Long-time reader Kush Tandon was in India a couple of months ago, and since then he’s been slowly putting up the photos he took on his blog and on his Flickr account. As I was perusing them the other day, one photo stood out to me:
Kush also gives a caption to the photo to explain a little about the history of IIT Roorkee:
IIT Roorkee, once University of Roorkee, and before that Thomason College is perhaps the prettiest campus in India, something like Cornell University campus in Ithaca for North America. It is a quiet, green oasis that is about 150 years old. Its history spans training engineers for canal building in India, sappers for Indian military for many wars (British India and later independent India), for huge dam making projects immediately after the independence, and now with India’s economy opening up. (link)
I personally like the photo because it defies the clichés regarding what India looks like — which probably tend to dictate what we ourselves photograph when we go there. That is not to say that there isn’t another side to life, even in Roorkee (and Kush himself has a number of photos showing poverty as well as open trash). But both kinds of images are part of the story.
Do readers have photographs in their public collections that show images of the Indian subcontinent that also defy expectations in some way? If so, we would love to see them…
Thanks, Amardeep.
I still have twice as many photos to publish/ post.
Accidentally, I made movies with my camera on Roorkee railway station one morning – like, people brushing teeth by the platform, etc. I’ll post them. They might be the most unique thing I did in December, 2007.
I need to figure where to .mov files.
If you SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM of http://www.ninapaley.com/IndiaPix3.html there is a photo of Trivandrum’s Technopark in 2002, which looks like magic fairyland.
Looks like a lot of smog in the background. cough! cough!
3 · Atool said
Sigh! Maybe this would be something you want to read.
Nice pictures, Kush, and interesting thread, Amardeep.
I know this is not just about campuses, but among recently built campuses in India, the BITS Pilani campus at Goa (which I had mentioned before on a different thread) and the IIM Kozhikode (Calicut) campus are really nice. See flash slideshows here (including a high-res 360-deg pan with zoom) and here.
Although the campus at Roorkee is aesthetically pleasing, and strongly reminiscent of 19th Century Raj architectural styles and town planning – I also noticed that IIT Roorkee has the highest faculty vacancy rate among all IITs. Kush, do you think this is because of its recent upgradation to ‘IIT’ status, or does the relative isolation of Roorkee also play some part? (with Amardeep’s permission, hope this won’t be considered too much of a threadjack). The 8 new IITs that have been proposed and ‘approved’ – are likely to be located in non-metropolitan areas, and I think that will compound faculty recruitment problems by an order of magnitude.
what do you mean, care to elaborate? what does India look like?
some of the older universities i’ve seen are just as grand
osmania u
banaras hindu university
aligarh muslim university
I jus came back from visiting Delhi and Goa (went to India after eight years). No matter how hard you try, pictures taken in Delhi tend to be blurry. I guess its the smog and dust but its def improving. Loved the toll road they built right next to the airport. Saw the metro construction goin on everywhere, didn’t get the time to ride in one tho.
I also noticed that IIT Roorkee has the highest faculty vacancy rate among all IITs. Kush, do you think this is because of its recent upgradation to ‘IIT’ status, or does the relative isolation of Roorkee also play some part?
Ok, a little digression, as this thread is about pictures of India.
Yes, re: “highest faculty vacancy” problem, it is, in part of many reasons:
a) Roorkee right now wants to build a staff that is comparable to a place like IIT, Kanpur***. I am using IIT Kanpur (Kalyanpur) as a gold standard. But first, usually they do not get that type of applicants for jobs, and the ones they get face great challenges. The ones who join face an uphill tasks to make their dreams come true. Without giving much (or any) details, I meet a new faculty member at Roorkee in 12/ 07, who was hired after being at MIT and Harvard for many years late last year, wanted to return to India for family reasons. He had been there for a month but did not even have internet in his office. He wants to start a million dollar lab though.
b) Mandal Commission playing out.
c) All IITs have same problem. Finding right people.
d) Now regarding “relative isolation“, I was chatting with 3-4 young unmarried faculty at Roorkee at a chai shop a few months ago, they said they were having hard time finding spouses since, it was not Bangalore, anyone moving to Roorkee will not be able to much employment opportunities, not comparable to something at Infosys or even close so their it is hard to convince to move to Roorkee. Yes, but isolation plays both ways – some benefits, and some bad points.
