students – The KGP Chronicle

IIT Kharagpur Offers First-of-its-Kind Full Ride Scholarship

Higher education can cost a significant amount of money. Students, though being meritorious and excellent academically, find it difficult to push through for higher studies due to lack of income flow. There is nothing to worry.

IIT Kharagpur is here to support. Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur has instituted India’s first-of-its-kind Full Ride Scholarship entitled “Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar Full Scholarship for Top 100 JEE (Advanced) Rankers”. This full ride scholarship is to support the students within Top 100 All India Rankings in JEE Advanced and whose parents’ gross annual income is below Rupees Twenty Lakhs. This full ride scholarship would cover the entire expenses of a student till they are completing their B.Tech course at IIT Kharagpur and be implemented from the academic session 2021-22. The director of IIT Kharagpur, Prof Virendra Kumar Tewari made the announcement about this full ride scholarship on August 18, 2021, IIT Kharagpur’s 71^st Foundation Day.

Speaking about the initiative, the director of IIT Kharagpur, Prof Virendra Kumar Tewari said, “At IIT Kharagpur, we believe that not a single meritorious student should have their education limited due to financial constraints. It is our responsibility as well as it is our privilege and immense pleasure to support all such talented and meritorious but economically challenged students to access higher education. This scholarship is in the name of Pandit Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar (Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay) and he earned the title of ‘Vidyasagar’ for his vast knowledge in Sanskrit and Indian philosophy which was compared to the vastness of the ocean. His quest for knowledge was so intense that he used to study under a street light as it was not possible for him to afford a gas lamp at home. Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar worked endlessly to provide equal education to all men and women irrespective of their caste, religion and gender.”

Not only tuition fees for what money is required, but also there are many other additional costs for books, transportation, food and lodging. The expense may be too high for a family to pay.

“This full ride scholarship would cover the entire cost of education of a student such as institution fees, hall expenses, text book, meals, gadgets and other miscellaneous expenses such as relocation expenses, personal expenses, other living costs, and also to provide an out-of-pocket allowance, leaving you free to focus on your studies and social life without worrying about money.”, said Prof Jayanta Mukhopadyay, the Dean Outreach and the Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Kharagpur.

“The students, you are encouraged to carry on with your studies, not only for your bright future but also for the progress of the nation. You need not worry for the expenses enroute your education career, as the institute assures of solely bearing all the financial expenses throughout”, said Prof Surjya K Pal, the Associate Dean of Alumni Affairs and Branding and the Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kharagpur. “If you want to be a support to your family, you can be so as there is a provision where the saved amount from your expenses can be utilised for the benefits of your immediate family members. There is absolutely no need to worry about finances.”

With scholarship covering the entire expenses of a student, they do not have to worry about those things that can distract them from focussing on their education. Such a full ride scholarship would allow students to follow their dream and help in empowering their academic and career goals by removing all financial barriers. Thus, the students would get ample of time to focus on studies, gain knowledge and secure better grades.

Media Contact: Prof Surja Kanta Pal,

Associate Dean of Alumni Affairs and Branding,

Ph. No.: 03222-282019, Email: adeanaa@adm.iitkgp.ac.in

Kgp Cares: Student Outreach

Campus Lockdown: How IIT KGP is facilitating students on-campus and beyond

Business Insider Outlook Times of India

IIT Kharagpur has recently sent about 35 students to their hometown in Kolkata. This is one among the several student outreach initiatives taken by the Institute administration in the past two months while the campus adopted social distancing followed by the nation wide lockdown.

Classes at the Institute have gone digital since March 17 in the process of following social distancing. Following the lockdown announcement on March 24, all classes were moved to web-conferencing mode, video lectures of NPTEL, or through email. The academic calendar was also revised with the final semester examination scheduled in July and Autumn semester in August end. Further the Moodle platform was made accessible from outside the Institute LAN for submission of assignments by students from outside the Institute LAN. A crucial part of academic programmes are internships which have been rearranged either in online form with corporate houses or at the Institute. Pre-final year students were offered to opt for internships at any department in the Institute on topics of their choice and as per project availability as part of the ongoing COVID19 e-Learning initiatives. But the initiatives undertaken by the Institute were not only limited to academics.

