IITs & IIMs are the fountainheads of forwards and posts about Hindutva and generally anything promoting aryanism, brahminism, orthodoxy, patriarchy. They were even before Modi. So were ripe to become propaganda factories once he took over. Why they obsess over the "IIT brand".
IITs & IIMs have very little real actual serious top level world class research happening, the way it would happen in comparable institutions in other big countries. IITs & IIMs are primarily "Teaching Schools" or at the most "Balanced Schools", to use the US nomenclature.
I'm not saying there is no real research at those places. Many academics do real research. But on the aggregate, it's not really much. The structure & culture at IIT/IIM, is & always has been, more geared towards placements than education or research. By design, pretty much.
IIT/IIM were always explicitly set up as teaching schools, to serve the needs of the Indian nation and economy as it grows. Research has never been the priority the way it explicitly is in top schools in many other countries. Research requires independence, freedom.
But a teaching only institution also has a regimented militaristic style top-down culture. The emphasis is on obedience. Questioning is not encouraged. Just attend classes, write exams, get good placements, goodbye. IIT-IIMs run more like military academies than universities.
Those of us who have been to IIT, IIM (even NIT for that matter), and then been to universities in the West can tell this difference. How western universities just seem more.... Relaxed. Creative. Open to ideas. Empathetic. Because they're not run like West Point.
Well, sanghis want to run the world like a military academy, so of course IITs and IIMs are a great source for mindless propaganda and chest thumping. Just put a sanghi on top and the institutional structure will make it almost all sanghi.
Pu La had a great name for India's education ethos. He called it the "Gapp Basaa Sanskriti". The "Shut Up! Culture".
Nothing lights a fire under the butts of elite Twitter sanghis like throwing shade at IITs and IIMs. Especially when it comes from "one of us". 😂🤭

It's hilarious, the parochial defensive mindset. They don't want to make their schools better. Just "protect the brand".
"We consider teachers as gods and teachers consider students as their own children in our culture."

Yeah, no! You should not!

Teachers are not gods nor want to be treated as gods.
And teachers should NOT be treating students like their own children.

Like, seriously!

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More from @gauravsabnis

29 Dec
Just remembered a hilarious story from a couple of years ago. Wife's friend was staying with us. I was watching test cricket once when she came home and joined me on the couch. She is an American, not into cricket at all. But knows I'm into it. So she started chatting...
Her: You know what I like about cricket?

Me: What?

Her: They wear pants. Proper loose pants, not those weird baseball things. Not many sports let the wear pants, have you noticed?

Me: True.

Her: Why is that? I don't want to see man knees! Cricket gets it! Pants!

Me: True.
Her: Pants are the reason half the good looking men look good looking. Now this guy. He seems like a cute guy...

*She steps towards the TV to point at batter, then pauses and does a double take*

Her:...ummm have I had too much to drink because I swear his name seems like Pant!
Read 4 tweets
29 Dec
Indian wickets falling so quickly might, ironically, in the end help India win this test match, #indvsa
I feel like Kohli-Dravid, understandably, would not even consider declaration before the target crosses 325. Why should they? It's just the first test against a slightly weaker team for a change! And this Indian team gets better as a series progresses.

Which is the rational call
However, if India get dismissed for like 275 lead or so, or even 260... Not really easy to chase. Not against this Indian attack. And that might leave enough time for India to bundle them out under 200. Even with rain breaks tomorrow.
Read 5 tweets
29 Dec
"Tahir Bhasin is the actor who plays me. He's taller than me, of course. He didn't have much of a role to play though, because I didn't have much of a role to play in that 83 campaign, lol."

Hehe, self-effacing Sunny is the cutest Sunny.
"That ball ricocheted off the stump towards me and I picked up that ball and I ran and even Usain Bolt could not have caught me. I have that ball still. That is the greatest moment of my life!"

I love how emotionally Sunny talks about the 83 win like a genuine passenger.
Sunny has always been a great storyteller. And an honest storyteller. His books are some of the best cricket books ever written. I wonder why some publisher doesn't try to lure him into writing another book. Sunny has been around forever so we don't realize his full range.
Read 6 tweets
29 Dec
Wife recently finished Narcos Mexico & El Chapo, moved on to the Colombian show El Patron Del Mal, a gritty no frills 75 episode docu-drama about Escobar. I saw it 7-8 years ago, right after Narcos s1. But back then, I didn't understand Spanish at all. Like hola, bueno, done.
So I am rewatching the show with her. After having been to Latin America many times, including Colombia itself, and in fact Medellin too, and also countryside Antiochia.

And I'm seeing the show in a whole other light again!

Most noticeably, the language.
Now I'm at least very very rudimentary level okay in Spanish. Not fluent at all. But not horrible. So now, when I watch a Spanish show, I'm not just reading the subtitles, but also trying to see if I can understand what they say without reading the subtitles.
Read 9 tweets
29 Dec
As a kid from a fish eating family from Maharashtra, I was always puzzled when teachers referred to a chaotic classroom as a "fish market". Cos I went to fish markets often and they were very peaceful and chill.

Only later did I realize, it's yet another casteist insult.
So many insults we use on an everyday basis in India are tied to suggesting someone has a menial job. Which is a direct connection to the casteist mental models we are taught in India growing up. Even saying someone looks not great,"looks like a bus conductor".
The "fish market" insult is originally from English, cos those fish markets, with auctioning catches etc, were indeed very noisy. Now they aren't. No one in the west really uses the "fish market" phrase to describe chaos. Because 21st century fish markets are generally chill.
Read 10 tweets
29 Dec
The student surveys are in and I opened the comments very nervous, cos this has been a very stressful semester for everyone. I had 3 quant classes this time. Plus heading a job search. Plus a new solo PhD student. Plus new research projects.

So this is a nice year end read 😍😍
There was the added stress of the continuous attack from the IT cell. Thousands of emails sent to my colleagues, HR, bosses, etc, with random fake allegations and insults. The sleaziest was when they were tagging high school students who tweeted they got into Stevens. Yuck.
But my Stevens fam, everyone from bosses to HR to colleagues to students stood with me 100%, seeing the fascist trolling for the fascist trolling it is. As long as my students love me and my colleagues love me, no random online harassment campaign will work, bhakts. 😎😎
Read 7 tweets

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