I held off on Part II because I wanted to see what others thought. I find that there is a great deal of opposition to the creation of more IITs on the ground that there will be dilution of brand equity, erosion in quality etc. I suspect that these arguments have been advanced by those who managed to get into IIT and want to preclude others from such education. Therefore, in somewhat of a reversal of my earlier position, I now propose that instead of renaming the RECs as IITs, the government should start five absolutely new institutions that are NOT CALLED IIT. Call them what you will but make them much better than IIT so that these new institutions become the envy of the world. Many readers have pointed out that it is the faculty that makes an institution great. I agree. Increase the budgets of the non-IITs and hire some marquee professors of Indian origin from Stanford, MIT, Harvard, Berkeley etc. Make the admission standards into these non-IIT institutes even tougher than the IITs by according a certain weightage to innovativeness. In addition to scoring the points on an entrance exam, make it compulsory to present an engineering project at the time of admission.
