Institute of Technology Kharagpur

Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur
Logo
Motto	योगः कर्मसु कौशलम् (yogaḥ karmasu kauśalam) (Sanskrit)
Motto in English	Excellence in work is (true) yoga.
Established	1951
Type	Public
Director	Damodar Acharya
Deputy Director	Arun Kumar Majumdar
Academic staff	470
Admin. staff	2403
Undergraduates	4500
Postgraduates	2500
Location	Kharagpur, West Bengal, India
Campus	2,100 acres (8.5 km2)
Website	www.iitkgp.ac.in

The Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur  is an autonomous engineering, technology and management oriented institute of higher education established by the government of India in 1951. The first of the IITs to be established, it is recognised as an Institute of National Importance by the government of India. IIT Kharagpur has been ranked the best engineering college by Outlook magazine in 2009 and 2010. IIT Kharagpur has been ranked amongst the top engineering colleges in India by education surveys such as India Today "Hindustan Times" "OutLook" "DataQuest".

The institute was established to train scientists and engineers after India attained independence in 1947. It shares its organisational structure and undergraduate admission process with sister IITs. The students and alumni of IIT Kharagpur are informally referred to as KGPians. Among all IITs, IIT Kharagpur has the largest campus (2,100 acres), the most departments, and the highest student enrolment. IIT Kharagpur is known for its festivals: Spring Fest (Social and Cultural Festival), Kshitij (Techno-Management Festival) and Shaurya (sports festival).

Vinod Gupta School Of Management was founded in 1993 when IIT Kharagpur realized the need for IITs to produce managers. Founded with a contribution from Mr Vinod Gupta (founder, Infogroup) along with support from the government of India, VGSOM started with a batch of 30 students.

History

History of Indian Institutes of Technology

The Hijli Detention Camp (photographed in 1951) served as IIT Kharagpur's first academic building

With the help of Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy (Chief Minister of West Bengal), Indian educationalists Humayun Kabir and Jogendra Singh formed a committee in 1946 to consider the creation of higher technical institutions for post-war industrial development of India. This was followed by the creation of a 22-member committee headed by Nalini Ranjan Sarkar. In its interim report, the Sarkar Committee recommended the establishment of higher technical institutions in India, along the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with affiliated secondary institutions. The report urged that work should start with the speedy establishment of major institutions in the four quarters of the country with the ones in the East and the West to be set up immediately.

The main building of the institute during construction (1955)

On the grounds that West Bengal had the highest concentration of industries at the time, B. C. Roy persuaded Jawaharlal Nehru (India's first Prime Minister) to establish the first institute in West Bengal. The first Indian Institute of Technology was thus established in May 1950 as the Eastern Higher Technical Institute. The institute was located in Esplanade East, Calcutta, and in September 1950 shifted to its permanent campus at Hijli, Kharagpur located 120 kilometres southwest of Kolkata. When the first session started in August 1951, there were 224 students and 42 teachers ten departments of the institute. The class rooms, laboratories and the administrative office were housed in the historic building of the Hijli Detention Camp (now known as Shaheed Bhawan), where political revolutionaries were imprisoned and executed during the British rule. The office building had served as the headquarters of the Bomber Command of the U.S. 20th Air Force during World War II. To honour B.C.Roy (Bidhan Chandra Roy), the area in front of the main building is named Bidhan Chowk.

The name "Indian Institute of Technology" was adopted before the formal inauguration of the institute on 18 August 1951 by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad. On 15 September 1956, the Parliament of India passed the Indian Institute of Technology (Kharagpur) Act declaring it an Institute of National Importance. Prime Minister Nehru, in the first convocation address of IIT Kharagpur in 1956, said:

“

Here in the place of that Hijli Detention Camp stands the fine monument of India, representing India's urges, India's future in the making. This picture seems to me symbolical of the changes that are coming to India.

”

The Shaheed Bhawan was converted to a museum in 1990. The Srinivasa Ramanujan Complex was incorporated as another academic complex of the institute with Takshashila starting operation in 2002 and Vikramshila in 2003.

