IITs and the project of Indian democracy

Technological education in India has privileged the demands of the market and industry, while ignoring the demands of democracy to create an egalitarian society. The engineer is trained to "make" and "innovate" for a growing economy without understanding the social processes that produce certain "demands" in the fi rst place, or considering how goods manufactured are to be distributed fairly in an unequal society. To make a successful journey from passive suppliers of technology to thought leaders on the question of India's development, the Indian Institutes of Technology must respond to the dominant discourse on development and articulate paradigmatic ideas on what development ought to be for India's democratic project.