Trouble in the World’s Back Office Sudhir Chella Rajan
Within twenty miles of Chennai, along any of three dusty and bustling highways headed south or west of the city, one passes by at least a dozen college campuses speckled with a few young trees, elaborate gates, tall compound walls, and occasionally curious acronyms such as RRASE preceding the words “College of Engineering.” Little activity seems apparent outside, but the campuses are usually busy inside, with several hundred students managing brutal classroom schedules. Most are coeducational institutions, but there is also a famous women’s college in the vicinity. Tamil Nadu, the large southern Indian state in which Chennai is located, has about 580 engineering colleges, and is second only in its population of such colleges to Andhra Pradesh, its northern neighbor. Most of these colleges are self-financed or private. While many used to be quite competitive, in the past two years significant numbers of seats have remained unfilled, in part because of the very proliferation of these campuses. Throughout India, the growth of engineering colleges over the past decade has been phenomenal. Engineering enrollment in the country went from about half a million in 2006 to over 1.5 million in 2015. Responding to the increase are the now over 3,500 engineering colleges and about 2,200 polytechnic institutes providing vocational training. The city of Chennai itself has several engineering colleges, the most prominent of which are Anna University and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)–Madras, where I teach. IIT–Madras is one of the original five IITs inaugurated by Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, whose abiding vision was one of a technologically led nation. IIT alumni, as well as engineers from elsewhere in India, are famous around the world for their leadership Harvard South Asia Institute 77