dear smriti irani, stop giving my money to iitians

3/28/2015 DearSmritiIrani,stopgivingmymoneytoIITians

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Dear Smriti Irani, stop giving mymoney to IITiansIf IITians are so intelligent and can earn lakhs in their placements, why dothey sponge off taxpayers' money?

Dear Smt Smriti Iraniji,

At the drop of a hat, every government, including yours, says that subsidiesare bad for the economy and should be done away with.

Jeswanth PadooruMar 26, 2015 03:30 pm

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Photo Credit: IANS

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Saturday, March 28th 2015



Many of the subsidies in your ministry are going to those who don'tdeserve it. IITians are the most guilty of this pilferage. To make thingsworse, they hardly do anything for the country. Best-selling fiction is notknown to help farmers.

1) To begin with, this is what they cost usWhile it takes over Rs 3.4 lakh to educate an IITian per year, the studentpays only Rs 90,000 per year. The rest is borne by the government. That isclose to Rs 2.5 lakh per student per year, which is being paid by the taxpayer. If one extrapolates this to all the 39,540 students in the IndianInstitute of Technologies, the cost borne by the tax payer on educatingIITians extends to 988.5 crore annually.

According to budget estimates, Rs 1703.85 crore is to be allocated to the IITsfor 2015-'16.

2) What do we get in return for the Rs 1,700 crore we spend on them?Inspite of producing 9,885 world-class engineers in computer science,electrical, electronic, chemical, mechanical, production fields every year...

a) The Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle, though successful withthe Russian Cryogenic Engine, has time and again failed with theindigenous cryogenic engine. We have succeeded only once with ourindigenous cryogenic rocket.

b) Indigenous submarines are still a distant dream because of thetechnological complexity in building them. Though many projects arecoming up in our own shipyards, they are happening because we aremerely manufacturing them in India with foreign technology.

c) The indigenous Indian Small Arms System rifles for our army, developed



by the Defence Research and Development Organisation, have always beenreported as problematic, and we import assault rifles from Israel.

Why could our world-class engineers, who are educated with tax payers'money, not have built them?

3) This is what our top IITians gave a missA Right to Information application that was filed recently has shown thatless than 2% of engineers at the Indian Space Research Organisation arefrom IITs and the National Institutes of Technology. Our best spaceprogramme doesn't get our best engineers every year.

The army doesn't get engineers and officers from the IITs. Between 1986and 2006, not a single IITian has joined the Indian army.

The DRDO has a shortage of more than 2,700 scientists, and it is stretchedand overworked, but our world-class engineers don't find it challenging.

4) If an IITian wants to run an online shop, then why do I, a taxpayer,have to pay for his chemical engineering degree?Going by 2013 figures, Flipkart, the online mega-store, recruited sevenstudents from IIT Madras in 2013.

One can understand the logic behind Flipkart hiring a computer scienceengineer. But six of the hires had studiedaerospace, chemical, metallurgy,bio-technology and engineering physics. What specialist knowledge willthey bring toFlipkart?

These students do not have any interest in what they learnt in their four-year undergraduate programme, and want to erase their history bymoving to a different field.



5) Why did I pay for Chetan Bhagat's mechanical engineering degree?I have nothing against Chetan Bhagat, but I do know that Indian taxpayerspaid to make him a mechanical engineer. He has done everything butengineering.

Another RTI filed with IIM Bangalore has revealed that out of the currentbatch of 406 students, 97 students are from IITs. Fifty-six of these arestudents with less than two years work experience.

If all these engineers wanted to be was managers, why does the tax payerneed to pay for their engineering education at the IITs?

6) Get a loan, why seek a subsidy?All students from IITs can get collateral-free loans from nationalised banksfor upto Rs 20 Lakh.

And IITians are obviously so awesome that companies are eager to paythem crores of rupees.

Then why should a world-class engineer who makes crores of rupees andadds no value to India be given a subsidised education at the IITs? Can'tthey get educated with a bank loan of their own and repay it after gettingtheir huge salaries?

7) Remittances help forex? Nope, not really.Whenever there is a debate on brain drain from the IITs, the remittancesissue pops up. Many believe that IITians who go abroad send backremittances and contribute to foreign exchange reserves. However, it is apittance for India.



Dear Smriti Irani, stopgiving my money toIITians

Jeswanth Padooru Mar 26,

2015 03:30 pm

No, Smriti Irani is notwasting your moneyon the IITians

Nivvedan Senthamil Selvan

Yesterday 03:40 pm

When Modi mocksNREGA, he ridiculesthe 80 million Indianscontributing to thenations development

Indrajit Roy Today 08:50

am

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A report in the Economic Times shows that out of the total remittances of$70 billion to India, the remittances from IITians who go to developedcountries is much lower than the remittances from the Middle East to thestate of Kerala.

Most of the Malayalis in the Gulf are blue-collar workers, not IIT engineers.

So, why should the common man subsidise an IITian's college fees?

This article was originally published on Saddahaq.com.

Also read a response to this article:No, Smriti Irani is not wasting yourmoney on the IITians

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