To bemoan that "merit" is going to hell, and that "brain drain" will affect our competitiveness and economy, is just so much hogwash.
For all the years that the IITs have been there, there has not been any substantial research that has been path-breaking coming out of the IITs ( anyway all the guys leave for the US). At a basic level, the people laying the roads, or building the bridges ( basic infrastructure ) are from second , or maybe third rung diploma colleges. And exactly how much insight into the indian condition, political, economic or social ( since they cannot engineer any engineering marvels locally) have we had from our IITians. None. We have had recently some useless books from people like chetan bagat, incestuously extolling the IIT mileau. A self-congratulatory excercise in exhibiting some low-level vanity.
For institutions that are being praised sky-high, "temples" of education, that are not to be tampered with , by, god forbid, those hateful reservations, the IITs are just a bunch of ostentatious white elephants.
