Why IIT Became India’s Biggest Obsession

Did you know that India's first IIT, IIT Kharagpur was originally a detention camp? A British facility used to hold Indian freedom fighters without trial. In less than a century, the same site became one of the most powerful educational brands in India. Parents pray for their children to get in. The word IITian appears in resumes and matrimonial profiles. Bollywood has turned the exam, the coaching centers and the campuses into reoccurring symbols of ambition. Politicians invoke IITs whenever they want to talk about technology, innovation and the Naya Bharat. This video is not about whether IIT is simply good or simply bad. It is about how a group of engineering colleges became a national obsession and what that myth does to the people living in it. And if you are trying to figure out where you should study, you don't have to just follow the biggest name. GradRate helps you find and compare universities based on your course, career goals, budget and profile. Because the right university for you may not be the one everyone else is chasing. Now, to understand how IIT became a national obsession, we have to go back. In 1945, a committee chaired by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, an industrialist and former minister, was set up to advise the government on creating higher technical institutions for post-war industrial development. The committee is commonly known as the Sarkar Committee. Its recommendations helped shape a system of regional institutes modelled partly on international institutes such as MIT. The ambition was to produce engineers, scientists and technical teachers who could help a newly independent India become technologically self-reliant. The first IIT was set up in May 1950. Its first session began in August 1951 and the institute was formally inaugurated on August 18 by Maulana Azad. The choice for the location was probably not random. The Hitchley Detention Camp had been used by the British to imprison Indian freedom fighters and political detainees. The camp was associated with the violence of colonial rule. The new institute was built there to symbolise two things. First, the history of colonial repression and second, the new republic's attempt to build its own future. Then came the machine that would feed the IIT myth for the next several decades, coaching. Kota's transformation into a major IIT-JEE coaching centre began in the mid-1980s. V.K. Bansal, an engineer who taught students as a side gig, established the coaching operation that became Bansal Classes. Other major institutes followed. Allen in 1988, Fidji in 1992, Resonance in 2001. Lakhs of teenagers arrived with one goal. Clear the entrance exam and get into an IIT. By the late 20th century, of course, the myth was global. IIT alumni were leading major international tech companies. Some of the most recognisable examples are Sundar Pichai, Arvind Krishna, Parag Agarwal and Narayan Murthy. Back home, that visibility made the brand even harder to question. The institute was no longer only building India's engineer. It was building the myth of success in India by providing proof that Indians could compete with anyone, anywhere. And of course, how could Bollywood leave such a good story? Films such as Three Idiots turned the reality of the exams, the coaching centre and the campus into mass market stories about pressure, genius, failure and ambition. These movies made IITN a shorthand for intelligence and upward mobility. All this time, politicians were congratulating themselves on the enormous success these institutes turned out to be. The market, being the cruel monster it is, exploited the middle class selling the dream of success right next to cinema and parliamentarians. India's gigantic coaching sector valued at 58,000 to 70,000 crores in 2024 to 2025 is a proof of that. Nation builder, movie setting, political symbol, commercial product, four different things, one brand. And yet somewhere inside that blur are actually 18-year-olds. The government data presented to parliament recorded 39 student suicides across the IITs between 2018 and 2023. The same parliamentary report placed IITs above other categories of central institutions in the number of deaths during that period. A separate RTI-based compilation reported 115 IIT student suicides between 2005 and 2024, including 98 on-campus and 17 off-campus cases. For anyone wondering what's the national figure, by the way, the latest reported NCRB data shows 14,488 student suicides across India in 2024 alone. Not every student who struggles reaches that point. But the numbers show that student distress is not rare and the problem is not new. So is this myth, this fevered religion, this chase, is it worth it? If you're watching this as an IIT aspirant or you are already inside an IIT, this video is not telling you to run from it. But we are not telling you to worship IITs. We are telling you that the ground you are standing on is nuanced, more so than a film's plot or a politician's speech. The danger begins when the institute becomes bigger than the person it is serving, the students, who just want to make a life in the world. If you want to learn more about what's wrong with our education system as a whole or about the origins of every Indian student's bane, check out our other videos.