Administration

Indian Institutes of Technology#Organisational structure

Organisational structure of the IITs

IIT Kharagpur shares a common Visitor (a position held by the President of India) and the IIT Council with other IITs. The rest of IIT Kharagpur's organisational structure is distinct from that of the other IITs. The Board of Governors of IIT Kharagpur is under the IIT Council, and has 13 members that include representatives of the states of West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa, in addition to other members appointed by the IIT Council and the institute's senate. Under the Board of Governors is the institute's director, who serves as the chief academic and executive officer of the IIT. He is aided by the deputy director.^[ Under the director and the deputy director are the deans, heads of departments, registrar, president of the students' council, and chairman of the hall management committee. The registrar is the chief administrative officer and oversees day-to-day operations. He is the custodian of records, funds, and other properties of the institute. Under the charge of the heads of departments (HOD) are the faculty (full-time professors as well as those of associate and assistant status). The wardens of hostels are placed under the chairman of the hall management committee in the organisation.

IIT Kharagpur receives disproportionately more funding than other engineering colleges in India. While the total government funding to most other engineering colleges is around Rs. 100–200 million (US$ 2–4.5 million) per year, IIT Kharagpur gets nearly Rs. 1,300 million ($ 30 million) per year. Other sources of funds include student fees and research funding by industry-sponsored projects. IIT Kharagpur subsidises undergraduate student fees by approximately 80% and provide scholarships to all M.Tech. students and research scholars to encourage them to pursue higher studies. The cost borne by undergraduate students, including boarding and mess expenses, is around Rs. 90,000 ($ 2,000) per annum. 35% of undergraduate students are given additional financial support based on personal need and economic background, with their annual expenses being nearly Rs. 45,000 ($ 1000).

The academic policies of IIT Kharagpur are decided by its senate. It consists of all professors of the institute, and administrative and student representatives. The senate controls and approves the curriculum, courses, examinations and results, and appoints committees to look into specific academic matters. The teaching, training and research activities of the institute are periodically reviewed by the senate to maintain educational standards. The director of IIT Kharagpur is the ex officio chairman of the senate.

IIT Kharagpur follows the credit-based system of performance evaluation, with proportional weighting of courses based on their importance. The total marks (usually out of 100) form the basis of grades, with a grade value (out of 10) assigned to a range of marks. For each semester, the students are graded by taking a weighted average from all the courses with their respective credit points. Each semester's evaluation is done independently with a cumulative grade point average (CGPA) reflecting the average performance across semesters. The medium of instruction is English.

Campus

Institute Main Building, IIT Kharagpur

IIT Kharagpur is located 120 kilometres (75 mi) west of Kolkata. The campus is located five kilometres away from Kharagpur's railway station. The layout of the present campus and the design of the buildings were carried out by a group of engineers and architects under the guidance of Werner M. Moser, a Swiss architect. The 8.5 square kilometres (2,100 acres) campus is residence to about 20,000 inhabitants. In 2006, IIT Kharagpur had about 470 faculty members, 1,933 employees and approximately 5,500 students living on the campus. The campus has a total of 55  kilometres (34 miles) of roadways.

The 20 student hostels are located on either side of Scholars Avenue, which extends from the institute gate to the B. C. Roy Technology Hospital. The three earliest halls—Patel, Azad, and Nehru—together constitute the PAN loop or Old Campus, which is located just next to Scholar's Avenue. There are eight hostels for undergraduate male students (MMM, RP, RK, MS, LLR, HJB, Patel, Azad and Nehru) and one for undergraduate female students (SN). Another hostel for women has been constructed. There are a few post-graduate students' hostels including two for women and two hostels for research scholars (BCR and JCB) and a separate hostel for scholars from the armed forces. The Jnan Ghosh stadium and Tata Sports Complex host large-scale sports competitions. The Tagore Open Air Theatre has a capacity of 3,000 people, and is used to host cultural programs. The Science and Technology Entrepreneurs' Park (STEP) provides infrastructure facilities to alumni who want to become entrepreneurs but lack infrastructure to start their own corporation.

In addition to the main campus at Kharagpur, the institute has an extension centre at Kolkata to provide venues for continuing education programmes, distance learning courses, and guesthouse accommodation. The institute plans to expand the Kolkata extension centre at Rajarhat, and use it to offer full-time undergraduate and postgraduate courses from the 2008 session onwards. The 10-acre (40,000 m²) Rajarhat campus will house 2,500 students, and will eventually expand to 250 acres (1.0 km²). The institute's plan for a similar branch campus of 200 acres (0.81 km²) in Bhubaneswar was scrapped following rejection by the Union Human Resource and Development ministry.

