IIT Roorkee has been in the news recently for expelling 73 students on grounds of poor performance. The Management at the Institute has taken a dig at coaching institutes for helping students prep for entrance exams who can otherwise do little.

I had written back in 2010 about this phenomenon in a different context. Somewhere around the third year of my Engineering was when I embraced the way of the Tao (although I only realised that it is the way of the Tao a month ago) and that was the time I wrote that post about aptitude.

It is interesting how people who do well enough to be in the top one percent of the country in a tough exam then fail to attain a passable grade once they are in. I think it is a clear case of deviating from the way of the Tao.

For those of you who didn't read my introduction to Taoism a couple of weeks ago, the key idea is that expending too much energy will ensure that exhaustion follows and that is not the way of the Tao, and whatever is contrary to the way of the Tao will not last long.

When students end up giving up everything else in their lives to study for an exam to get into an Engineering college, they are clearly expending too much energy and exhaustion follows in the following years.

The Tao way is to only spend as much energy as you generally do and not do anything additional for any event (the entrance exam in this case). It is to change your lifestyle to include whatever you wish to do (which might be to develop interest in learning the things that might help crack the entrance exam). All results are inconsequential as you wouldn't do anything to change the result in the Tao way. You do it because that is your lifestyle.

So, the Tao way is not to get into an IIT, it is to stay in one.