An IIT — IIM education must widen your choices, not limit them

The following is an excerpt from a samvaad (dialogue) session with Acharya Prashant.

Acharya Prashant: A couple of decades ago, I was on that side where you all are sitting now, in another engineering college, IIT-Delhi. We too used to take a lot of things lightly. We too would fool around in a lot of sessions, tutorials, lab sessions. But we also knew what is not trivial, not casual.

Once in a while, such a thing happens, and then we should be awake to the happening.

We will be together.

So, one of the members of your organizing committee, immediately asked this question, when he met me. His question was: “After IIT, after IIM, after Civil Services, and after a few years of successful corporate life, why this?”

I said, “Let me first look at the anatomy of your question.” Your question presupposes, assumes, a couple of things. The first is: Education gives you a few specific directions to move in. And that is why you are surprised, even shocked, that someone is breaching those directions, violating those directions.

Before we discuss the breach of violation, it is more important that we see whether education is supposed to be a liberating force or a constraining force.