Academic buildings

Takshashila complex

Vikramshila complex in IIT Kharagpur

IIT Kharagpur has 19 academic departments, eight multi-disciplinary centres/schools, and 13 schools of excellence in addition to laboratories and central research facilities. Apart from the main building in the central academic complex, the Srinivasa Ramanujan Complex also has common academic facilities. In the S. R. Complex, the Takshashila building houses the G. S. Sanyal School of Telecommunication, the School of Information Technology and the Computer and Informatics Centre; and has facilities for conducting lecture classes as well. Vikramshila is another academic building in the S. R. Complex, having four lecture halls, several seminar rooms, and Kalidas Auditorium, which has a seating capacity of 850. The School of Medical Science and Technology is housed in the basement of the Vikramshila building.

The institute main building houses most of the administrative offices, the lecture halls, and two auditoriums on either side. The signage at the front displays the message," Dedicated to the service of the nation." The tower of the main building has a steel tank with 10,000 imperial gallons of water capacity for emergency supply needs. The Netaji Auditorium in the main building is used for official functions and events, and doubles as a cinema theatre on weekend nights, showing movies to the IIT community at subsidised rates.

IIT Kharagpur's first library was located in a small room of the institute's Old Building (Shaheed Bhawan). At the time of its opening in 1951, the library had a collection of 2,500 books. Now located in the main building of the institute, the Central Library is one of the largest of its type. Its collection includes over 350,000 books and documents, and it subscribes to more than 1,600 printed and online journals and conference proceedings.

The library has six halls and a section exclusively for SC and ST students. The library's collection consists of books, reports, conference proceedings, back volumes of periodicals, standards, theses, micro-forms, CD-ROMs, floppies, and audio-visual material. The library's transaction service is automated and online searches are possible through an Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC). The Electronic Library section has a collection of databases, video lectures and miscellaneous other resources.

The Nehru Museum of Science and Technology has over a hundred indoor exhibits that include technical models collected from institutions across India. The park outside the museum contains 14 open-air demonstrations and outdoor exhibits, including a hunter plane and a steam engine. The museum has an archive room, showing documents relating to the history of the institute and West Midnapore district. The Rural Museum, located in the Rural Development Centre of the institute, has a collection of exhibits in local culture.

Civic amenities

The B.C. Roy Technology Hospital is a civic hospital inside the IIT campus

The institute campus has six guest houses, a civic hospital, four nationalised banks, four schools, a railway reservation counter and a police station. The campus has a water pumping station, electrical sub-station, telephone exchange, a market, six restaurants, and a garbage disposal section for the daily needs of the residents. Construction is going on for another guest house and a convention centre having a capacity of 2,000. The institute draws its supply of water from wells near the Kosai river (located 112 kilometres away from institute) by harnessing sub-surface water. Three deep wells near the institute supplement the supply from the river. The water is supplied by a 16-inch (410 mm) pipeline to 12 tanks in the campus with a total capacity of 2,800,000 litres (615,000 imperial gallons). However students have recently shown dissatisfaction with the current level of amenities, especially the civic hospital, forcing the director to resign.

IIT Kharagpur is located just outside the town of Kharagpur, in the Hijli village. The civic amenities provided to the campus of IIT Kharagpur make it nearly self-sufficient with regards to the basic needs of the residents. As Kharagpur is a small town, there is limited direct interaction between the campus community and the town. There is also little opportunity for the employment of family members of the faculty. Unlike some other IITs (such as IIT Bombay), IIT Kharagpur does not restrict outsiders' entry into the campus. IIT Kharagpur provides much of its benefits to the local community through the Rural Development Centre (RDC) located in the campus. Established in 1975, the RDC helps the local community by developing customised technologies. The RDC also co-ordinates the National Service Scheme (NSS) programs in IIT Kharagpur, with the members of NSS taking part in weekly community service activities such as sanitation, road construction, teaching and building educational models.

