IIT Kharagpur: The first of the seven IITs had a modest beginning from an old Hijli jail building

Meritocracy. That's the first good thing about the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). If you can get your grey cells to crack the world's most palpitation-inducing tests to get in, boy, you know one thing for sure: you're smart. Mensa kind of smart. In 2002, 1,50,000 Indian whizkids competed for 2,900 IIT seats, and 100,000 graduates vied for 1,500 IIM seats.

Autonomy. That's the second good thing about this system to distill and channelise Indian brainware towards productive purposes. The IITs and IIMs are true institutions, in the sense of being self-perpetuating crucibles for brilliance, with the brilliant perpetuating the brilliance-in defiance of any external pressure, be it the government or any other power.

Brand equity. That's the third good thing. For decades, the IITs and IIMs have been training young Indians minds to take on the world's most cutting edge technical and managerial challenges. But it's only now in the 1990s that the IIT-IIM brand has gained recognition across the world. In corporate corridors and in Silicon Valley. Let's face it: no Indian institution has done more for India's future as a superpower.

The Edge

So, what makes the institutions so great? "We have a clear philosophy," says Professor Dilip Bandhopadhyay, Dean of Research & Academic Collaboration, IIM Lucknow, ''of not managing change, but leading it.'' Adds Professor Ashok Misra, Director, IIT-Mumbai: "We create the ambience in which leadership qualities emerge.'' Leadership is the right word. The alumni list of all IITs and IIMs is a veritable who's who of the corporate world, academia and bureaucracy, be it M.S. Banga, Chairman of Hindustan Lever Limited (IIT-Delhi and IIM-a), Nandan Nilekani, CEO of Infosys (IIT-Mumbai), or Victor Menezes, Chairman and CEO, Citibank (IIT-Mumbai) or Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems (IIT-Delhi) or Ajay Bisaria, Private Secretary to the Prime Minister of India (IIM-Kolkata), or even filmmaker Jag Mundhra (an engineering graduate from IIT-Mumbai).

Vinod Khosla, Partner, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers The IITian who went on to co-found IT giant Sun Microsystems

Those are only a few of the hundreds of successes who owe their success to the Nehruvian vision of running the country on a 'scientific temper'. Set up in 1951, IIT Kharagpur-located at a site used by the Raj to imprison Indian freedom fighters-was the first of the seven IITs. The then Prime Minister Nehru described it in 1956 as a "fine monument of India, representing India's urges, India's future in the making''. The youngest of the IITs, is IIT Guwahati, also in the East, which had its first batch graduate in 1999.

Set up in 1961, IIM Kolkata was the first of the six IIMs. Created in collaboration with the Alfred P. Sloan School of Management and the Ford Foundation, apart from the Indian business community and the state and Central governments, it started functioning from Emerald Bower, Barrackpur Trunk Road, before moving in 1975 to a 135-acre campus at Joka, on the outskirts of the city. Among IIMs, the Indore one is the youngest, having commenced sessions as recently as 1998.

The institutes' emphasis has always been on the practical application of knowledge. And learning through genuine experimentation.

That the institutes are strictly residential is a plus. "A residential campus enhances the interaction between all concerned," explains Misra, citing the example of McKinsey's Rajat Gupta, who was the head of sports and cultural activities at IIT-Mumbai, famous for its rock performances at Mood Indigo, its annual fest. The academic curriculum is tough, but the extra-curricular stuff provides the real survival kit. Spending valuable time in a psychedelic haze of Floyd may not strike everybody as a great way to allocate scarce resources, but deep down, it works to make these people what they are. Successful, mostly. And success promotes success. ''They act as good advertisements for their institutes,'' says P. Dwarakanath, Director (hr & Administration), GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, an active IIM recruiter.

The Uh-Ohs

One oft-cited worry is that IIT-IIM grads are risk-averse by nature, having opted for the most obvious (and thus safest) route to riches, and lack the entrepreneurial spirit. Most are content to be functionaries rather than creators. Infosys is among the few companies created, in part, by people from these institutes.

The other big worry is that their autonomy might be under threat. Hence the sudden appeal of the new Indian School of Business, in Hyderabad, helped along by McKinsey's Rajat Gupta and many other international management luminaries. But surely, the institutes are competitive enough to worry about a dilution of their brand equity-and do something about it.