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NEWS: Gates plans to work with IITs in the digital decade
Gates plans to work with IITs in the digital decade
By Mayank Chhaya, Indo-Asian News Service
Cupertino, California, Jan 18 (IANS) The Indian Institutes of
Technology (IITs), one of the most influential legacies of the
first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru's visionary ideals,
drew fulsome praise from Bill Gates, the world's richest man.
Gates, chief of U.S.-based Microsoft Corporation, called the IITs
and its alumni a "treasure of top rate intellectual resource" for
the world in a keynote speech at a special event in Silicon Valley
to celebrate 50 years of the IITs.
The first IIT centre was set up in 1951 in the small town of
Kharagpur in West Bengal in a complex that was a prison during
British rule.
Today the country boasts of seven IITs, among India's growing
centres of educational excellence, six of which are ranked among
the top 10 science and technology schools in the Asia-Pacific
region.
The two-day celebrations, which started Friday, is being organised
by IIT alumni in the U.S. to forge "a formal identity for IIT-ians"
as a group that has come to exercise considerable influence in
technology and business worldwide.
Gates said if there was one feature of the IITs that he would never
want changed was its philosophy of respecting merit above
everything else.
Prompting frequent applause at the upscale Flint Centre in the heart
of Silicon Valley, where some 2,000 IIT alumni showed up, Gates
said he had made plans to "work together with the IITs in the next
digital decade."
Gates particularly pointed out that other than Cambridge University
in Britain, the IITs are the only institutions that his company
Microsoft has chosen to work with.
He said there was need for institutions like the IITs to use
information technology to deliver top quality education in a
developing country like India.
Gates seemed to be in a particularly amiable mood, some of which may
be attributed to Microsoft's astonishing announcement of first-ever
dividend and a two-for-one stock split as the world's largest
software maker reported record sales.
The company announced a 2-for-1 stock split and an annual dividend
equal to 16 cents a share before the split. Already the world's
richest man, the announcement meant a gain of a whopping $99.472
million for Gates' personal fortune.
He controls 621.7 million of Microsoft shares. Gates began his
address comparing the websites of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), reputedly the world's best, and the IIT-Mumbai.
He said the MIT website had a news story about how a coffee house
had to be closed down for want of business, while the IIT-Mumbai
website talked about a leopard having strayed into its campus.
Clearly, he said, the IIT offers a "much more exciting experience."
Recognising that India was sensitive about any comparison with
China, Gates said while it was remarkable to see India's growth as
a "super power of human talent" it was equally important that the
country also developed its manufacturing base.
He said IT would create millions of jobs but India needed hundreds
of millions of those. The only way to do so was by creating a
powerful manufacturing economy the way China had done, he added.
The event was kicked off by an introduction by Rajat Gupta,
worldwide managing director of McKinsey. Gupta said the IIT
community is becoming ever more influential internationally.
He said the conference was the first in a series of annual affairs
designed to use the depth of knowledge and breadth of influence of
IIT alumni.
In a recorded message Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com, described the
IIT as a "world treasure." He said IIT alumni were making a great
difference at his own company as they were elsewhere.
The second day of the celebrations feature speeches by India's Human
Resource and Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi and U.S. envoy
to India Robert Blackwill.
--Indo-Asian News Service