*** In Departments like Civil Engineering, they have always had the quality to none in India, but not so in all other Departmens.
Well, let’s get back to pictures of India.
And Atool Bhayia, that is not smog, those are water fountains in the background, that water the University lawns have almost round the clock.
Roorkee Cantonment (the HQ for Bengal Sappers) is equally beautiful, scenic, and vast but for security reasons, they would not anyone photograph it.
6 · Yogi said
That is actually an interesting point. If we are saying that cliches do not represent this aspect of India, then that is true. But that’s why they are cliches. In actuality, India does have a fair bit of colonial architecture, especially in places where there was reasonable British influence. I immediately think of Connaught Place in Delhi, Flora Fountain and VT in Bombay, Victoria Memorial in Kolkata among some. My college in Pune was from the late 1800s and most of our buildings were very much colonial and there are such buildings all over the country, not very well known but quite western in influence.
Kush, thanks for the detailed response. I’ve blogged some issues related to new IIT locations, mandates, etc on my blog, linked in above.
Back to the pictures thread here. Thanks Amardeep!
Amardeep,
Skyscrapercity India has a pretty good collection of pictures. Check these out
Some pictures from the above link
Kashmir in different seasons Gulmarg, Kashmir Agatti Island, Lakshadweep Indosan Nipponji Temple, Bodh Gaya Loktak Lake, Manipur Batasia Loop, Darjeeling Amar Vilas Hotel, Agra Beaches in Lakshadweep
I found this on the Skyscrapercity link from #12.
Almost a bewildering take on a contemporary temple. This temple is like the guy who wears totally mismatched clothes, turns to you and says, “what, what’s your problem?”.
link
Folks, a discussion of what’s happening at the different IITs might not be relevant to photography, but it seems like a good topic for discussion… so please carry on, if you have issues you wish to discuss.
(For instance, I have a friend who graduated from Roorkee just before it got converted to an IIT, and he says the quality of the institution has gone down since then, owing partly to the exam structure: in the old days, Roorkee had its own “All India” entrance exam, now students are admitted based on JEE, and all of the best JEE admittees go elsewhere)
On the photos front, Khoofia (#7), thanks for the links! I especially liked this shot, of BHU-VT.
@#14 🙂
Few more from SSC-India The Oberoi Amar Vilas, Agra The Oberoi UdaiVilas, Udaipur The Mayfair, Darjeeling Deer me 🙂
Yogi,
I think what is meant by the sentence you refer to is that not all of India is how it is depcited in Western Media, there is a different aspect of India which never gets any mention.
Amardeep, I will find some pictures from my last trip to Bombay this January and link them here.
Amardeep, BHU-IT was also an ‘upgraded’ IIT – the name was not changed, but sometime in the late 70s, it began accepting people who ‘qualified’ in the JEE – and the same thing used to be said about BHU-IT admits at one time. How true that is felt to be depends on who you ask, but the impact of IIT location on faculty and student quality first became a really stark issue with IIT Guwahati.
The real problems about the JEE are different – its lack of transparency – especially in things like cutoff scores (which, if reports are to be believed, reached the single digits in 2007 – out of 300 marks); the marking algorithm – e.g., which subject gets more weight – math, physics or chemistry; whether the algorithm (and also the difficulty of the exam, the quality of those who ‘qualify’ etc) varies depending on which IIT conducts the JEE in a particular year; it also seems to be mainly selecting people tutored in ‘coaching and cramming’ schools – the very thing it was supposedly designed to discourage; the level of the JEE is deliberately pitched very high to screen people out – but the statistical difference in ability between those who reached the merit list and those who didn’t may be insignificant or even favor the latter. These issues will become all the more prominent as new IITs are started, and as the ‘brand-awareness’ of the IITs increases. The solution is partly to increase intake in each IIT, before new IITs come on-line, and also to increase transparency in the JEE. It should select ‘for’ certain attributes, and aptitude for technical studies – not have the sole purpose of screening people ‘out’ – which can be done also with a preliminary screening test, or other exam cutoff scores, or even recommendation letters, or some combination thereof.
I am not too concerned about stereotypes in the media, in my comment, I was wondering what Amardeep’s perceptions of India were that’s all.
Less than 5000 students are admitted to the IITs each year, so even the worst of JEE admittees are amongst the best in India so I don’t buy your friend’s theory that the standards have gone down.
