Wednesday, December 05, 2007

dr gangan prathap to be cochin univ VC

dec 4, 2007

this is a positive step. dr gp is academically brilliant. he was IIT JEE all-india-rank 1, and when he graduated with a btech from iitm, he was again the gold medalist. i don't think this has been replicated by anybody else so far as i know. he joined the national aeronautical labs, was later awarded the bhatnagar prize for young scientists, the iitm distinguished alumni award, etc., and has been director of the center for mathematical modeling at NAL.

he wrote a paper a few months back (posted in the archives of this blog) about how science education was so pitiful in india that china was -- he said -- 163 years ahead of india in this department, and falling behind further. i am not sure about the 163 years, but the chinese are doing a lot for science education. maybe gp will get to do something to improve matters.

it is also quite surprising that a hindu got this kind of post in kerala. usually all plum posts are given only to christists and mohammedans. besides, it is not clear to me that gp has a political godfather, which is also absolutely essential. anyway, here's to wishing him the best of luck. an exceptional instance when someone with actual merit and brains is put into a position of responsibility. compare this to the last communist government in kerala putting in that imbecile communist k n panikkar (who doesn't read a word of sanskrit) as the VC of sri sankara sanskrit university (obviously with a view to destroy the place, which he managed to.) it's also like romila thapar being a 'historian of ancient india' without knowing sanskrit, pali, or tamil! what does she know, i wonder? arabic? persian? (btw, arabic and persian are 'classical languages of india' according to the nehruvian establishment. haha, ROTFL!)

also, to blow my own trumpet, i want you guys to be impressed that i was all-india-rank 1 in the IIM CAT. really, no kidding.

6 comments:

hUmDiNgEr said...

Rajeev,

at your time, IIMs were not revealing CAT scores. I am really interested in knowing how you got to know about this rank 1.

I m from one of the big 3 IIMs and a regular reader of this blog.

truti said...

Rajeev,

If you ranked 1st in the CAT, why did you choose to go to Stanford GSB, where surely the grade distribution has a much longer tail than that at the IIMs? One can confidently say that what keeps bright CAT qualifiers out of of Stanford is simply money. For sure the toppers at Stanford GSB and IIMs are comparable in many respects, but the minimum standards at the IIMs are way higher for sure.

I am not surprised you ranked 1st in the CAT.

kautilya said...

cool !!

IIM CAT # 1... that is awesome...

u r the man :)

sri said...

A-O-SOME RAJEEV..it shows...

sri

nizhal yoddha said...

my iim cal friends who were senior by one year got this info from their office people, and iim ahd friends confirmed it.

i didn't know this, but when i went for the interviews they were very solicitous of me, which made sense in hindsight. in one they actually asked the group waiting to be interviewed, "is rajeev here?". iimb asked me, "if you get into all three, where would you go"? i said, honestly, "iima". i did get into all three, but i chose to not go to b school at the time, but went and did computer science as i was keen on technology then. i went to stanford a few years later.

the AIR-1 is nice, but it really doesn't mean anything. i was only talking about it because dr gp gives me an inferiority complex :-)

witan said...

Stop bragging! Asok, who was an intern in Dilbert's company, was the most brilliant alumnus of IITs. “Asok had an IQ of 240. He could reheat a cup of tea by holding it to his forehead while thinking of fire; and once, in 2005, he vaporised an obnoxious Texan. He also had the ability to solve complex problems with a few keystrokes. And yes, he also slept only during national holidays.” Neither Dr Gangan Prathap nor Nizhal Yoddha are one-tenth as good as Asok.
Unfortunately Asok is dead. His boss announced yesterday, "I am sad to report that Asok the Intern died during a test of our moon shuttle prototype." Yes, he is dead. That is why I used the past tense, "was", while referring to him.