In 2005, IIT Kharagpur started construction of a boundary wall for the security of the campus, which is now complete. Mild restrictions apply to entry of outside vehicles. The boundary wall was opposed by the local community as it would hinder their access to amenities provided by the institute. Campus residents have also been denied direct access to the adjoining Hijli railway station as a result of this wall. The local community also opposes the construction of a flyover from the railway station to the campus, as it would lead to substantial losses of opportunity for the shops along the roads. The construction of the 1052.69 m long flyover has been approved by the Indian Railways and West Bengal state government. It will be formally called Hijli Road overbridge, and will be constructed for estimated cost of Rs. 237 million ($ 5.3 million).

Academics

Entrance gate

Admission to most undergraduate and postgraduate courses in IIT Kharagpur is granted through written entrance examinations. Admissions to M.S.(by Research) and Ph.D. programmes are based on written tests followed by personal interviews.

Admission to undergraduate programmes in all IITs is tied to the Indian Institute of Technology Joint Entrance Examination (IIT-JEE). Candidates who qualify for admission through IIT-JEE can apply for admission in four year B.Tech. (Bachelor of Technology), five year B.Arch. degree, five year Dual Degree (Integrated Bachelor of Technology and Master of Technology) and five year integrated M.Sc. (Master of Sciences) courses at IIT Kharagpur. The admissions to postgraduate programmes (M.Tech.) are made primarily through the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE). Other postgraduate entrance exams include Joint Admission to M.Sc. (JAM) for M.Sc., and Joint Management Entrance Test (JMET) for management studies.

15% of the seats are reserved for students belonging to Scheduled Castes (SC) and 7.5% for Scheduled Tribes (ST). As of 2008, 27% separate reservation exists for the Other Backward Classes.

IIT Kharagpur is a member of LAOTSE, a network of universities in Europe and Asia exchanging students and senior scholars. The institute has been ranked as India's best engineering institute by India Today in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2007. In the Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Academic Ranking of World Universities (2006), IIT Kharagpur was the only engineering school from India listed among the top 500 universities worldwide. In 2010, according to University Ranking by Academic Performance (URAP), Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur is the best university in India and 472nd university in the world.

Undergraduate education

A lecture auditorium in the Vikramshila complex

IIT Kharagpur offers degrees as part of its undergraduate programmes. They include Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech.), Bachelor of Architecture (B.Arch.) and the 5 year integrated Master of Science. The B.Tech. degree is the most common undergraduate degree in IIT Kharagpur in terms of student enrolment. It is based on a four-year programme with eight semesters. The first year of the B.Tech. curriculum has common courses from various departments. At the end of the first year, an option to change departments is given to students on the basis of their performance in the first two semesters.

From the second year onwards, the students take courses offered by their departments that are known as depth courses. In addition to these, the students takef inter-disciplinary courses known as breadth courses. Separate courses from the humanities and social sciences (HSS) department, and management and information technology are also required. At the end of the third year, the B.Tech. and Dual Degree students undertake industrial training for a minimum period of eight working weeks as part of the undergraduate curriculum. In the final year of their studies, most of the students are offered jobs in industries and other organisations through the Training and Placement section of the institute. Some students opt out of this facility in favour of higher studies or by applying to recruiting organisations directly. In addition to the major degree as part of the undergraduate education, students can take courses from other departments, and by demonstrating knowledge of a discipline based on objectives set by the department, earn a minor in that department.

Postgraduate and doctoral education

IIT Kharagpur offers postgraduate programmes including Master of Technology (M.Tech.), Master of Business Administration (MBA), and Master of Sciences (M.Sc.). Some specialised post graduate programmes offered by IIT Kharagpur include Master of Human Resource Management (MHRM), Postgraduate Diploma in Information Technology (PGDIT), Master in Medical Science and Technology (MMST), Master of City Planning (MCP), Postgraduate Diploma in Intellectual Property Law (PGDIPL), and Postgraduate Diploma in Maritime Operation znd Management (PGDMOM). The institute offers the Doctor of Philosophy degree (Ph.D) as part of its doctoral education programme. The doctoral scholars are given a topic by the professor, or work on the consultancy projects sponsored by industry. The duration of the programme is usually unspecified and depends on the discipline. Ph.D scholars submit a dissertation as well as conduct an oral defence of their thesis. Teaching assistantships (TA) and research assistantships (RA) are provided based on the scholar's academic profile. IIT Kharagpur offers an M.S. (by research) programme; the M.Tech. and M.S. being similar to the US universities' non-thesis (course-based) and thesis (research-based) master programmes respectively.

