IITs serve as the pillars of building the foundations of technical advancements by providing the finest human resources in the field to the country. A daily scroll on Google News would tell the trajectory of reaching heights of new innovations in these premier institutions. Being an IITian myself for more than a year now, however, I feel discomfort in labeling myself an IITian. This is not because of my general aversion to labels and labeling myself. The discomfort, or the sense of being a misfit emanates from the repetitive interactions, anecdotes and general observations of my surroundings on the campus.
Being a PhD scholar from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, I would be a misfit in any random group of other research scholars from technical departments as my research does not conform to the standards of conventional lab-based methodologies. In fact, I do not work in a functioning instruments-laden lab. On the contrary, I infer and deduce based on the interactions around the world, in society and even in the campus. My days are spent delving into theories of gender, identity, geopolitics, and more, exploring topics that often seem too idealistic for our complex world. I try to gauge the reasons for discrimination in society, coloniality in people’s minds and the prevalence of caste and class biases entrenched in our ideas of the “mundane”. To be precise, my research is predominantly qualitative in nature with value-laden enquiries (as opposed to value-free, objective) having subjective undertones.
In an atmosphere (read the Institute) where quantification runs the day, from score cards to CGPA, from placements to CTC, from rankings to trends, a qualitative aspect or value would indeed be deemed a misfit! And so, for many, I am a misfit. This sense of being a misfit strikes even harder when I get random offers on LinkedIn to work in organisations working in computational mechanics or machine learning, despite my profile clearly stating research interest areas which are not even remotely close. To infer the reasons behind these random offers, I think it is the common perception of an IITian in the outside world.
However, as time passes, this sense of disconnection is gradually easing. I’ve come to appreciate the campus’s serenity—the lush greenery, solitary bike rides along Delhi Avenue, and the serene beauty of its flora and fauna. Interestingly, all these little things are qualitative in nature – having abstract notions of beauty, calm and peace. More interestingly, these aspects of the nature act as spaces where divergences interact to create a dialogic environment.
Amidst this interplay of the quantitative and qualitative, I hope there emerges a space where both aspects coexist, where the label of an IITian embraces diversity and harmony.
Edited by Yatin Satish
Article 19 