A quick look at the social media handles of Director of IIT Kharagpur, Prof. V K Tewari would give a glimpse of student outreach activities undertaken by the Institute extensively in the past few weeks. The Director has visited all the halls of residence and discussed with the students regarding their lifestyle and extracurricular activities while remaining indoors and maintaining social distancing.

“We take pride at IIT KGP for being a home away from home. I have visited my family members at the halls of residence for the past few weeks. We talked about how they are spending their time during lockdown, how to reduce the risk of infection, minimise social gathering and to ensure social distancing and hygiene norms just as we are doing during these visits. And together in our applause we said heartfilled thanks to the security staff, healthcare professionals, mess and sanitation workers and other essential service providers,” said Prof. Tewari.

Director interacting with girl students at a hall of residence

He has also been reaching out to the students and campus community through his social media handle and encouraging them to learn new skills, acquire new knowledge and pursue activities for which otherwise people fall short of time.

Taking the cue from the Director, many students have been keeping themselves busy in activities. Srijita Pal, PhD scholar at the Dept. of Mathematics has joined her friends to learn ballet to continue with a healthy lifestyle. She talked about several students in her hall of residence who are trying their cooking skills and it is not because of any disruption in mess services.

“Mess food continues to be usual but engaging in activities with a friend is helping us sail through the lockdown period,” she said.

Students leaving for Kolkata on IIT buses

In another initiative, the Institute has been arranging for students to return to their hometowns. At present there are more than 5000 students residing on the campus. Out of them close to 700 students have consented to go home. In the first installment, the Institute has arranged for two buses to drop 35 students to their hometown Kolkata. Further plans are being made to send the other students to their home locations across the country. Students opting to go home have been advised to stay in self-isolation for two weeks.

Talking about the initiative, Kinjal Bhattacharyya, research scholar at the Dept. of Civil Engineering said, “My decision to move to Kolkata was to support my parents in daily activities during this time of crisis. The Institute was kind to do all the arrangements from medical checkups, getting permission and arranging hassle-free travel with safe and sanitized institute buses. I will always be indebted to the institute for taking the initiative.”

His parents Supratip Bhattacharyya and Anuradha Bhattacharyya expressed their gratitude to the IIT KGP security and administration.

“Our son felt completely safe and kept us very well-assured during his stay in the campus. Also we are really happy that he is back now to support us, kudos to the IIT KGP team for taking all the efforts to arrange safe and secure travel of my ward,” they said.

Aniruddha Saha at his hall of residence at IIT KGP

However, the majority of the students have decided to stay back at the campus. While Mouli Majumdar from the Dept. of Architecture and Regional Planning stayed back to complete her PhD project work, Aniruddha Saha from the Dept of Mechanical Engineering, who hails from Barrackpore felt that the campus would be a safer place to stay and would continue with his B.Tech. internship during the summer recess. The students did not have much to complain about except that they were missing their batchmates.

Ankita Gupta who recently reached her home at Basirhat said, “We were looked after quite well with the messes being open and interactions in small groups while maintaining social distancing norms. But being a 1st year M.Sc. student with my friends already away from the campus, I felt being at home would be happier though campus was safer.”

Deepak Verma attending an interactive session by the Director

The Institute has also distributed facial masks to students and made available necessary facilities well within residential boundaries. However, they are also allowed to move outside the hostel for 30-40 minutes, particularly for procuring essential items from the on-campus market. The halls are being sanitized as well at regular intervals with the service staff properly geared with PPEs.

The Institute has been maintaining regular contact with the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India through various platforms and apprising them about student outreach initiatives. The Ministry has set up a web-portal YUKTI (Young India Combating COVID with Knowledge, Technology and Innovation) wherein centrally funded higher educational institutions are to submit reports regarding the efforts and initiatives which have been taken in the wake of COVID-19.

Director, Prof. Tewari thanked Hon’ble Union HRD Minister Shri Ramesh Pokhriyal “Nishank” for his initiative to connect with individual institutions to discuss the wellbeing of the students and campus community and motivate the leadership to continue with their responsibilities and work during these challenging times.

