A brief history of IIT Mumbai

Monastery, Sanctuary, Laboratory (Rohit Manchanda)



A book about IIT mumbai: http://www.easternbookcorporation.com/moreinfo.php?txt_searchstring=16310
got me thinking about IIT alumni and their contribution to the industry. The book is written in the style of narrative history. It traces IIT's history from its inception following the seed soviet UNESCO grant to its unarguable prominence in IT symbolized by Nilekani and Nrayan Murthy's grand success. I have been googling for anecdotes related to IT, ITans, IIT and IITans.

Both Nilekani and Narayan Murthy happen to be of Karnataki origin with strong links to Bangalore, where their empire is based. Both had been influenced by some shade of socialistic thinking. Here is a wiki article about Fabian socialism which is the philosophy Nandan Nilekani's pop subscribed to. I prefer a lighter word like altruistic federalism to describe their orientation in life.
Suprisingly, distinguished applied mathematician Narendra Karmarkar (right below) existed at the same time as Nilekani, who is the other super distinguished alumni as noted by the book. Here is an anecdote I found about these luminaries :

"Here I will describe a few incidents (will add more later if I have the time) that will throw some more light on Nandan Nilekani's personality and why I thought highly of him. Nandan Nilekani Leads Narendra KarmarkarIt was a rare event. Karmarkar, Nilekani, Somnath Sinha (likely or was it Prem Kamble?) and I were assigned to the same group in our electronic circuit design lab course by a professor who wanted balanced groups. Normally, toppers didn't associate with non-toppers. Here was poor Karmarkar in risk of losing a grade point or two and jeopardizing his chances of getting the president's gold medal. Whatever thoughts crossed his mind, outwardly he remained calm. We had a meeting to decide on our shares of the workload. I was quite enthusiastic, as was the case with me during the first week of most semesters, and proposed a fairly equitable distribution of work. Nobody else said much and the meeting was adjourned.After that Nandan left with me towards our hostels and then asked me in his Bombay Hindi, what was I trying to do. I asked him to explain what he meant. He asked me why din't I leave technical work to Narendra Karmarkar who was best suited for it and we manage the project. At beginning I didn't like this idea since I wanted to learn and contribute too. However, I agreed to his idea. In our next meeting Nandan proposed a solution that passed on major share of the lab work to Narendra Karmarkar and he seeemd happy about it. At the end of the semester when my grade report card showed an A for that course, I too was happy."

Jairam Ramesh (top left), Kanwal Rehi(top right) and Jug Mundhra (bottom left)

Manchanda's book leaves out a few colorful products. Jairam Ramesh (senior politician), Jug Mundhra ( B movie maker in LA), Kanwal Rekhi (venture capitalist) are not in view.