My apologies, I interpreted it otherwise
Less than 5000 students are admitted to the IITs each year, so even the worst of JEE admittees are amongst the best in India so I don’t buy your friend’s theory that the standards have gone down.
What Amardeep’s friend meant is true:
a) There is very strong pecking order in students choosing IITs, with IIT Kalyanpur being on the top, and IIT Delhi following it. By the way, both IIT Kalyanpur and IIT Delhi have ugly, and unkept campuses. Next time, I go to India, I will try to photoshoot JNU, Delhi which has a different sense of vibrancy. Roorkee stands out not for its building (there are hazaar British Raj buildings in India all over), it is their devotional zeal to keep that campus pretty.
b) Typically, students within JEE go with that pecking order, and those pecking orders are strictly maintained in India for many reasons (for that matter here in US). So places like Roorkee (or IT BHU who had an arrangement to be part of IIT JEE exam but is not an IIT),
c) In past, if someone had a JEE 100 rank (or JEE 250), and Roorkee “All India” 5 rank, he or she might pick Roorkee. So Roorkee when separate had more wild cards (people choosing Roorkee over others), than being part of a big team. So Amardeep’s friend, a Roorkee alum is not wrong.
This all said,
I was having in chai in cafe in Roorkee, a soldier (jawan) from Bengal Sappers came to one of newly hired faculty , and they chatted in Tamil for 15-20 minutes. He told us later, “His kids are 8-9 years old, and he wants them to study @ Roorkee. He wanted to know how he should start preparing them for admission?“.
I meant: So places like Roorkee (or IT BHU who had an arrangement to be part of IIT JEE exam but is not an IIT), typically get lower quadrature with JEE ranking.
23 · Kush Tandon said
Kush, interesting comments, I agree generally speaking. To some extent it also depends on what you want to study. A determined Civil Engineer would be foolish to choose Kanpur over Roorkee, and a determined CS person would be foolish if (s)he chose Roorkee over Kanpur. BTW, I’m guessing you meant quartile.
Kush,
Thanks a lot for your commentary, from what I remember growing up some of my friends on a broader scale used to rank IIT, Bits, REC and so on. Do you think this still holds?
I know many many many IITians and NOT ONE sane person who got a JEE rank of 100 or 250 would even consider Roorkee independent of how they ranked in Roorkee. Maybe if you got an IIT rank past 2000 and your choices were Kharagpur or Guwahati in a random engineering area. Roorkee was always a fallback unless you were in a field like civil engineering or architecture, where Roorkee clearly shines.
I don’t think Amardeep’s friend’s claim makes sense. In past years, when Roorkee and IIT had separate entrance exams usually separated by around a week or so, I know many, many people who would skip the Roorkee exam either because of JEE fatigue or so that they did not waste time while preparing for the JEE (depending on which way the exams were ordered). If anything, the shared test increases the candidate pool for Roorkee (to a small extent), and the IIT tag might make some people consider it above some of the lower ranked IITs.
Personally, I am not a huge fan of the expansion of the IIT name to as yet untested schools. I think what is needed is to first make sure these schools raise their standards to the quality of the top 3 or 4 IITs (something which I don’t think even Kharagpur and Guwahati meet today). This can be done by a combination of using the JEE exam and ranking as admission criteria to get a higher quality of students to these other schools, and also making sure that they have the teaching staff and infrastructure commensurate with a top IIT (facilities in an IIT generally far outstrip most other Indian colleges, the faculty are generally better too, although at the end of the day, the most significant difference is in student quality primarily because the JEE is such a competitive exam).
The problem of ‘overfitting’ has become a real issue only in the last 5 years or so, with many specialized residential training schools (like in Kota, and Ramaiah’s in Hyderabad) cropping up. Students do nothing through their 11th and 12th grade but study for the JEE, doing tens of problems of each type that has shown up in recent JEEs, while completely neglecting their schools – which they can do because these coaching institutes start up their own schools which make sure the students have to do just enough to get a barely passing grade in the 12th standard examinations. This has led to the kind of disaster where even some top ranking students in recent JEEs have ended up struggling once they get to IIT, due to some combination of a complete lack of motivation as well as an absence of grounding in necessary fundamentals.
