Mumbai: In August 2007, two engineering students of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, or IIT-B, walked up to their professor and dropped what most would consider a bombshell. “We want to build a satellite,” they said.
While an average professor might have been taken aback, at IIT-B, the proposal by Saptarshi Bandopadhyay and Shashank Tamaskar, third-year students of the aerospace department, aged 21 and 22, respectively, at the time, was dealt with like any other project request.
“He asked us to do our homework and come back,” says Tamaskar. “What was important was that he didn’t discourage us.”
Months of work, research and consultations later, the now 50-member team of students is well on its way to building the institute’s first student satellite, Pratham, and signing a preliminary agreement with the Indian Space Research Organisation to provide them with funds to the tune of Rs1.5 crore.
“All kinds of exploration, academic or extra-curricular, is encouraged,” says Rohit Manchanda, faculty member and author of Monastery, Sanctuary, Laboratory: 50 years of IIT Bombay
. He adds that the liberal attitude and encouragement offered to students is one area where “IIT Bombay might steal a march over the others”.
Known for its illustrious faculty and alumni, lavish cultural festivals and a smattering of Silicon Valley-funded start-ups, IIT-B has long been considered the most glamorous of the IITs. For many years now, it has attracted some of the best students, faculty and recruiters. At least 50% of the students in the top 100 list in the high-stakes Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) usually pick IIT-B, adding to its stature as a Mecca for aspiring engineers.
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IIT-B didn’t start off with this advantage, explains Manchanda. At its inception in 1958, it was set up with financial aid from the then Soviet Union through the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or Unesco.
Creative licence: Students on the IIT Bombay campus. The school encourages entrepreneurship through organizations such as the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, or SINE. Abhijit Bhatlekar / Mint
“In the early years, the most sought after, liberal, forward-looking IIT would have been IIT Kanpur, which thrived under the charge of its first director, professor (P.K.) Kelkar, considered an academic visionary by many, and a more modern and state-of-the-art set-up, funded by the US,” says Manchanda. IIT-K was robbed of its advantage in the late 1970s as Uttar Pradesh became a hotbed of politics.
Mumbai, which by then had developed into a financially vibrant city, offered IIT-B the opportunity to evolve. “The aura and ethos of the city, of the time, also spilled into the institute, making it one of the most democratic and least hierarchical institutes of the lot,” says Manchanda. Compared with the other IITs, IIT-B is considered less rigid and hierarchical, and has the widest mix of faculty from all over the country.