An Eye For Excellence

An Eye for Excellence is an inspiring chronicle of how a newly established institution – the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur – achieved pre-eminence in a short period of time, and how today, as it completes fifty years, it is poised for a quantum leap in its journey of excellence. Blessed with the support of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and lucky to have a visionary founder-director, Dr P. K. Kelkar, IIT Kanpur was able to draw on the rich experience of nine famous US universities, backed by US government funds. Breaking loose from established educational patterns both in India and abroad, IIT Kanpur went in for an innovative broad-based curriculum with sciences and humanities and social sciences forming an essential component. It also introduced in India the concepts of the semester system, a continuous evaluation of students and letter grades. An open, participatory ambience transformed the students, representing the cream of India, into firebrands with a Midas touch. They went on to make a name for themselves, their alma mater and their country across a wide spectrum, even beyond their fields of specialization. From an important discovery about prime numbers(by Maninder Agarwal), to rising to be the head of the Reserve Bank of India (Duvvuri Subbarao), to selfless public service (Satyendra Dubey), to becoming icons of environment (Anil Agarwal) and entrepreneurship(N.R. Narayana Murthy in India and Umang Gupta in Silicon  Valley), the students of IIT Kanpur have shown extraordinary versatility. What gave the faculty, the students and staff a deep sense of 'ownership' of the institute was the fact that they pioneered a large number of exceptional activities, whether in computers or materials science education or a student-operated television studio. How the institute overcame the hurdles in its path is a heart-warming saga in itself. Today, as IIT Kanpur continues on its dynamic path, it is exhilarating to know that such 'Nalandas' can indeed be built and sustained in modern India.