National Institutes of Technology (India)

This article is on the National Institute of Technology in India, for the chain of for-profit colleges in the United States, to go National Institute of Technology (United States).

National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are premier schools of engineering and technology education in India. They were originally called as Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs). In 2002, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, decided to upgrade, in phases, all 17 Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) as National Institutes of Technology (NITs), on the lines of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). These institutes are rated just next to the IITs in terms of student quality, research and placements.There are currently 18 of them, including NIT,Patna.

The MHRD in it's efforts to improve the quality of technical education in the state of Chattisgarh has decide to upgrade the College of Engineering and Technology Raipur into NIT Raipur.

History

During the second five year plan (1956-61) in India, a number of industrial projects were contemplated. And, to ensure enough supply of trained personnel to meet the demand for these projects, it was determined to start Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs), at the rate of one per each major state, which can churn out graduates with good engineering merit. Thus, seventeen RECs (some of them are called Regional Institutes of Technology) were established from 1959 onwards in each of the major states. Each college was a joint and cooperative enterprise of the central government and the concerned state government. All the 18 institutes now offer degree courses in various branches of engineering and technology,with facilities for postgraduate and doctoral programs. The entire non-recurring expenditure and expenditure for post-graduate courses in the RECs are borne by the central government. As regards in the REC system the entire recurring expenditure on undergraduate courses, the same was shared by the central government and the state government on 50:50 basis.However after becoming NITs the entire funding is managed by the centre now.

Recent Changes

Since 2002, the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India, has been upgrading, in phases, all 17 Regional Engineering Colleges (RECs) as National Institutes of Technology (NITs), on the lines of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). This was the result of the recommendations of the High Power 1998 Mashelkar Review Committee.

Entrance Examination

The Entrance for undergraduate courses in these colleges is through an All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) that is conducted every year across the nation.Almost 3.5lakhs student appeare in this test. 50% of the seats of undergraduate courses are allotted to candidates from the home state where the NIT is located based upon rank obtained in the AIEEE examination. The remaining 50% of the seats are allocated to all the states of India in proportion to their respective populations.