Green Innovation by IITKGP Students Stands Second at NEC Hackathon

Students from IIT Kharagpur have secured 1st Runners-up position at the NEC Hackathon: Environment for developing environment-friendly and revenue-maximizing business applications for the farming community to manage crop residue. Vaishnav Katiyar, Pranav Agarwal, Paras Chaudhary and Shivam Tiwari, final year students from the Dept. of Architecture & Regional Planning have achieved this feat at the PAN India competition organized by NEC Japan and HackerEarth. The event witnessed participation from 1149 teams from all over the country of which 18 teams reached the finale.

The hackathon enabled participants to identify the challenges, a factor of problems, analyze them and develop a solution using technologies such as FIWARE and other open-source platforms. The participants were encouraged to think of a solution on the platform that can solve the current environmental challenges in India. This year’s themes were air pollution and water pollution.

The IIT Kharagpur team which participated under the name ‘BioNet’ proposed a revolutionary platform for the benefit of farmers and to increase the overall production of Biopellets with better supply chain management. They developed an application which will provide a single platform to the farmers and biofuel plant operators to sell agricultural waste (biomass) and to buy biopellets. The user interface was designed in local languages for ease of use. The proposal also took into consideration in-app bidding process for biopellets buyers to ensure maximum revenue generation and profit maximisation for the farmers. The platform could also be used for selling local agricultural products directly to the customers in the near future.

Explaining the concept team member Shivam Tiwari said, “Air pollution in India is caused by fuelwood and biomass burning, burning of crop residue in agriculture fields on a large scale, emission from vehicles and traffic congestion etc. We have built an android application which provides a single platform to the farmers to sell their crop residue directly to bio-pellet plant operators (Govt./ Pvt.) and further the bio-pellets are sold in the open market using in-app bidding process. This will solve the issue of crop residue burning, thus tackling air pollution and building a healthier living environment in India.”

The final round was held online on March 28-29 due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. The shortlisted participants were invited to submit their prototype on the hackathon website and present their prototypes to NEC through a video conference. The toppers were announced too online video announcements.

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics company, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. NEC has conducted various hackathons aiming at resolving social challenges in India through technology and in continuation to that they conducted this hackathon focussed on ‘Environment’. The event partner was HackerEarth which has been professionally managing hackathons and programming challenges and coding competitions for developers and companies.

e-Learning at IIT Kharagpur

Summer recess has set in at IIT Kharagpur on April 1, preponed by 4 weeks and a revised academic calendar being circulated amidst the novel coronavirus pandemic. Classes at the Institute have gone digital since March 17 in the process of following social distancing.

Online Classes

The first year classes with their larger size were the first to be facilitated on YouTube Live using the National Knowledge Network. The lectures were also video recorded and made available online for future reference. Following the lockdown announcement on March 24, all classes were moved to web-conferencing mode, video lectures of NPTEL, or through email.

Till March 31, 2020, total number of courses offered stood at 388 with registrations from 8025 students to participate in the online classes.

“We procured 200 user licenses of WebEx which allowed us to conduct 100+ lectures at a given point of time. This could practically allow us to conduct all classes as per our academic schedule,” said Prof. Debasis Deb, Dean, Undergraduate Studies.

The Institute has also been conducting online classes using Zoom, G-Suite, Skype, DEEKSHAK (an IITKGP web-conferencing platform). Institute is in the process of procuring 20 user licenses of Zoom for conducting classes uninterruptedly, Teachers are using these online platforms to interact with students for lectures, doubt clearing sessions, tutorials and assignments while emailing and uploading video lectures. The NPTEL platform of the Ministry of Human Resources Development is being widely used for the purpose which has a rich repository of video lectures by various IITs. Students are also being recommended to use the National Digital Library of India (NDLI) platform to access vast digital resources.

Atul Jain, Assistant Professor at the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering who has been teaching a course ‘Mechanics of Composites’ shared his experience on his online teaching and students response tracking. He has been using Microsoft Office extensively to create lectures and share exclusively with students enrolled for the course as unlisted videos on YouTube. He further uses Google Analytics to derive useful insights about student participation and attention span etc.

