IE: Information Exploited

Sometimes, I cannot help but wonder how people can exploit a piece of information by interpreting in ways a normal mind cannot and should not. AICTE has advertised in many leading national dailies recently stating that all technical institutes offering a degree need to be approved by or affiliated to AICTE. (See the ad here)

This caused a lot of anxiety to the students of our institute DA-IICT, who were later pacified by the Director in an open address to students stating that AICTE did not speak anything about universities. If you are a university and affiliate some other colleges, you were expected to be affiliated or approved or whatever by AICTE. We are the former, but not the latter. We are an aoutonomous university and so we do not need any AICTE backing. All we need is an apprval from the UGC, which we already have. We need not go to the AICTE now. If this were a sweet little heaven we built for ourselves and did not bother to check around, it would have been questionable. But then, we have the Supreme Court stating that universities need not be approved by AICTE. (Read here)

So, all's hunky dory right! But then, bystanders do want their bite of the pie and out of nowhere enters the scene stupid Indian Express which runs an article in the Ahmedabad Edition stating that DA-IICT students would be in a lurch. (Read here) The article was so preposterous coming from the stables of so-called renowned national English daily. It had no facts to quantify its claims. It states that students would not be able to pursue higher studies in renowned institutes. But, the first batch of students who graduated from DA-IICT study in world renowned institutes ranging from University of Florida to M.Techs in IIT. Students have not had any problem, after the initial friction with the IIMs whom we eventually won, in MBA admissions also. The article also quotes that the students would not be able to make jobs properly. Then, how come students have been recruited and are working in companies ranging from Texas Instruments to Human Factors International to Infosys? Companies of varied profiles pick students from here and they are happy with us.

Of course, we dont need to advertise ourselves. But, the point in question is the integrity of a daily like Indian Express. They cook up stories like these to fill up pages. They exploit the information at their hands and sensationalise stuff to sell their crap. Now, they could as well say that there have been speculations that not having an AICTE approval could jeopardise DA-IICT. But, what is a responsible media? Is it not the one which provides facts and educates people the veracity of claims and speculations? Is it not the one which provides information so as to put an end to speculations and shed light on the true status? In that sense, Indian Express should have actually provided analysis about the advertisement of AICTE and citing the case of Supreme Court judgement in the Bhartidasan case, it should have concluded that there is no need to worry! But then, it gave in to peurile methods to rake in moolah and killed the spirit of true journalism. People rever journalists and newspapers as intelligent people who provide genuine information, but then people like this malign the divine profession. Can't help it! An old adage in my native language says 'When an elephant walks, dogs bark.' Its the high and mighty that raise above these plebeian things and do not budge from their ideals. We are one such!

Read on the same topic at: Bhavesh and Rahul Bhaskar