History of Computing in India

Recently, I read Ross Bassett excellent paper titled, "Aligning India in the Cold War Era: Indian Technical Elites, the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, and Computing in India and the United States." This paper talks about history of computing in India, and the relationship of US and Indian academicians and technical people. It was published by JHU in October 2009, and is available here.

A couple of interesting points.

On page 14, it says, "Part of the reason the Indian government sought different sponsors [for different IITs] was to introduce a variety of ideas into its engineering institutions."

It is obvious that the government of the day was very aware of the need of experiments in educational institutions. Today, most stake holders want similarity across all educational institutions. Most states have a technical university, which will force same syllabus in hundreds of colleges affiliated to it. A state like UP is trying to create common syllabus across all state universities for all programs, including BTech, BA, BCom, BSc, BEd, and so on. Everyone is being encouraged, if not forced, to admit students through a single exam.

Another interesting observation is the undergraduate institute of Computer Science professors in top 10 CS Departments of US. In 2008, the author looked at the background of all Indian professors (those who did undergraduate studies in India) in the top 10 CS departments of US. There were 38 such faculty members (almost 4 per department, that is a lot). The two IITs dominated this group - 11 from IIT Madras, and 10 from IIT Kanpur. (5 from IIT Delhi, 4 from IIT Bombay, none from any other IIT.) I guess this reflects the migration of undergraduate students to US in 80s and 90s, which was perhaps a lot more from IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur at that time.