“From my statistics reveal that the average number of students viewing the lectures within three days of delivery is almost the same as the average attendance in a contact classroom. There is no specific time preferred by the students with the viewing time spread over almost 24 hours. Students have a definite tendency of watching the videos in a smaller time span of less than 10 minutes with about 2.5 views per user on average. This is quite a contrast to the usual 55-60 minutes lecture usually delivered in regular classrooms. This freedom is a major positive in online learning,” said Prof. Jain.

Assignments

Talking about assignments, Prof. Deb informed that the inhouse Moodle facility of IIT Kharagpur has been made available for access from outside the campus LAN.

“The assignments have been emailed while Moodle is being used primarily for computer programming related assignments. BTech and MTech projects related to design and software applications too are being carried out while those requiring laboratory access have been postponed until the reprise of the academic session on June 1,” he said.

Internships

Student internship which is critical at IITs is being considered for the period from April to July session having a break in June for regular classes and exams. The Institute is advising students to opt for online mode for company internships and also to apply to faculty members at the Institute for inhouse internship opportunities.

“We are in the process of allocating students to work as interns at the Institute on various on-going projects, term papers, product development and others. Departments are actively involved with the students to give them the best internship experience in house ” remarked Prof. Deb.

Placement

In a recent development, the Institute has set up a taskforce to monitor placement situation. In the academic year 2019-20, 1306 placement offers were received. Due to the ongoing 19-nCoV pandemic, there has been speculations regarding offers being cancelled by the recruiters at various institutions. The taskforce will liaise with the recruiters and work towards ensuring that the number of offers at Iit Kharagpur remain consistent with those of the past years.

Round India Winners

IIT Kharagpur Students among the Winners of India Finals of CFA Institute Research Challenge 2019-2020

A five-member student team from IIT Kharagpur has qualified for the Asia Pacific round of the CFA Institute Research Challenge 2019-2020. Along with IIM Ahmedabad and IIFT Delhi, the team from IIT Kharagpur have been won the India Finals of this Global level competition held on February 8, 2020. The Asia Pacific round is scheduled to be held on March 18-19 2020 in Seoul, South Korea. The AP Challenge will consist of one winner from each Member Society of the Asia Pacific Region, typically about 16-18 countries.

The final year students Shubham Maheshwari (Dual Degree, Metallurgical and Materials Engineering), Satwik Bansal (Dual Degree, Agricultural and Food Engineering), Daksh Thakkur (Dual Degree, Aerospace Engineering), Ritika Agarwal (Dual Degree, Agricultural and Food Engineering) and Tanay Jagani (Dual Degree, Agricultural and Food Engineering) who are all currently pursuing M.Tech. in Financial Engineering were mentored by Prof. Abhijeet Chandra from Vinod Gupta School of Management, the business school of IIT Kharagpur.

“A rigorous multi-disciplinary academic curriculum along with industry-ready skill-training has helped our students achieve this success at CFA Research Challenge India leg, along with other top b-schools of the country. IIT KGP’s team being only an undergraduate team has stood out in the competition mostly participated by MBA students. Financial Engineering, our unique interdisciplinary program run by the departments of Mathematics, Humanities & Social Sciences and Vinod Gupta School of Management, has always been appreciated by the industry. With our students competing with the best teams of Asia-Pacific region, we will mark our global footprints in financial research and valuation as well,” said Prof. Chandra.

The other finalists for India round included IIM Udaipur, IIM Calcutta, IIM Trichy, IIM Kozhikode, NMIMS. The teams qualified through the respective zonal rounds which witnessed participation from 59 leading business schools from across the country. The finalists presented their equity research on Reliance Nippon, HDFC Life, BATA and Oberoi Realty. The judges panel consisted of industry luminaries viz., Mr. Pankaj Tibrewal, Sr. Vice President & Equity Fund Manager, Kotak AMC, Mr. Varun Gupta, MD, Duff & Phelps (Asia Pacific Leader, Valuation Advisory Services and Country Leader, India) and Mr. Namit Arora, CFA, Managing Partner, IndGrowth Capital.

