming backis not necessary. He sees his wife andhimself as builders of bridges, as the firstswallows in the coming summer of eco-nomic and social cooperation betweenthe two countries.

“In third countries, Indians andPakistanis work very well together,” saysJaitly in Delhi. “Not everybody can use thelanguage of love to promote unity andprogress. But we IITians have languages ofour own that can do as good a job. We talkJava and C++.”

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Amit Bhaya / Brazil

Jyoti Majumdar / Switzerland

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