The IITs are attempting to fix this with a combination of requiring far higher cutoffs in the 12th standard examinations, as well as regular changes in the format of the JEE to prevent the coaching schools from gaming them. All that said, I disagree quite strongly with this claim:
While there may be borderline cases as there are in any highly competitive admission process and some qualified candidates miss out, while some others might end up doing well enough to make the cut on the day of the exam, the JEE is generally a very strong indicator of technical merit. Coaching schools definitely have the unfortunate effect that raw talent that is from a small town without a good peer group (although some of these people still leave their hometowns to spend 2 years in Kota or wherever), or people who cannot afford the high fees that these schools charge, are put at a disadvantage. However, the fact is that mere drill cannot transform any old student into JEE material, and that students who get into IITs through the JEE are still very capable. What is true is that there are still many capable (by an absolute standard) students who do not make it into the IITs, and outside of Pilani, some state colleges, and RECs, don’t have very good secondary options.
The rise of coaching schools is a natural response to the fact that getting into an IIT is a life-changing event. What is needed is for more IIT quality schools to come up so that there is a 20-30x expansion in affordable, high quality college education. This will reduce to some extent the extreme pressure built into the system, and also make sure that more capable students get the education they deserve.
I’m guessing you meant quartile.
Yes, I meant quartile. Yes, a determined Civil Engineer would always study in Roorkee, but then India is now growing in subjects (like Computer Science, Biotechnology) that are dominated by Kalyanpur, Delhi. Fifty years ago and before, Civil Engineering was the king in India, when all the dams were being built, and before that canal building. Ganga canal in 1800s in some ways, before white revolution brought food to millions in India through irrigation.
umber desi, I think ranking in a young teenager mind in India is very much there, stronger than ever, but so is here, ask any high schooler here – or Tom Cruise’s Risky Business.
But software “India Shinning” revolution is lead (man powered) by graduates from RECs, private colleges, since IITs either do MBAs @ IIMs or Wharton, work for investment banks in Hong Kong, move to USA.
So RECs, deemed Universities are doing the heavy lifting right now in 9% growth rate.
JEE Whaa?: To clarify, my comment on statistical differences in ability referred only to those at the bottom of the JEE merit list and those that didn’t make it at all, and sometimes, as you said yourself, this difference can be in favor of the latter. The lack of suitable alternatives for these latter, is a real issue, and in part, is motivating the expansion of the IIT system.
A report in yesterday’s Hindu quoting an ASSOCHAM study says that the top 40% of those who don’t make it into IIT go abroad – spending US $ 10 billion yearly, costing India in foreign exchange, and arguing that this is enough to set up many more IITs than the 8 new ones currently being envisaged. In fact, it goes a step further in hinting that if India were to invest in its higher education sector, it could itself draw in students from abroad, turning the foreign exhange ‘drain’ into a revenue stream five or ten times as large.
Thanks Kush, I meant mental perception and how it comes into play now that there are many more IITs.
Kush Tandon #22 You don’t have to be so condescending, I do know all about the JEE and the relative rankings and the hierarchy of the campuses. The point I was trying to make was the even the person who comes dead last in the JEE (and though may be looked down upon by the other 4999 who finished before him or her) has to be pretty smart considering the number of students that take JEE every year, I am sure the number is in hundreds of thousands if not more, and any school that has such good raw material(in this case Roorkee) can’t really be all that bad. As far as the standards going down that is purely subjective opinion, how exactly do you measure these so called standards?
sadly, I haven’t been to the subcontinent for over 12 years. But it’s nice to see the pictures – nice contrast to my memories of India as a 10 year old.
Yeah, the real issue is not the noise at the bottom of the list, which is always going to be the case in any system where demand exceeds supply, the real issue is the fact that I mentioned about those who don’t make it still being capable at an absolute level.
Yes, but right now, this expansion of the IIT system seems like a linguistic sleight. Simply calling an institution an IIT and admitting people off the JEE merit list doesn’t make a school an IIT. You need high levels of infrastructure and faculty, something which I think has been difficult even to guarantee across the 5 old IITs (especially, Kharagpur, probably significantly due to its geographic isolation), leave alone Roorkee or Guwahati.
I agree with JEE whaaa? that I’ve never known of anyone who would have chosen Roorkee with rank 5 over an IIT with rank 100 or even 250 when it was not an IIT.
