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I'd like to respond to a few of your points.

I find myself not as bright as those who I have seen being very successful. I still try to do as much as I can, hoping that my efforts will be enough.

I didn't get into the IITs after my 12th and thought myself not smart and hardworking enough to do well at an IIT, leave alone at research. Many years and plenty of twists and turns later, I'm now a graduate student at a well-regarded and extremely selective US university. I have a small number of papers, some of which even get cited every now and then (!) and a couple of patents. The main thing I learned from all this is that in research it's not very important to be smart, because I see people smarter than me all the time, what's important is to actually like what you're doing sufficiently that you enjoy thinking really hard about it.

lack of research output may be because the brightest of UG students get into US universities where there are better research groups and opportunities. Or may be because other engineering colleges from where the PG students have completed their Undergraduate programs didn't offer as much as IITs (or US universities do).

There's a combination of factors here. Many good students do choose to go the US/Europe over India and I can sort of see why they do that. Life, in general, sucks a little less here, the professors are little better, opportunities are a little easier to get, and of course, a good job after graduation is significantly easier. I studied at IISc and got to know quite a few faculty there and at a couple of IITs. I feel that the Indian system is improving rapidly and there are many good professors who are doing excellent research at IISc and the IITs. Having said that, I think that some things are still harder to do in India, and some professors are still very mediocre and some still harbour rather regresive views on how research should be done. A generation or two from now I expect things will be a lot better.

It is unfair to compare IITs with other institutes, there are a lot of factors at play. Sure, we want high paying jobs - but if they are available who won't? Think about the socio-economic pressure on the students as well. For a middle income family most salaries that are offered to IIT graduates will bring about a significant change in lives of these students as well as their families. It might be a different case in US (and other countries) but a lot of us face these issues. I was lucky that I don't, but I know many students with parents who will feel happier if their child settles down with a high paying job and not pursue higher education for another 2 - 5 years.

This is an excellent point.

We're still at that phase in our development where it's more important to ensure economic security for oneself so that one is guaranteed a reasonable standard of living. Foregoing these "high-paying jobs" and doing research, in effect, means accepting a significantly lower standard of living and it's completely unreasonable to expect people to do that in a still-developing country like India.

>>but I think it is unfair to expect a lot from UG students

Each year almost 7000 teenagers are filtered out in India to be sent to IIT, the best place of all in India. At least 10% of these are supposed (or 'have the potential') to drive scientific, technical innovation in India. The present conditions at IIT are not at all encouraging in Research except Computer Science and Electrical mostly. The problems are many fold. One important problem is the faculty, except that of CS, lack a vision and passion for research. While CS, Elec profs have undergrad experience at IITs, it is not at all true for other departments like Physics. [Yup, I am from EP]. The profs are ones who had a B.Sc at some regional university and MTech and Phd at IIT. And I say CS students are not the ones who can contribute to the core Scientific Research. They drive Technological Innovations. But the research in CS is very 'volatile'. There is no sharing of Ideas in other departments as in CS. Ideas quickly spread in CS and give rise to better solutions to problems. But not so in medicine or physics. India already has a great 'research' contributions in CS. I myself has lost all the passion taking Physics as my professional career after coming here, and I am pursuing CS (which I was naturally able to connect, given it's mathematical nature, the first fav subj for any IITian). And I regret for loosing Physics. And there are so many friends in Physics, BioTech who had taken the dept in spite of good chances in other departments. And it is very essential to make use of these bright students for research. The IIT is the only bet for good research. Even if research is not directly produced at IIT, at least the conditions should be encouraging to instill the passion in students, before pumping money.

> conditions should be encouraging to instill the passion in students

There are attempts already being made to do this. In past 5 years at IITB I have seen: Student Satellite Project, RaceCar (BAJA) Project, Some very neat summer projects for freshmen, BioFuel project and others. Enthusiastic faculty is now trying on their own time to reach out to students and motivate them. And this was across departments not just CSE or Electrical Engineering.

Oh well, without all those projects IIT is not just IIT. There is no lack of projects at IITs. It is the passion and research attitude that is lacking. Most (not all) students involve and finish those projects, essentially to get their CVs pretty. In my BTP presentations half of the Physics Panel sleeps in the presentations! The way of teaching is so narrow, it is about exams, CGP. The professor's towards teaching is so materialistic. There are exceptions. We have only 3 professors who makes subject exciting of around 30 professors.

Yet 10 Non-IITians from India seem to have received a nobel prize.

Not sure if you are trolling or you really believe that IITs should be producing Nobel laureates. Nobel prizes are given for: Chemistry, Literature, Peace, Physics and Medicine, not engineering. IITs are engineering institutes - famed largely for their Undergraduate program. IISc has a much better core sciences program than any IIT.

Not saying it should produce nobel laureates. All this talk about as if IIT is the only place in India, when the real work and research is done by graduates of other universities. And nice cop out saying engineering is not science.

> the real work and research is done by graduates of other universities 9 not 10 Indians have been honored by Nobel Price, out of which only 4 are for sciences. Out of these 4 only CV Raman did his research work in India and that too before IITs were even conceived[1]. So no, if Nobel prices are the criteria for your judgement, you are wrong. And I am offended, you are insulting my work and that of my peers and professors. May be you have done groundbreaking research in your life or have seen that happening in other institutes, it is most definitely true. I do not wish to say that IITs are the only institutes in India. If you check my last comment you will notice that I have explicitly mentioned that IISc has a better Core Sciences curriculum.

If you believe that we do not do real work and research, either back your claim or keep your prejudice to yourself. IITs are involved in research work[2] and we do not do fictional/worthless work. I have no idea what qualifies as real research work for you, but I am sure you will find a lot of decent research work happening in IITs if you are willing to shed your prejudice.

[And I do not believe that this is the right place to discuss this. We can discuss it here if you wish to continue, you can leave a comment on my profile: https://plus.google.com/112310425433589490684/posts]

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_laureates_of_India [2]: List of papers by just IITB Academic Community: http://www.ircc.iitb.ac.in/IRCC-Webpage/DisplayResearchPaper...