Just after the young aspirants for entering the prestigious IITs got their results this year last week, a mutiny of a sort started in Patna. I came to know about it through media.

Super 30 has become a global name and has got a lot of publicity, because of its missionary approach. Perhaps, it is also as two of the founders- Shri Abhayanand, the present AGP, Bihar and Anand Kumar who was also invited by IIM-Ahmedabad just in continuity with Laluji and Nitish Kumar, have become legendary and celebrity. I also wrote about it time and again. The best part was the founders taking a holistic care of the aspirants and arranging lodging too in Patna besides coaching them. I wish they had inculcating the good values in the boys also that caused the problem.
Super-30 claimed 28 of its 30 getting selected for IITs. And then perhaps another coaching institutes I-Desire claimed 3 of those 28 from Super-30 as its own students and got them facilitated by the CM. It created a tide of protests first from the founders declaring the closure of its Super-30, and then from the students’ community in Patna. I also appealed to CM to call both the parties and clear out apprehensions; as to me it appeared as silly and damaging for the students. Many wrote emotional letters on Internet sites that smelled with caste bias. I was shocked and pained too.

After many appeals from far and near including some from abroad, the founders are ready to continue with the great affirmative work for the deserving candidates from deprived categories of the rural Bihar that they are doing since last five years. However, I shall like to give some of my own views.

Why should the Supr-30 feel bad if some of its own students get allured to attend some other coaching institue too? This has become a common practice among the students. Out of sheer lack of confidence to get into IITs anyhow, they are resorting to many practices that I feel wrong. I came across a case where the boy left his good school in class XII as it required a minimum attendance for appearing in final examinations, and joined an ordinary school to go to Kota the coaching city for preparing for the IIT entrance examinations. As he has not been selected, he shall be wasting one year more with Kota coaching and try again.

Firstly, why should a coaching be necessary? It was not there at our time, and we were no way disadvantaged. Can’t IITs invent an innovative way of examining the students that can’t be facilitated by coaching centers?

Why can’t IITs depend on the results from the boards as BITS, Pilani does? Is the performance of BITS any way inferior? I feel the coaching institutes are as superfluous as the newly introduced finishing schools for the graduate engineers. It is certainly making many entrepreneurs rich. It is noway adding any creativity among the students that are the basic necessity of a good education.
However back to the main story, why should Super-30 wish to make itself monopolistic? How does it matter if some hundreds of institutes such as Super-30 come up in Patna?

I read reports about I-Desire in both the national dailies of New Delhi. It is a good endeavour if it is correctly report.

Now, IITians help poor crack IIT-JEE
PATNA: A poor waiter in Patna has become a celebrity of sorts after his son cracked the IIT entrance exam this year. The overjoyed man gives full credit to I-Desire – a small group of former IITians in Bihar who coach underprivileged kids and provide them study material.

It appears the institute wishes to emulate Super-30. I don’t find any harm in that.