IIT Kharagpur (along with other IITs) offers Dual Degree programs that integrate undergraduate and postgraduate studies in selected pairs of branches and specialisations. Most of the Dual Degree programs involve specialisation in the major field of education of the student. For a dual degree involving an MBA from Vinod Gupta School of Management, the selection is made on the basis of an aptitude test of students across all engineering streams. The Dual Degree program spans five years as against six years in conventional B.Tech. (four years) followed by an M.Tech. or MBA (two years). IIT Kharagpur has a management school (Vinod Gupta School of Management), an entrepreneurship school (Rajendra Mishra School of Engineering Entrepreneurship) and a law school (Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law) on its premises. The Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law has been opened in collaboration with George Washington University.

Continuing education

The institute offers the Continuing Education Programme (CEP) for qualified engineers and scientists to learn technologies and developments in their academic disciplines. As part of CEP, the institute offers formal degree programmes (M.Tech and Ph.D) and an Early Faculty Induction Programme (EFIP) under the Quality Improvement Programme (QIP), short-term courses supported by the All India Council for Technical Education, self-financed short-term courses supported by course fees, and certificate courses conducted as distance education. In addition to conducting educational courses, the CEP develops model curricula for engineering education. As of 2006, the CEP has facilitated publication of 103 course curriculum books. The CEP administers SIMAP (Small Industries Management Assistant Programme) and STUP (Skill-cum-Technology Upgradation Programme) on behalf of IIT Kharagpur; the institute being a corpus institute of SIDBI (Small Industries Development Bank of India).

Sponsored research

Kalpana Chawla Space Technology Cell

The institute received 171 research revenue worth Rs. 417 million ($ 9.25 million)—and 130 consultancy projects in the 2005–06 session. The institute transferred 15 technologies to industry during the same session. The institute has filed 125 patents and 25 of them have been granted. This does not include patents obtained by individual professors or students. During the same session, the value of the international projects was Rs. 9.9 million ($ 220,000), and the revenue from transferred technologies was about Rs. 2.5 million ($ 55,000). The institute earned Rs. 520 million ($ 11.5 million) from research projects in the 2005–06 session. Major sponsors for research include the Indian National Science Academy, Ministry of Human Resource and Development, Defence Research and Development Organisation, Microsoft Corporation, Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (India) and Indian Space Research Organisation. IIT Kharagpur has had a cell known as the SRIC (Sponsored Research and Industrial Consultancy) cell since 1982. It handles sponsored research projects and industrial consultancy assignments, and has the infrastructure to simultaneously administer 600 R&D projects.

Institutes and departments

The Centre for Ocean, River, Atmosphere and Land Science (CORALs) is an academic and research department in earth sciences.

Student life and culture

 Student Life in IIT Kharagpur

Madan Mohan Malviya Hall is one of 18 student halls

IIT Kharagpur provides on-campus residential facilities to its students, research scholars, faculty members and many of its staff. The students live in hostels (referred to as halls) throughout their stay in the IIT. Hostel rooms are wired for internet, for which students pay a compulsory charge. Most of the rooms in the halls of residences are designed to accommodate one student per room. Now (2005–2009), due to scarcity of sufficient student accommodation, two students share a single seater room for the first two years.

Undergraduate students choose between National Cadet Corps (NCC), National Service Scheme (NSS) and National Sports Organisation (NSO) for their first two years of study. IIT Kharagpur has common sports grounds for cricket, football, hockey, volleyball, lawn tennis, badminton, and athletics; and swimming pools for aquatic events. Most of the hostels have their own sports grounds. The institute organises an annual inter-collegiate sports and games meet in October.

The students of IIT Kharagpur compete among themselves in various events held under the purview of open-IIT and inter-hall events, and the results of the latter contribute to the points that determine the winner of General Championship. The four categories in which General Championships are decided are Sports, Social and cultural activities, Technology, and Hall affairs. The women's hostel together participate as a single team in all events with the exception of sports, where women's team do not participate at inter-hall level. IIT Kharagpur participates in the Inter-IIT Sports Meet, held annually in one of the IITs by policy of rotation.