“It has been a thorough learning experience for us to participate in the CFA Institue Research Challenge. The competition has provided us with a platform to perform equity research under the able guidance of industry leaders of the investment management industry. We are looking forward to the Asia Pacific Regional round in Seoul, South Korea ,” opined partcipants Daksh Thakkur and Shubham Maheshwari.

The CFA Institute Research Challenge is an annual global competition that provides university students with hands-on mentoring and intensive training in financial analysis. Students work in teams to research and analyze a publicly-traded company — sometimes even meeting face-to-face with company management. Each team writes a research report on their assigned company with a buy, sell, or hold recommendation and may be asked to present and defend their analysis to a panel of industry professionals.

With content contributions from CFA Society India, CFA Institute Research Challenge in India

Placement Begins

It is the time of the year when all eyes are towards the IITs – as December hits, so does the placement season at IITs. At IIT Kharagpur with 282 PPOs the Institute is aiming to secure 1000+ placements in less than a week’s time. Already three PSUs have recruited and more are expected in the coming months.

This year several first-time recruiters will visit the IIT Kharagpur campus including top corporate brands like Sony Japan, PayPal, P&G India, Nestle India, Nomura. The Institute will also be welcoming back international recruiters like Apple, Microsoft Redmond, Uber, Amex, Qualcomm, Mercari Japan among others.

“We have taken almost all the last year’s companies on board and some prominent Japanese companies along with two US companies. We are expecting double the offer in international profiles,” said an official at the Career Development Centre of IIT Kharagpur.

Apart from the prominent players which recruited last year, seven more companies are on board for the phase one recruitment at the Institute. Most of the profiles are in the areas of software development and consulting. Though there were apprehensions regarding market conditions, the internship and preplacement offers were highly promising touching all time high figures. Read More

Talking about the current market scenario and its potential impact on the recruitment, Prof. G P Rajasekhar, Chairman at IIT Kharagpur’s Career Development Centre remarked, “The PPO rate is very encouraging. We took proactive measures to attract companies by reviewing our Company Relation Index (CRI) and then upgraded a few companies. We are stretching our wings to accommodate more companies on a given day so that companies do have enough pool of students each day.”

A supposed challenge of 2.30 hours distance from Kolkata airport is also being addressed.

On day 1, thirty companies will be recruiting for fifty different profiles. The students are hoping for a high number of shortlisted candidates during the first week which will indicate the final number of offers made. The phase 1 will continue for 3 weeks in December.

An increasing trend in salary also was observed.

“This was expected especially with software and quant companies offering higher packages,” said an official.

A total of 220 companies have registered for recruitment in the phase one who will be interviewing more than 2000 students who have registered for placement opportunities in 2019-2020. By the end of the second phase about 500 students from Undergraduate, Postgraduate and Dual Degrees are expected to opt out from the placement process.

Do-It-Yourself

India Today

IIT Kharagpur is ready with the DIY Laboratory to inculcate innovation spirit among the first-year undergraduate students through the concept of Do-It-Yourself. The Lab which is located in J C Bose complex was inaugurated on October 22 by Prof. Sriman Kumar Bhattachayya, Officiating Director.

This lab will act as a playground for technical work where instruments and consumables can be accessed in domains of electrical, mechanical and electronics engineering. To begin with 350 first year students will be working on projects selected by students. Students will be supported by technical staff and senior students who will act as design mentors and guide them in their projects.

The initiative will be led by Prof. Vikranth Racherla of the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, who has recently launched the indigenous Make-in-India electric auto DESHLA.

We will start with first-year undergraduate students but moving on the lab will be accessible to all. There will be some fixed slots for 1st year undergraduate students and some open slots where anyone can walk in and work. Projects can be selected by the students – said Prof. Racherla.

Every semester some selected faculty members will be associated with the lab. In the upcoming semester around ten faculty members will join the lab from various disciplines.

The students will be working towards independent product innovations. They will have access to facilities and multidisciplinary guidance and technical assistance to reach their goals – added Prof. Racherla.