The real deterioration of the JEE, IMO is that they have done away with the wonderful analytical problems which were a trademark of that exam and Roorkee’s and have moved to pure multiple choice, which doesn’t allow much leeway for creativity etc. I have buddies who teach in IITs and they (and the senior faculty who have been teaching for decades) see a strong deterioration in the quality of students which they attribute to one thing – the gaming by Kota coaching centers and the like.
This overall trend might be what Amardeep’s and Kush’s friends are seeing in Roorkee. Except for people choosing one or two departments like civil, the Roorkee admissions were in effect, already more like an extension of the IITs by the 90s for this reason. I can only imagine that Roorkee’s decision to join the IIT list was good for the institution because it is more likely that somebody desperate for some field like computer science might come there now (since it now has the IIT name) instead of accepting another branch at an IIT. This used to happen at IT-BHU where they would get people with ranks within 1000 just because of CS because CS would have close long since in the IITs.
Also, at least in the old days, IIT was accepting only about 2000 students (before multiple choice and Kota tricks), I felt that the top 10,000 students were excellent and any school that accepted people from that list was doing itself a favor. Unfortunately, these students were usually left with nothing unless they had planned a backup.
I am generally in agreement with JEE whaa?’s comments except. I would add to the remark about JEE being a great indicator of ability, that not making in the JEE was never an indicator of lacking ability.
whoa I did not know that, when did they make that change?
I think, in the last couple of years. The JEE entrance exam has been put under a fair amount of stress by the onslaught from the coaching farms, and I think changing the format was a strategy to eliminate the extremely exam-centric training methodology of these farms. My sense is that the format will change on a regular basis so that they can try and stay a beat ahead of the coaching farms, although it will be a tough battle.
Fully agreed.
Kush, this is a very UP point of view. How come so many people with JEE rank 1 (or 2 or 3) went to IIT Bombay and IIT Madras, then? The IITs are geographically distributed precisely so that more people can study closer to home. Why do you think IITM is filled with Tamil and Telugu kids? Hyderabad kids typically go to IITB or IITM. Mumbai kids prefer IITB. It’s that simple. In fact, before Guwahati came around, if I heard any slightly about any IIT being not the best, it might have been Delhi or Kharagpur, quite opposite to what you say about Delhi being #2 and the rest following.
See where Delhi falls in this list.
http://admissionsync.com/2007/07/28/ranking-of-engineering-colleges-in-india/
The general impression was that except for Guwahati (because it was new), people paid much attention to ranking between the IITs while choosing and instead were crazy about branch.
If one were to really consider ranking, then look not at where the toppers went, but what rank each IIT closed at. For a couple of years in the late nineties (maybe more years, I wasn’t paying much attention), CS closed first at IITM, despite the generally good reputation of IITK for that field. I attribute this to nothing but geography and the fact that there were more southies in the very top ranks that year. The geographical preference could be very strong in some people.
If one were surrounded by UPites at that age, it is natural that the order might have seemed like K,D,….
Kurma, solid points, especially the last one.
On the slow transformation of the JEE: the Math exam had gone to being partially multiple choice some time in the 1980s. Later the whole exam, including Physics and Chemistry, switched to being multiple choice (called ‘objective type’), and now, instead of separate Math, Physics and Chemistry papers, the exam consists of two tests, each of which has questions from all 3 subjects.
The multiple choice is essential both to ensure objectivity and to deal with the huge numbers of students that take the exam. However, it decreases the scope for exhibiting creativity, but it can probe understanding deeply, if properly designed. But the fact that all 3 subjects are in the same test also increases the importance of the algorithm used in assigning relative weights to performance in the separate subjects in generating the merit list.
5 · chachaji said
I think that is good way to develop the non-metropolitan areas instead of monopolizing all the development in the urban centers. If you cannot attract faculty in the non-urban centers then the govt. has not served the social goal towards development which is not just churning out students.
Partial multiple choice = 7-10 questions usually for a total of 15 to 20 points out of 100, which is a very reasonable format, and this was the general format through much of the 90s (at least till late 90s), except for the screening exam (which was just a cutoff to decide whether the full papers would be graded: this measure was introduced in 92 or 93 to deal with the vastly increasing numbers of students) which was all-objective. I don’t know the details of the current multiple choice, but the multiple choice questions back then were truly multiple choice (i.e. more than one answer could be correct, and getting the points required checking ALL correct answers) and they were not easy.
Kurma, well said. IITM closed earlier in CS even during the early 90s, by the way.