A common room in a hostel during a cricket match telecast

The students choose their representatives by elections held under the control of the Technology Students' Gymkhana. The highest-ranking student representative chosen by the elections is the Vice-President of the Gymkhana, and represents the students in the senate. All halls nominate two representatives for the senate. The Gymkhana publishes an annual magazine called Alankar. A fortnightly newsletter called The Scholar's Avenue, named after the avenue common to the student halls, is also published by an independent student body. A Hindi monthly newsletter Awaaz is also published by another independent student body. Individual halls organise "Hall day" — an annual event that involves lighting and decoration of the organising hall, with a social gathering of students from all halls—during March. The event is also used by the halls to popularise their candidates for student body elections.

Students who violate the code of conduct of the institute have to defend themselves in front of the Hall Disciplinary Committee (HDC), which investigates the case and prescribes punishment if necessary. Students may appeal against the punishment to the Appellate-cum-Liaison Committee known as Inter Hall Disciplinary Committee (IHDC). The IHDC submits its recommendations to the Senate, which finalises the punishment. Extreme cases of indiscipline are referred directly to the IHDC. The IHDC is empowered to give punishments to students for acts of indiscretion committed anywhere in India.^[47] IIT Kharagpur has strict provisions dealing with physical and mental harassment of junior students (ragging). Students found harassing their juniors are suspended from the institute, without going through the Disciplinary Committee.

Festivals

IIT Kharagpur has festivals like Spring Fest, Kshitij. Spring Fest, the annual social and cultural festival, is held in January. Spring Fest includes cultural competitions in addition to stage shows (known as Star-nights) by singers and performers such as K.K., Pritam, Kailash Kher, Shaan, Breathe, Led Zepplica, Parikrama etc. The event attracts participation from colleges across India. IIT Kharagpur organises a techno-management festival known as Kshitij. It is the biggest techno-management festival of Asia with a total budget of more than 1.5 crore and a total prize money of Rs 50 lakh. An annual techno-management festival organised in January or February, it receives participation from foreign universities as well. Events include technical workshops, seminars, and competitions.

Robotix, the annual robotics competition held by IIT Kharagpur, is organised during Kshitij. IIT Kharagpur organises an annual inter-collegiate sports and games meet known as Shaurya. It is held in the autumn semester in October. Events include cricket, hockey, volleyball, basketball, badminton, table tennis, lawn tennis and aquatics. Workshops for archery, boxing and handball are held

Multiple panels with illuminated lamps on display

Illumination, known as Illu, is a festival unique to IIT Kharagpur. It is inspired from the day of Diwali (the festival of lights) and is usually held on the day of Diwali itself. It is held as a competition among student halls. As part of the Illumination festival, all halls build vertical panels of bamboo (called Chatais) on which thousands of lamps (diyas) are mounted forming outlines of people or things; illustrating an event, or a place of importance. The chatais may reach a height of 6 metres (20 ft), with nearly 20,000 lighted lamps. The lamps on the chatais are lighted with all other light sources switched off, to showcase the art-panels made by the flickering lamps. On the same day as Illumination, the Rangoli Competition is organised as an inter-hall event. Rangolis of exquisite detail and shading—measuring around 3.5 by 3.5 metres (11 by 11 ft) —are constructed using coloured powders, crushed bangles, and pebbles. Interplay of light and shadow and ambient music are part of the display.

In January the Entrepreneurship Cell organises a Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which consists of guest lectures, workshops, a start-up camp and other events relating to entrepreneurship and starting-up.

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering organises Bitwise IIT Kharagpur, an online programing contest annually in February. Programing and algorithmic challenges are given in a span of 12 hours. In Bitwise 2010, 4900 teams participated from 65 countries. Bitwise 2011 is scheduled on 13 February 2011.

