Being from an IIT myself I disagree with a lot of points that Nisheeth has raised.

Coaching insititutes like FIITJEE have a habit of inflating the figures...the 25% mark that you talk about includes almost every student who has been affiliated with FIITJEE, including their national test series and correspondance courses which have little impact on the candidates ability to succeed in JEE.

The argument that you are furthering is that coaching institutes like FIITJEE help the non-meritorious students get throught JEE. However, if you look at the percentage measure of people who actually take the classroom programs of FIITJEE and out of those how many clear JEE then the figure will not be more than 5%. Even in that 5% there are students who subscribe to coaching from other insititutes as well like Vidyamandir. If FIITJEE would have been successfull in placing non-meritorious candidates through JEE then this figure of 5% would have been much higher.

Vidyamandir is an exception to this rule because I know that almost 80% of students who attend classroom coaching succeed in JEE. However again, this does not imply that Vidyamandir helps non-meritorious students get through JEE because their classroom program has itself a very highly competitive entrance examination which makes sure that they only get the high peformers.

Again, if one were to believe that coaching institutes help non-deserving candidates clear JEE then it makes sense to assume that these non-deserving 'coached' candidates would definitely perform worse in academics inside IIT as compared to their non-coached counterparts. However, atleast in the IIT I went and almost all other I know of there does not exist any such patterns in academic perfomance. A pattern that does exist is that in almost all IIT's reserved category students perform worse in academics as compared to their general category counterparts.

Infact this is something which has started reflecting in job placements also. I have interviewed numerous candidates from IIT's for software development positions. A major part of the interview comprises of general puzzles and simple coding problems - something which we hope can measure the 'raw brains' of the candidates. A lot of times I have been faced with IIT candidates who have had very good all india ranks in jee (like less than 100) but have faced miserably in the interviews. The thing that is striking is that almost always such candidates are from the reserved category. It might not be far fetched to assume that in the near future companies would start filtering out quota candidates even before the interview process.

Another assumption that you make is that it is only the general category students who attend coaching. Almost 70% of quota students in my batch were actually very 'rich' (with their parents in high profile jobs in the govt.) and had gone to multiple coaching centres. Infact, none of the students (almost 7-8%) who came in without any coaching were from quota category.

Also it might be true that Infosys recruits 50 people from a batch of 500 but those are invariably the people who have are from non-computer science backgrounds and are unable to find jobs in their elected fields of engineering.

What I do know is that there are about 8 students from the computer science department in my batch who are at work for the last 3 years to create a world class telecom company right here in India. Their product competes with those developed by international telecom majors and mostly successfully. They presently employ almost 60 people across India. None of these are quota candidates. Infact almost all the quota candidates that I know of in my batch and my senior batches are presently working in some govt. of India organization and enjoying babudom.

I heard question on the merit of teh IIT JEE exam and similar exams from ppl who favoured the reservations. I would ask one thing if the exam criteria is not just for merit how do you ensure that those 50% reserved seats will get allocated in desired way.

If the question of the examinations efficiency is raised I don't understand how giving 50% of seats to some ppl would raise it? If I end up with low cgpa In my college I can always blame many ppl for designing the curriculum such that those who can mug can do well, but that doesn't justify me getting bad grades. Its just an excuse.

When there is a competition there has to be some criteria to choose the winner and runner up and the criteria can possibly never be perfect but just assuming that it is not do we get the rights to make it worse ?

Is it ensured that those 50% seats filler from SC/ST/OBC category are ppl who weren't able to take coachings and so weren't equally prepared to get it. Even if it is isn't the right solution changing the way of conducting exam or improving education at school level ?

The author, MR NISEETH, in his article has presented an interesting yet a comical view of the IIT's and in general the whole technogical resources of India.
I myself being in the iit's feel that the author has not perceived the correct idea of the jee exam conducted by the iit's.He seems to have crossed the line in distinguishing between whats a good institute and what is not.His sole idea of criticising one institute over the other does not seem to help the incognisable 'novel' written by him.
Yes it is true that the TIFR, and IISc's are the hallmarks of educational excellence, but they are not meant to fulfill the technological needs of the country.

IIT's as the name stands for are solely responsible for producing world- class engineers but with the indian touch.I would also like to ask the author as to why he has not gone in search of his
visionary centres of excellences but landed up in the commercially favorable IIT's.
Technological 'dilution' by unreasonable increase in the no. of seats will incite rebellion in the nation and the youth of india are ready to destroy all escalades in their way.
K.Sharath Chandra
IITMADRAS