List of National Institutes of Technology

Notable Alumni

Name	Campus	Year	Achievement
Srinidhi Varadarajan	NIT, Warangal	1994	Creator of SystemX - the third fastest supercomputer in the world and quite possibly the cheapest price/performance of any supercomputer on the TOP500 list. Currently, he is the Director of Terascale Computing Facility and Associate Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech.
Srini Raju	NIT, Kurukshetra		He is the founder and Chairman of ilabs and was also the Chief Operating Officer of Satyam Computer Services Ltd. during 1992-2000. He is the founding CEO and Director of Satyam Enterprise Solutions Ltd. and was on the board of Sify Ltd. Mr Raju also held the position of CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Satyam Software Ltd. (now known as Cognizant Technology Solutions)
Nitish Kumar	NIT, Patna,		Former union minister for railways under the NDA government and cuurently the chief minister of Bihar. Nitish kumar is an engineering graduate from the Bihar College of Engineering Patna which has now been upgraded into a full fledged NIT Patna in the year 2004 by the MHRD, GOI.
Guruswami Ravichandran	NIT, Trichy	1981	Professor of Aeronautics and Mechanical Engineering at the prestigious California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
press_releases/nr060203b.htm Rohit Rai	NIT, Jaipur		He is the Vice President, Strategy and Corporate Development at CTS Corp.
Dr. Priya Prasad	NIT, Patna		A world-renowned biomechanics expert, Dr. Prasad has spent the past 30 years at Ford Motor Company studying the human body and its response to physical forces in vehicle crashes.He is a Fellow member of the Society of Automotive Engineers, and the chairman or member of various ISO / SAE committees and is also an NAE honoree.
Savita Wakhlu	NIT, Srinagar		She has been appointed as one of the three new Board Members to The World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and is also the managing director of Jagriti Communications,a Training and Consulting Organization, specializing in Human Development
VK Kala	NIT, Jaipur		He is currently the Vice President,of ,IDeas "Technology Center of Excellence" in Pune, India and a former officer in the Indian Air Force, where he was awarded the prestigious Vice Chief of Air Staff Commendation for services at Air Headquarters.He also holds a masters degree from IIT Delhi.
Mr. Manoj Agarwala	NIT, Calicut		Vice President, Services ,Induslogic. He was one of the co-founders of the company.
Sunil Kumar	NIT, Surathkal	1990	Associate Professor of Operations, Information, and Technology at the prestigious Graduate Business School, Stanford University
Hari Murthy	NIT, Bhopal	1986	He is the head of Hexaware's North American Operations and an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad.Hexaware Technologies.
Krishan Batta	NIT, Warangal		Chief Operating Officer at Celetronix.
Sanjay Verma	NIT, Kurukshetra	1981	He is the Managing Director of ITC Infotech.Prior to this, Mr. Verma was heading the operations of the Tobacco business of ITC Limited. Mr. Verma is the Founder President of the TiE - Kolkata Chapter. and is also on the Board of ITC Infotech Inc. USA, ITC Infotech Ltd., UK. - the two 100% subsidiaries of ITC Infotech India Ltd and CLI3L e-Services Ltd. - the joint venture between ITC Infotech India Ltd. and Clientlogic, USA.
Tarun Amla	NIT, Calicut		Vice President and Chief Technology Officer,Isola Global. Isola Group leads the market in the design and production of innovative base materials used as the foundation for printed circuit boards.
Satya Prabhakar	NIT, Trichy	1985	Founder and CEO of Sulekha.com - the largest portal for Indian community.
Dr. Damodar Acharya	NIT, Rourkela	1981	Chairman of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), a statutory body for development of technical education in India
V Sriram	NIT, Surathkal		Director of Infosys'China Operations.
Aakash Khurana	NIT, Rourkela		Noted theatre and film personality. He is a winner of the coveted filmfare award and has acted in numerous films namely Sarfarosh, Saaransh, Trikaal.
Vinod Kathail	NIT, Bhopal		He is the founder and CTO of Synfora - a hardware design company that has emerged out of HP Labsafter a 10 year research. Earlier, he led the Trimaran effort at Hewlett Packard in the role of Chief Architect of Elcor compiler, which constitutes most of the machine-dependent part of the Trimaran research infra-structure.
Prof Laxmi Bhuyan	NIT, Rourkela	1972	Graduated from NIT Rourkela in 1972 then affiliated to Sambalpur University, Orissa. As of Aug 2005, he is serving as Editor for prestigious journals - IEEE Transactions on Computers (TC), IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS) and Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC). He is also a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, Riverside.
Rajeev Madhavan	NIT, Surathkal		He is the co-founder, Chairman and CEO of Magma - a $150 million company that develops software for electronic design automation (EDA)
Rajesh Vashist	NIT, Rourkela	1980	He is the President, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Ikanos - Ikanos Communications develops silicon solutions that are focused on delivering fiber-fast broadband access over existing copper lines.
Prof. Anurag Agarwal	NIT, Allahabad		Professor, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
Mr. Vivek Man Singh	NIT, Allahabad		CEO of Asia Pacific Region Dell Inc.,Dell Corp.
Pradeep Kar	NIT, Nagpur		A Serial entrepreneur, he is now the CEO of Planetasia. He is the founder of Microland Technologies, a big name in offshore infrastructure in India and also the founder of the portal indya.com
Dinesh Keskar	NIT, Nagpur		A graduate of this NIT he is now the Vice - President of Boeing's Sales(Asia).

Uniqueness

Currently, the student body in any NIT constitutes 50% from the home state and 50% from the rest of India. So, any NIT will have students coming from every nook and corner of the extremely diversified Indian nation with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, dress, language and food habits, making each one of them a Little India in true sense. This is probably the single most important feature of these schools, which helps to foster a sense of integrity and understanding.

External links