In recent years, Indian press has started publishing about the high level of neworking that goes on in elite IIT communities. In the case of Dubey's murder in Bihar, the news items with titles like 'IITians Seek Justice for their Brother's Death" were commonplace causing resentment among non-IITians who wondered what if Dubey was just a mere mortal and not an IITian. Would it have become such a big story? [More on true motives in Dubey's case and really what happened sometime later]
What is the reality? From my experience, and probably yours too, it would appear that IITians are no different from rest of the Indians, who, while looking out to promote their and their family members' interest, and that of a few followers (chumchas), cannot think beyond their fellow-caste, fellow-state or religion members' interest. Here I will provide examples of my experience with 'IIT Networking.'
1. In Japan, before I filed my discrimination lawsuit against Mitsubishi Electric - a company that was treating Caucasian males and its Japanese employees well while intentionally mistreating me, the company sent an Indian, an IIT Kharagpur graduate, from its Nagoya plant to 'talk' to me. He was married to a Japanese women, a condition for his employment at Mitsubishi Electric, and he was upset at me. He too believed that Caucasians are special and told me that I should not be complaining.
2. During 2001-2002, I worked at a Berkeley-based technology company and the Caucasian males were in-charge meaning high positions and high salaries for many of them incompetent slackers. They also had appointed an Indian-born Sumer Singh "Khalistan" Johal ("Uncle Tom"/"House-nigger") who seemed to take pleasure in mistreating me by paying me close to minimum wages and making me work extremly long hours. There was an IIT Delhi graduate - Sanjay Dayal, who was a loyalist to him and while pretended to be friends with me, stopped talking to me after I complained about Mr. Khalistan to his boss.
3. Earlier in 2001, when I had moved back from Kansas to the San Francisco Bay Area, I didn't have money or a job. During IIT Bombay days, I knew a few people like Rajiv Bhateja (Synplicity) and Khalid (Hal) Ahmed Kazi (Oracle), who were my batchmates and we even lived in the same wing of Hostel 7 for a part of our 5 years' sojourn there. I had contacted them earlier by emails and there both were nice and I was asked to meet them. I visited them a few times at Rajiv Bhateja's house in Palo Alto. I told them that I didn't have job and didn't have money and that's why I had to share an apartment with a roommate in Berkeley. They even made jokes about this roommate business which I took in stride. No big deal.
Interesting thing is that Rajiv seemed very big on IIT networking. He kept track of a large number of classmates from IIT Mumbai collecting their address, phone numbers and even articles about. Obviously, he was proud of many of us. For example, he showed me an issue of India Current magazine with Rakesh Mathur, my electrical engineering department classmate, on its cover showing off how his company Junglee (later sold to Amazon) could find cheapest prices on the net. Or the article on Vivek Jairazbhoy who seems to have done well at Ford Motors. Things like that.
Unfortunately, soon after he knew about my Mitsubishi lawsuit and my employment status, he became quite insulting towards me. He started insulting me in front of others whenever he got a chance, like at the annual IIT picnic. He found things wrong with my thinking, my clothes and everything else. Needless to say, there was never a single word about giving me some job leads or such things. Others around him were taking hints and soon Hal Kazi, his chumcha, became non-communicative towards me. Can't blame him, though. Survival instinct, I guess.
Interestingly, when we had our 25-year IIT reunion in December 2003, he became the organizer of this event. On the Yahoo group created for this purpose a few months earlier, Khalid Hal Kazi joined in praising him by writing "But Rajiv still gets the credit for maintaining active contact with largest number of mates from our batch." I sort of expected it.
To cut the story short, I have given you a real case of "IIT networking" as opposed to that you know by reading newspapers or other media outlet. As you would have guessed by now, there is no contact between them and me now, especially after they came to know about my misadventure with that Berkeley company abut a year ago in June 2003.
In early May 2004, I had a brief contact with Rajiv Bhateja regarding this website. Details at the bottom of this page.
4. Sanjay Bhargava is also one of my classmates and we lived in the same hostel. He was one of the founding employees at PayPal which got acquired by Ebay later. I met him and his wife, who too worked at Paypal at Rajiv Bhateja's house in Palo Alto. The last time I met them was during a Holi festival in Palo Alto and they were trying to recruit technical staff for PayPal. I was asked to apply too and I sent Sanjay Bhargava my resume by email soon after. I got a very formal email from him stating that he would forward my resume to the personnel department. That's the last I heard from him.
Now you knw how we IITians network. In contrast to the situation for my former Caucasian co-workers, the incompetent slackers, who would keep on getting good jobs, thanks to how Caucasians network helping each other, at best I am on my own here. Incidentally, while many non-Indians have read about my account of what happened at Mitsubishi and understand the situation very well, Indians and IITians and even classmates have been most reluctant to read that, instead believing it must be all my fault because masters (Mitsubishi) can't be wrong. We are just slaves, known throughout the world for this. [Once I met a US-born Indian at UC-Berkeley and when he asked me about my experience at Mitsubishi and I replied that they sre racists, you should have seen his face. It became brownish-red with anger and he shouted back, "I don't believe it. Of all the companies, Mitsubishi? No chance." I think that he would have been okay if I had used a few choice words for his mother, but saying bad things about the Masters - it just blew him off. I guess his dad could be from one of the IITs.]
Note: I think that Rajiv Bhateja is a typical IIT product in many ways and there is nothing especially evil about him. Recently he contacted me and we talked. I won't go into details now but I thought that he was lying, was in denial and was trying to be manipulative. I don't bear any ill-will towards him, have sympathy for him and wish him good luck. Hope his sons all get admission to Stanford. All the names used here are for reality purpose just like the names used in other essays and are not intended to 'hurt' anyone as Bhateja is planning to blame me of. Peace.