The activities were spearheaded by a Committee under the mentorship of the Deputy Director. The committee included Prof. Racherla from Mechanical Engineering, Prof. Debalay Chakrabarti, Dept. of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Prof. Nilanjan Mitra, Dept. of Civil Engineering, Prof. Santanu Kapat. Dept. of Electrical Engineering (former faculty member), Prof. Sandeep Saha, Dept of Aerospace Engineering, Prof. Chirag Kalelkar, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering among others. Several other faculty members will be part of this initiative.

Another lab going to be launched soon where Bioscience activities will be taken up confirmed Prof. Sriman Bhattachayya.

The country is aiming to develop manufacturing hubs to pick up pace in the industrial sector. IIT Kharagpur has taken leadership role in eastern India to support MSMEs and industry leaders in advanced manufacturing and healthcare technology commercialization. We are creating an ecosystem towards this and this would also involve inspiring the next generation of innovators who would take off their flight from tinkering laboratories such as the IIT Kharagpur DIY Lab – opined Prof. Bhattachayya.

IIT Kharagpur’s Young Innovators Program Sails High across Asia

India Today Careers360

IIT Kharagpur is all set to welcome close to one hundred finalists from across Asia for the grand finale of the Young Innovators Program scheduled on November 8-10, 2019. This international science and technology competition witnessed a participation of close to 2500 students in class VIII-X in the previous rounds from an initial outreach of more than 4500 schools globally. Apart from various regions in India, students from Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, UAE, Saudi Arabia participated in the event.

The one-of-a-kind competition has been highly appreciated across secondary educational fraternity and corporate R&D leaders as a co-curricular educational program giving direction to the career aspirations of the students. It focuses on school students developing working models and prototypes of innovative solutions for technological challenges in the domains of Energy and Environment, Health and Cleanliness, Hardware Modelling, Product Design and Disaster Management. Each of these themes is targeted towards encouraging the participants to understand the importance of these areas and be equipped with the ability to ideate and come up with innovative solutions having local and global relevance.

Teachers from several participating schools emphasized the ability of this competition to entice the creativity of the students. The teachers have been mentoring the students beyond the normal course curricula for in-depth learning in their project domains. The students pursue various self-learning modes and experimentations as well. Some of the students even continue to work on their projects and nurture their career goals towards fulfilling their innovative ideas. Radha G of GIIS Smart Campus, Singapore spoke about how the competition encourages students to think out of the box, to be creative and to work collaboratively.

“It is a great initiative that helps inculcate the 21^st century skills among the young,” she said.

The competition has received words of appreciation from President of India and an Israeli diplomat as well.

“YIP is a program very close to our hearts. I have been fortunate to have been involved in this program since its inception in 2017, first as an evaluator and then as an organizer. In just a period of 3 years, the program has gone from strength to strength and spread its presence not only across the country but also different countries in ASEAN and Middle East. The level of innovation displayed by the students and the maturity of their thought process at such tender ages is mind blowing.” said Anandaroop Bhattacharya, the Associate Dean, International Relations at IIT Kharagpur whose office organizes this event.

This year a new theme has been introduced in coordination with ICICI Bank. The theme of Financial Inclusion broadens the resource base of a financial institute by bringing low-income groups, especially among the rural population, within the ambit of the formal banking sector. Talking about this theme Sudipta Roy, Head – Unsecured Loans of ICICI Bank, zeroed in on fast-evolving digital India and economic policies of Govt. of India penetrating into the weakest and deepest sections of the society.

Roy said, “These budding minds could bring to the table fresh set of ideas, novel way of looking at challenges faced by the financial sector which could lead to continuous flow of new technologies, processes and awareness. The financial inclusion theme proposed by us would instill in them an orientation towards product and process development which would benefit the entire financial sector in the long run and also evolve next-generation fintech leaders.”

For the bright and the brilliant

Careers360 Asian Age India Today

The scholarship chooses you, or you choose a scholarship. At IIT Kharagpur, it works both ways!

At IIT Kharagpur, you can self-select yourself to a scholarship. That’s right. For example, if you are a top JEE Advanced scorer, at the end of the 1^st semester, you will be eligible to apply for the ‘Learn-Earn-Return’ scholarship that gives the recipient Rs 10,000 per month for four years, provided, of course, a CGPA of 9 is maintained. In return, the student has to take a pledge to give back to the Institute once they are capable to do so.

