IIT campus speaks national language

Updated on: Monday, October 10, 2011

It won’t be incorrect to say that Hindi is the official language on the IIT campus. Data collected by tech schools shows that every other student comes from north India, from homes that speak Hindi.

Their numbers on the IIT campuses is large by the sheer dint that they also form the largest pack of exam-takers. Of the 4.68 lakh aspirants who took the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) 2011, 68% speak Hindi at home.

While most took the exam in English, IITs say that 68,000 were more comfortable with Hindi and chose to take the entrance test in their mother tongue; 517 of them cracked the JEE. The trend of those opting to take the exam in Hindi has been rising: In 1997, close to 10,000 took the test in Hindi and the number went up to 30,000 in 2007.

Old-time faculty members say the student demography at IITs has undergone a slow but steady change—for the better. For years after the schools opened, their hostels were cleaved into two monoliths: North block and South block.

Only after the 1990s, the divide began to dissolve and diversity entered the classroom. Now, students from Uttarakhand and Assam sit alongside those from Gujarat and Orissa, and the Vindhyas are no longer a faultline. Other states which send in significant numbers to IITs are Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra.

In the last few years, AP has sent several students to IITs. And the elite engineering colleges found that most freshers come from Jaipur (1,458), followed by Hyderabad (1,307). “There is no shying away from the fact that many go to coaching classes and these numbers have a bearing on the fact that both cities are meccas of coaching classes,” said an IIT dean.

P V Indiresan, former director of IIT-Delhi, feels JEE has become “trainable” as it changed its avatar from being a subjective exam to an objective one. Delhi has sent 1,197 candidates to IITs, followed by 1,049 from Maharashtra; of them, 669 are Maharashtrians.

Then come Bengalis, followed by Punjabis and Tamilians. “There was a time when there were many more students from Chennai. But their numbers have reduced,” said an old-time IIT faculty. Most students come from families where both parents are graduates; there are 2,240 of them who are first-generation college-goers.

Data provided by students on their annual family income was collated and most, the IITs found, come from homes that earn Rs 1-3 lakh, followed by 4,021 of them who state that their family income ranges from Rs 3-6 lakh.

IIT campus speaks national language

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