Student organizations

Entrepreneurship Cell

Main article: Entrepreneurship Cell, IIT Kharagpur

Entrepreneurship Cell (E-Cell) is a student's organisation, functioning under STEP (Science and Technology Entrepreneurs' Park), from within the Institute, with the aim of promoting entrepreneurship among students throughout India. It provides mentorship and support to startup companies and helps them with financing, through Venture Capitalists and incubation, through STEP and SRIC, IIT Kharagpur.

It conducts two major events, the Global Entrepreneurship Summit(GES), which is a three-day event, held in January at the institute, and the Entrepreneurship Awareness Drive (EAD), a 10-day event, consisting of guest lectures in 10 cities across India. Knowledge Camp is conducted annually for the benefit of students within IIT-Kgp, while the Innovation Platform and Fund-aKGPian programs continue throughout the year, to recognise and support innovative ideas among students of IIT-Kgp, besides workshops and guest lectures throughout the year.

Prof. Sunil Handa, Padma Shri Prof. Anil K. Gupta, Sanjeev Bhikchandani, Vinod Dham, Arjun Malhotra are some of the speakers, who have delivered lectures within and outside IIT -Kgp.

E-Cell has been instrumental in the establishment of School of Engineering Entrepreneurship (SoEE). The E-Cell has played a key role in the Deferred Placement Programme (DPP), whereby, a student can opt for placement a year after the completion of his/her course, in case they are involved in a startup company. This is the first time such a programme is being offered at the undergraduate level in India.

Spectra

"Spectra" is a student initiative that promotes fine arts among the students of IIT Kharagpur. Spectra has organized workshops on Photoshop, Photography, Film Making, and Animation since its foundation in 2007. It has also organized all the fine arts events in Spring Fest since 2009 under the banner of "Destination Artland". The details of its events can be found at website.

Placements at IIT Kharagpur

The international placements began in 2006. IIT Kharagpur’s Vinod Gupta School of Management (VGSOM) had completed Vantage 2008, its annual recruitment programme, on a high note with a 30% increase in the average salary levels offered to the 121-strong batch, reports Sreeradha D Basu in Kolkata. According to IT magazine Dataquest’s annual survey, IIT Kharagpur is the second best technology college in terms of placement in India.

This huge jump can be attributed to the fact that it is the first time in IIT Kharagpur’s history that students have been allowed to take up foreign placements by companies. “We, in fact, had a documented policy of not allowing foreign placements. This was overturned last year,” GS Sinha, former IIT Kgp’s placement in-charge, said. “Since all the other IITs were already allowing this, we wanted it to happen at IIT-Kharagpur as well,” he added.

“Since we got the permission a bit late last year, the kind of active marketing that was required did not happen. This year, we plan to plug into our alumni network and scale up the process in a much bigger way,” said Prof Sinha.

The top domestic compensation this year came in at Rs 18 lakh per annum. In 2011 batch, Goldman Sachs recruited 10 students on a package of Rs. 26 lakhs per annum.

Barclays Capital recruited 11 students with a package of US $55,000(Rs.22 lacs./annum) in December 2009. The highest salary offered till now is Rs 1.7 crore by social networking site Facebook in an off-shore recruitment (of which ESOPs were offered valued at 1 crore). The 2010 batch of B.Tech students saw 94% placements while the remaining preferred IIMs or entrepreneurship.Deutsche Bank recruited 9 students on a package of Rs. 15 lakhs per annum.

Motto

The motto of IIT Kharagpur is "Yoga Karmashu Kaushalam" (योगः कर्मसु कौशलम् in Sanskrit). The motto literally translates to "Perfection in action is Yoga" essentially implying that doing your work well is (true) yoga. It is sourced to Sri Krishna's discourse to Arjuna in Bhagavad Gita. This quote in its larger context of Gita urges man to acquire equanimity because such a soul endowed with the mind of equanimity allows him to shed the effects of his good and evil deeds in this world itself. Equanimity is the source of perfection in Karmic endeavors while leading to Salvation..

Alumni

Alumni-institute interaction is maintained through the Alumni Network under the aegis of the Dean of Alumni Affairs and International Relations, his office staff and student representatives. It also helps in conducting the annual alumni meets.

