It took me one marriage (of my own), an interview call from TISS (for my sis-in-law) to be able to fulfill my long standing desire of visiting the National Defense Academy (NDA). I was so excited about this opportunity that I almost sat straight in the car as it entered the gates of NDA. Incidentally, I also visited the IIT Bombay campus in the same week though I did not have to go through this long and arduous route to visit an IIT campus.
Disclaimer 1: The goal of this article is not to compare both these eminent institutes but to contrast the two institutes in light of their goals.
Disclaimer 2: The article does not do justice to describing either IIT or the NDA campus. There is much more to it then what is written below.
A ride to IIT Bombay took us though the crowded and polluted central Bombay. The construction work in front of IIT made it worse, so much that I almost did not notice that we entered IIT. Few days later, a ride to the NDA campus from Pune felt like trekking in the jungles with sign boards leading us to an escape route. The sign board reading “First view of NDA 50 ft ahead” was impressive as if we were to witness a significant architectural wonder. The ambassador taxi, though not intentional, matched perfectly well to the military nature of the academy. Note that most high ranked defense personals still go around in black ambassador cars. The revered NDA campus welcomed us with tight security measures at its entrance. In fact we were even asked “Why are you carrying so much luggage if you were to stay only for a night?”. As we entered the gates at 10 in the night, we could still see cadets marching around the campus. A few of them pleasantly greeted us with the usual “jai hind sir”, mistaking us as officers. Mahatma Gandhi calls out “undeserved honor” as one of the seven professional sins and we seemed to have earned the sin within NDA. Seeing the cadets engage in various sports such as hockey, volleyball at six on a sunday morning seemed like a perfect start that you would want to give to twenty years olds. Contrast this with many IIT graduates who would wake up only during lunch time on a sunday.
The first thing that struck me in the campus is the display of several achievements/accomplishments of the academy. It had real tankers displayed that the Indian Army had captured. A visit to the squadron/hostel would show off the list of things the each of its cadets have done where as the main campus shows accomplishments of academy as a whole. In fact, NDA has an entire museum dedicated for this. I was hard pressed to find any such thing at IIT. Even if they were there, they were lost amidst dust and discard. This of course does not mean that IITs have nothing to flaunt but I am forced to believe that IITs are being modest. While modesty is good as an individual, but as an institute, showcasing the accomplishments goes a long way to instill pride amongst the fellow and aspiring students. For example, I would have loved to see a list of illustrious alumni at the IIT who I am sure are at the helm of their respective fields now and something that each IITian can take pride in.
Besides the sprawling and widespread campus, the other thing that strikes a visitor is the meticulously well maintained facilities at NDA. My brother-in-law jokingly mentioned that the Bombay stadium at NDA is better maintained then the Wankhade stadium in Bombay. The common room, the squadron entrance, the academic facilities were all spotless. All institutes of the cadre of NDA, such as IITs, IIMs and several others, are institutes which represent the country at international level. These attract international visitors and a well maintained campus such as that of NDA goes a long way to create a lasting impression. At IIT I could see constructions all around to cater to the increasing student intake while the existing hostels continued to suffer from lack of sanitation and cleanliness. IITs suffer from continuous government pressure to increase student intake, faculty intake, reservations and several political agendas and thus are hardly ever able to allocate attention to better the existing infrastructure. NDA fortunately do not have to deal with this problem of excessive supply of candidates; in fact they have the reverse of the problem which is too less candidates wanting to get in to the defense services.
For these and several other reasons, IIT failed to provide a strong personality and character as an institute where as NDA came out strong on both. One can feel that he is inside a defense campus when he is in NDA. When in IIT, besides the various department sign boards, its hard to guess if you are in an technology institute or other wise. To me, IITs seem to have a larger charter and agenda to accomplish then the NDA. As institutes for training students, IITs have long deviated from just producing able engineers to producing able graduates who can take the country forward in any field be it engineering, media, healthcare. NDA, on the contrary, have a very focussed goal of producing only military professionals and it does everything that takes to produce and also retain one.
