With placement offers from major IT companies, the first batch of students from the Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) established in 2008 in three rural regions of Andhra Pradesh (pop. 84 million) ” Basar (Telangana), Nuzvid (Andhra) and Idupulapaya (Rayalaseema) ” are all set to start their dream jobs when they complete their B.Tech programmes in March at astronomical salaries (Rs.5 lakh per year) by rural India standards. Coming at a time when weak financial conditions globally have resulted in most IT majors bypassing several urban colleges, these campus placements have generated huge enthu-siasm in the state govern-ment-run rural IIITs prom-oted under the Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies (RGUKT) umbrella by the state™s late chief minister Y.S. Rajashekhar Reddy (1949-2009). RGUKT and its constituent institutes were promoted to provide IT education to rural youth with the initial target of admitting at least 1 percent of meritorious rural youth into the six-year integrated programme which includes a two-year pre-university course and a four-year B.Tech programme. Admission to the IIITs is given to secondary school leavers topping the Andhra Pradesh Board of Secondary Education™s class X SSC exam. Selected students are provided free education, hostel and mess facilities for the entire duration of their study programme. Despite this the initial 6,000 seats offered had to be reduced to half last year due to the medium of instruction in the six-year programme being English with which most students admitted were unfamiliar, having studied in Telugu upto class X in government-run schools in remote villages. However remedial classes seem to have worked wonders and RGUKT vice chancellor Prof. R.V. Rajkumar is understandably elated by the job offers made to students. œWe have a highly motivated faculty which devised innovative pedagogies to improve students™ English listening, speaking and writing skills to instill confidence in them. This year these efforts have yielded results, he says. This euphoria is justified because most students in these institutions are from poor households with incomes in the range of Rs.50,000-100,000 per year toiling in remote villages of Andhra Pradesh. With 185 of the 6,000 students in the three campuses having already been selected by infotech giants such as Infosys, TCS, and Tech Mahindra and FMCG major ITC by way of campus placements, the RGUKT management is hopeful of placing the remainder by end January. Dr. Amarnath Reddy, who heads the varsity™s placement cell, is optimistic that in the next round of interviews some students could get pay packages of up to Rs.10 lakh per annum. œPlacements to high paying jobs is not only good for students themselves, but will encourage more rural youth to sign up with IIITs and help to reduce the rural-urban divide in Andhra Pradesh, says Reddy. At a time when Andhra Pradesh is in deep turmoil because of the imminent formation of the new state of Telangana to be carved out of the composite state, this is a welcome silver lining. Aruna Ravikumar (Hyderabad)