IIT Kharagpur, in fact, provides students need-based financial assistance. For all meritorious students whose annual family income is less than Rs 6 lakh, there is tuition waiver or some monthly scholarship, even free mess facility, free hostel and pocket allowance for some of the underprivileged. But financial aid is not denied even to those who come from upper middle class families. The Tower Research Capital India scholarship, for instance, does not take into account the economic criteria at all. Endowment scholarships such as the Ritesh Ranjan Memorial Scholarship, have relaxed the cut-off limit for merit-cum-means scholarships.

Since the Institute believes in the all-round development of students, there are also scholarships – such as the Sushma Mukhija Memorial scholarship or the Vinod Gupta Leadership scholarship –that take into account students’ participation in sports, and extra-curricular activities. Close to 1,000 students at IIT Kharagpur receive financial assistance from various corporations, foundations and external agencies, all of them targeted at rewarding merit. And it does not stop there. The Institute goes one step ahead and offers financial support along with the alumni for participation in international competitions such as Hult Prize, Solvay Business Plan etc. Further, the IIT KGP Foundation USA offers funding for international internships up to an amount of $3000 in order to groom the students for the professional world.

Students can look forward to financial assistance in research even at the UG level as the Institute aims to inculcate the culture of research early on among students. Besides, there are fellowships for research projects and special grants for incubated entrepreneurship projects.

The perks that students can look forward to at IIT Kharagpur are not merely financial. They are mentored by the IIT KGP alumni, groomed professionally by the Institute for placements and receive invaluable professional experience by being part of student societies which participate in various institutional events and projects. Not surprisingly, students come out with flying colours at national and international meets. While students have won international awards like the Honda Young Engineer and Scientist’s (Y-E-S) Award for 2018-19, Best Presentation Award at the Third International Conference on Machine Learning and Soft Computing and others, sixteen young alumni from the Institute have been featured by Forbes magazine for their 30 Under 30 prestigious listing for India and Asia.

Pushkar Singh of LetsTransport, a Bangalore-based intra-city logistics company, who recently made it to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list of 2019, said, “Our achievement in large part is also because of the training we received at IIT Kharagpur, its extra-curricular activities and the network we developed in college”.

Home furnishing

Feel like going to the nearest city? You can take a flight from the mini airport of IIT Kharagpur.

In a hurry to go to class? You can either hop onto the toy train going around the campus or the driverless cars zipping across.

How would it feel to work in a nuclear power plant? Just go to class, put on the VR headset and find out.

It’s raining cats and dogs and you still need to train for the inter-IIT sports meet? No worries. You have a dome over the Jnan Ghosh stadium.

You could say if wishes were horses, beggars would ride, just as any disparaging parent would tell a child whose mind is careening out of control. But no. These are actual scenarios that can play out in the IIT Kharagpur campus.

A few days ago, second year civil engineering students were asked to give free rein to their imagination and come up with something “wow” for the 2,100 acre campus and its residents. Related to the campus infrastructure, these ideas had to be feasible and workable. They would have to carefully work out the cost estimates but not to regard the cost as a constraining factor for an idea that was really good. As the professor in charge put it, “I wanted them to give me an idea that could be engineered.” The catch? This was to be a semester project and would carry half the marks of the final exam.

Students learnt in class how IIT KGP managed its affairs independently – whether it came to water supply, civil works, electricity distribution or managing the telecommunications network. Formed into nine teams, the 74 students got to work. They burnt midnight oil for two months at a stretch before they were finally ready with their presentation. They were told that they would be graded on the basis of boldness and impact, sound engineering analysis, plan of execution, budgeting and finance. Each project was also going to be peer reviewed by the whole class.

Some of their ideas presented were truly fantastical – a “Wow” dome over the Jnan Ghosh stadium, an air strip in IIT Kharagpur, deployment of light rail throughout the campus – but all of them were implementable engineering solutions to many of the problems faced by the residents of IIT Kharagpur. They had not only worked out the cost of the projects but had thought through the likely problems that could arise, and even found solutions to them.