So, is someone going to post pictures of the coaching classes, or what?
.
I meant in comment #33.
However, in response to #36, I would say that the original distribution of the IITs to the four metros plus Kanpur was designed at least partly to make sure people from one part of the country got to study in a different part. In practice if your rank was high enough you could go anywhere, but otherwise, there was a reasonable amount of mixing of people between the ‘zones’.
It is this mixing, and the ‘all-India’ character of the IITs that will be threatened, if, as the system expands, the expansion locations are not in the largest metros and are instead in decidedly regional cities. This is one very strong argument for tripling the capacity of the existing IITs first, and bringing up the stragglers within the existing IITs, before new ones are located in ‘regional’ cities.
Unfortunately the Indian system of higher education does not prize creativity and originality much. What India needs is many more good schools (Universities)and not just in engineering and the sciences. The excessive focus on entrance exams and exams like 10th and 12th grade exams (SSC and HSC in Maharashtra) is downright unhealthy.
9 · Kush Tandon said
Ah this is an interesting “social” issue. Lets assume that more and more women are going to have a career unlike most Indian grand-mothers and many Indian mothers. This means that future spouses of Indian men are going to as interested in career prospects rather than cooking. So if all the new institues ( or the economy of the areas themselves ) that are going to open in rural/semi-urban areas don’t cater to the females then they are going to have problems recruiting people from urban areas unless the recruitment also acquires more of a local flavour. In such a scenario raising the profile and standards of these institues will become intimately linked to the growth and development of the surrounding areas. That should make for some real interesting social dynamics in the coming times.
This is a small guest house in a village called Panghot in Nainital.
41 · chachaji said
I think I will disagree. There are many second-tier cities which can give a tough competition to the metros in attracting students. These second tier cities are doing quite well economically and can be useful launch pads for the new institues to spur development in the hinterland and not to mention developing those non-urban universities which are in bad shape ( especially non-technical education like humanities ). I guess development needs strong educational universities even in the non-engineering fields. And wonder why these new institues cannot be exploited to develop the unversities too.
9 · Kush Tandon said
Am I missing something that happened in India in the past 9 years. Has Kanpur city’s name been changed to Kalyanpur? Or is Kalyanpur the mohalla where IIT-K is located? That is like calling IIT-M as IIT Guindy or IIT- Taramani :).
Thanks, chachaji. Also, I didn’t know that the placing in metros was supposed to help mixing. That was just a guess. I have never read the history of how this was decided.
That makes me wonder, though. Why Kanpur then? Perhaps 2 for the region that had the highest population density? Why didn’t Calcutta get one and Kharagpur get one? Bangalore and Hyd were not big cities back then and I can see why they didn’t get one.
JEE whaaa? my mistake. I had actually meant early nineties. Dunno about any other time.
On the topic of Kush’s pictures, those are really nice. BHU is a very pretty campus too. I have heard the same about IISc and BITS. IITB and IITM have nice campuses. There is a trend nowadays to build beautiful colleges in beautiful locations among the new private colleges coming up. This seems to impress the parents very much. That should make for some really Taj Mahal (not quite) pictures in the future. For now they look more like gaudy Ramayan/Mahabharat sets.
Like Amardeep mentioned, the (general) Western trained eye generally might want to shoot the dirty pic to make sure “reality” is captured while the desi eye (tired of seeing the garbage and poverty) generally seeks out beauty….oops, wandering into pure speculation territory, maybe offensive territory.
Mixing might have been the intent, but in practice, IITs are very regionally weighted. As Kurma mentioned, IITM is dominated by people from Tamilnadu and Andhra, with a smaller number of Malayalis and Kannadigas, and a really small number of people from other parts of the country. Other IITs have similar distributions, except that the numerically dominant groups are decided by the region.
To me, the biggest argument for doing this is quality. The existing IITs have certain baselines which are more easily maintained, and which are harder to produce in a new IIT. Of course, a new IIT hasn’t yet been built in a centrally located place, so it might be the case that if an IIT were built in Hyderabad/Trivandrum/Bangalore/Bhopal etc., it might be easier to build it up quickly to a reasonable quality.
Kurma, did you go to an IIT? If so, which one? Maybe I know you 🙂
Well, IITB has long had the alternate name of IIT Powai around that region, no? Thaarams is teh rock!