Interview with PanIIT USA Conference Chair: Mr Sanjiv Goyal
We at SPARC- Students’ Pan IIT Alumni Relations Cell had a great conversation with PanIIT USA Conference Chair Mr. Sanjiv Goyal. Mr. Goyal is an IIT Delhi alumnus (1993-1996). He has been the board member of PanIIT for many years and is like of many IITians who take pride in their alma-mater and the entire IIT-system.
To start with, would you be able to give us a concise introduction about the PanIIT, What PanIIT does, what was the underlying rationale of framing this body?
Before I came to the USA, there was no PanIIT. The way back in 1999 we had little recognition as IITians. The majority of world did not know that it is very hard to get into IIT. When I came to USA in 2003, PanIIT was a small body and 200 of them formed an organisation and that’s how it started and here I would like to give you a funny story. When PanIIT decided to host its first conference, it was supposed to be a small affair. As the event came close, in one of the meetings, one of the board members casually said- “I can get Bill Gates to speak at the conference!”. And that’s how this great journey began. It’s been close to two decades and we’ve not only had Bill Gates but former President Bill Clinton and many more astounding personalities.
You being an alumnus of IIT Delhi, what do u think about the system of IITs? What are your views about the selection procedure for IITs, students having to go through a lot of competition from the very beginning?
I will give you a good example of my own experience not about the selection criteria, because selection criteria is a very complex topic and I am not qualified to speak about it but I will give you a very good example to you from my own personal life. So, when I was doing masters, Professor Dumir was our Plates and Shaft instructor and before Minor 1, he gave us one assignment to solve . None of us could solve it so we didn’t submit. The three of us me, and my friends Manish and Jagdish, decided for a night out. We were in our Hostel Shivalik. We all came to our room , Jitendra, Manish, and me. We didn’t study for the last couple of days and we had a minor the next day. What do we do? We split the questions, we had 10 questions so we divided them into 3 and left the last one. We spent our one whole night solving three questions. The three of us could solve I think 8 questions together and next day those were the questions that came in the test and we we all got an A grade and we all could not have done better than that. The point I am trying to make is that I love IITs because they really put you in the situation where you can only come out of that problem by figuring out how to solve it. One big thing that my friend Ajay Gupta (IIT-BHU, 1991) talks about is systematic thinking and I can tell you there is no better place than IITs that train you for this.
PanIIT being a body formed by the alumni, what is the vision of PANIIT for the students?
PAN IIT is an organisation and it has evolved. So, the first two decades were mostly about brand building which we have done extensively. In Fact IIT is the only foreign institution on the planet that is recognised by the US Congress . The US Congress has found the contribution of IITs to American economy to be significant, a huge thing to be proud of. Now coming back to the question, we have a lot of IITs , and if we look at the history of any developed country, we will find that that the whole country’s basic structure is built by entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is something which can make a country’s future bright and PAN IIT is an organisation which is working in the field of entrepreneurship. We are working in such a way so that most of the students passionate about entrepreneurship can be benefited by us, and entrepreneurship is not only about founding a company , you can be an entrepreneur in an organisation you are working . You just need to be creative , you need to build new things, you need to have new ideas.
On 4th and 5th December, PanIIT will organise an event named “Future of Now’’ can you tell us something about that event?
So, it is the IIT 2020 conference. It is in the same series as branding for IIT globally. It was carried out virtually this year due to the pandemic. I was appointed as the conference chair by the board and we discussed several thoughts. We analysed what we really need in the post-pandemic world. The reason I am saying it as post-pandemic is because my heart says we will be out of this pandemic sooner or later, everything will be fine. So, the value is what we need to provide to our audience, what our audience is looking for. So, our audience is looking for how they can come out of this situation, how they can find opportunities, where are the silver linings in this. We know this is an emotionally and financially stressful phase for the society and personally for all of us. People are losing jobs, the economy is really in a bad crisis but being an IITians we don’t give up. So what do we do? We think. We create a blueprint and what is that blueprint? The blueprint of future. And that would be easy when we will decide that future is now and what that means is future is not somewhere later, it’s here. And who is going to decide that future? It’s us. So, when we are going to define the future? It is when we decide to. It is not a problem that I can solve or you can solve alone but if we have half a million IITians join hands, then we can solve anything, that’s my belief and that’s what we call is the future is now.
Considering all the people you have met in your field, what personal attributes are essential for success?
That’s a tough question. I will say one trait, because I talked to a lot of amazing people in last few days. So that one trait is curiosity. What I find is fascinating that all the successful people are kids at heart. They talk to you as if you are like the days when you were 3 or 5. Anything new comes up and you go and you want to open it and fix it, you want to create it, you wanted to do something with it, right? And that is what I found to be so profound in majority of the successful people. I can give you an example of my friend Navin Jain. So, Navin is an IIT Roorkee alumnus. He started his first company became very successful in life and recently he started his company in the health sector. So, when I talk to him , when we were discussing, it blew my mind because what I find is, he is reading as much as any other PhD or doctor in the health space. Since he does not have any basic or fundamentals, he is reading anything interesting around him. The second thing is when extended for advice, they are able to connect the dots where there are (or seem to be) no connections. So, there are two things I will say that is important that is curiosity and ability to connect where there are no connections apparent.
How do you think the education needs to reform?
To me it is more about learning. Learning is what is important. The big change I think personally is that learning is going to become more non-linear. Because today when you go to class room , you go to grade 1 , grade 2 , grade 3, and so on. That learning has to change. Learning has to be more personalised. Learning should be more gathered to you personally and that is a challenge. We have not been able to perfect the education world. The day we arrive there, it will be phenomenal. That is the opportunity to a lot of you that how do we personalise education.
What according to you would be the role of this generation of graduates in particular from the Indian Institutes of Technology in shaping up the future?
It has both good part and the bad part. Let’s talk about the bad first and then we will talk about the good. The bad is that, I believe, our generation and generation before us created a lot of problems for you. There are so many problems, and these are phenomenally large. Pollution is terrible. Transportation is a great challenge. Healthcare needs to reform. So, we have created a plethora of problems. But the good thing is your generation is going to solve it. So, you have a lot of opportunities to solve it. Pick any and solve it.
You have excess to every single thing on your fingertips. I will give you another funny story or more of a real story. In 1993 , my professor asked me to find an algorithm which can calculate shortest distance between point A to point B. Now, think about that. Without Google, without internet, how would one find that? I had spent three days in the IIT library, gone through every single research which I could find which says distance between two particles, distance between two points and all. It took me 3 days to find the right algorithm. When I look back, that’s how my journey with car navigation or GPS started. I learned a lot in that process. Today, you can just put on the web and you can find the answer. Your generation has access to information on your fingertips, what you need is to apply brain and find ways to solve it, information is not the issue, it never will be.
Last piece of advice:
Well, the advice which I will give you is.. there are so many things that I can tell. When you grow old you become a little wiser, right?
So, I will give you two things- one is be a lifelong student, a constant learner. Your journey of learning does not end after you finish your graduation, that is very important. Second is what I call it A Sanjeev 3.0 formula i.e. everything in our life can be summarised in three words that is choice, experience and meaning. Everything is a choice we all pursue choices in our life. Second is each and every choice gives you an experience. Many give a meaning to that experience. For example the conversation I am having will make sense to some and for some of you it may not, which is totally fine. But who is defining that meaning, it’s you. It is the meaning that you carry from these experiences that matter.
So, my message is very simple- be a student whole your life and then just enjoy living. Tomorrow is amazing and so is today
