Metro vs. Province

Mukul Kesavan writes for The Outlook, telling the story of the geographical divide in colleges in his days and compares it with the present scenario. His article has a mention of an IIT Kanpur alumnus (his brother) and his (brother’s) opinion on the quality of the intake in IITs, viz,

“My brother, who finished his first degree at IIT Kanpur in the ’70s, returned for a reunion after 25 years. When I asked him if IIT-K had changed, he said the student body remained as ferociously bright and competitive as it had been in his time. The difference lay in its social origin, now overwhelmingly provincial. He thought boys from the big cities no longer felt the threat of the social abyss into which errant members of the middle class disappear as keenly as his generation had done.Their families had more money than ours ever did, and metropolitan children looked to their parents to buy them an education in second-rate liberal arts colleges in the US.”

Too much praise, sometimes, can make you a little arrogant and full of conceit, but what the heck! I love whatever Mr. brother Kesavan said. Mind you, I belong to a metro by origin!