For example, while detailing their proposed Biogas plant, Group 7 not only set out at the micro-level the amount of cement, sand, PVC pipes, stone chips and nails that would be required, but also clearly stipulated that the metal digesters and gas storage tanks for the biogas plant needed to be properly earthed so as to avoid struck by lightning. Team 9, which suggested a dome over the Jnan Ghosh stadium, had even considered the fact that since the dome would get sun rays from the southern side only, half the solar panels fitted on the dome (that would power the movement of the dome) would not be getting any sun light. As solution, they suggested moveable solar panels and Heliotex technology for their cleaning.

Team 1 dealt with improving classroom infrastructure. They argued that incorporating augmented virtual reality in classroom teaching could revolutionize learning by changing the way students experience subjects. For example, students could actually experience being inside a nuclear power plant. In fact, they argued, the concept of VR lab could be extended to schools. According to the team’s estimate, it could cost a little more than Rs 1 crore to set up a fully functional VR Lab.

There were three ideas on improving the transport network. Team 6 suggested deployment of light rail throughout the campus to serve the purposes of connectivity and amusement. Battery-operated toy trains with two passenger coaches could ply for 10 hours a day on tracks laid in the free space available alongside the roads. Team 8 suggested autonomously controlled carrier shuttles to ply 24×7. The 8 shuttles would be operated by a centralized swarm model and would cost the Institute approximately Rs 56 lakhs. Team 5 suggested an exclusive airstrip for IIT Kharagpur in order to provide easy access and also to provide for air ambulance for residents. They suggested the Institute bought two Cessna aircraft, hired two pilots, two maintenance engineers, and crew on contract basis. According to their calculation, the average cost for a person to travel from KGP to Kolkata airport would be less than than Rs 1,500. The one-time cost for the air strip would Rs 23 crore and the annual cost of running the air service would be Rs 60 lakh.

Two projects talked about betterment of the existent infrastructure. Team 3 suggested revamping the Gymkhana Lakeside and modifying the park in order to promote pisciculture and recreational activities. Team 2 suggested converting the Tech market into a Hi-tech Market by installing a self-sustainable solar power system that would power the Tech market completely. They also suggested the setting up of a cafeteria, a bar, a clothing section and a central canteen with a giant TV screen at a total cost of close to Rs 4 crore.

There were two green projects – Team 4 suggested building a lake that would take care of the run-off and help IIT Kharagpur become self-sufficient in water. The geo-thermal pipes under the water would trigger geo-thermal cooling of the entire campus, bring down the temperature. Team 7 proposed setting up of a Bio-gas plant in order to produce bio-gas from the leftover food from the Halls of Residence. In their calculation, the total food wastage produced by the Halls was about two tons per day, which would produce 345 kg bio-gas worth Rs 11,000 approximately per day.

Team 9 proposed a ‘Wow’ dome over the Jnan Ghosh stadium that will provide an optimum solution to the problem of suspension of sports practices and stadium getting muddy during the monsoon. The retractable multipurpose dome would also use the rainwater for harvesting. The total cost of the dome would come to Rs 135 crore, but the campus could save around 42 million litres of water. Truly ‘wow’ isn’t it?

Despite the wow factor though, most of the students concurred that they ought to immediately have a Bio-gas plant. Somehow, even while letting their imagination soar, the students had kept their feet firmly grounded.

Asked what the project had achieved, the said professor stated, “I wanted them to come up with something imaginative but I also wanted them to connect with the IIT KGP campus…think of it as their home.”

The project had undoubtedly hit home. When asked how they felt about the project, Eknoor Malhotra of Team 9 said, “Initially, it was about marks. But once we started working for it, we realized that if this (idea) gets implemented, then we would have been the first to propose it. In the end, however, the effort became something much more than obtaining the marks. In the end we were so connected to it that we could visualize Jnan Ghosh actually having a dome.”

Now that the project was over and done with, would they keep thinking about IIT KGP? Eknoor declared, “Yes, of course. The domino effect has started. Everywhere I go, I try to see what can be changed.” Raman Shaw of Team 5 agreed, “The mind has started functioning differently… we are oriented differently now.”