Alumni Network

The Alumni Network  is a student body in IIT Kharagpur that organises interaction between the institute and its alumni. The network consists of a group of IITians from Kharagpur who network, publish, and run an annual alumni meet. The group is guided by the Dean of Alumni Affairs and International Relations

Alumni Meet 2010

The VIth global alumni meet (January 2010) saw the arrival of hundreds of alumni at the institute. The meet had events such as panel discussions, performances by the students, cultural programmes like Hasya Kavi Samelan, photo exhibition showcasing achievements of the institute, and a campus tour.

Alumni Meet 2011

The VIIth version of the Global Alumni Meet was held in January 2011 at IIT Kharagpur.

Notable Alumni and Alumni initiatives

IIT Kharagpur is proud of its numerous alumni who have distinguished themselves in diverse fields. With more than 20,000 degrees granted since the Institute’s founding, the list of its notable alumni is long and the few names provided below are necessarily a small sample. Persons interested in additional names of distinguished alumni in a particular field may contact the Institute’s Office of Alumni Relations.

Sushantha Kumar Bhattacharyya (Baron Bhattacharya) was awarded the CBE, a knighthood, and Padma Bhushan, and eventually a life peerage. V. C. Kulandaiswamy was awarded Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan. Srikumar Bannerjee was appointed the Director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. Praveen Chaudhary (B'58) was Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory of the US Department of Energy. Surendra Prasad (B'69) was Director of IIT Delhi. Pradeep Khosla (B'80) is Dean of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Kirit Parikh was the founder director of Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) and a member of Union Planning Commission of India. Kalyan Banerjee is President of Rotary International for the year 2011-2012.

Five alumni of IIT Kharagpur have been elected to the US National Academy of Engineering: Praveen Chaudhary (B’58), for significant contributions to the field of materials science and engineering and to the advancement of electronic materials; R. Shankar Nair (B’65), for advances in the art and science of engineering through the design of innovative bridges and building structures; Kanti Jain (B’69), for invention and development of deep-ultraviolet excimer laser lithography, the dominant microfabrication process used worldwide in the manufacture of nearly all semiconductor electronic devices; Pallab Chatterjee (B’72), for advances in submicron microelectronics and computer technology; and Pradeep Khosla (B’80), for design and sensor-based control in robotic systems for high-precision electronics and for leadership in engineering education. Praveen Chaudhary has also been awarded the US National Medal of Technology for the discovery and development of amorphous magnetic materials that are the basis of erasable, read-write, optical storage disk technology.

As some examples of accomplishments in the corporate world, Suhas Patil founded Cirrus Logic, Arjun Malhotra co-founded HCL Technologies, Vinod Gupta founded InfoUSA, Ajit Jain became president of Berkshire Hathaway's Reinsurance Group, and Arun Sarin became the CEO of Vodafone., Ramesh Chandra founded Unitech Group, India's second largest real estate company. Ravi Kant is Vice Chairman and former Managing Director of Tata Motors. R. Gopalakrishnan is the Director of Tata Motors and Tata Power. Prith Banerjee is Director of HP Labs, the research wing of Hewlett-Packard. Raj Dutt, Chairman and CEO of privately-held APIC Corp and Photonic Corp., has made contributions in developing next-generation energy-efficient computer chips. Aneesh Reddy and Krishna Mehra, two alumni, founded Capillary Technologies in 2008. It is a 150-employee company with operations across India and in the UK, Middle East and South Africa.

The Vinod Gupta School of Management was built from alumni funding

The Vinod Gupta School of Management and Rajiv Gandhi School of Intellectual Property Law were established with donated funds from Vinod Gupta. Other centres built by funding from alumni include the G.S. Sanyal School of Telecommunication and VLSI-CAD laboratory. The IIT Foundation, started by Vinod Gupta in 1992, is the alumni association of the institute with chapters in cities in India and abroad. Dr. Subrata Gupta IAS is the Director of West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation. The alumni association publishes the quarterly newsletter KGPian for the alumni. The institute also publishes a monthly e-newsletter titled KGP Konnexion for alumni. IIT Kharagpur has a dean for alumni affairs to manage liaisons with alumni. The US-based alumni of IIT Kharagpur have started the Vision 2020 fundraiser, to provide infrastructure (like labs and equipment) and attract and retain faculty and students. The objective of Vision 2020 is to raise a US$200 million endowment fund by the year 2020 for technology education, research and innovation related growth of the institute.