There comes a point in the first episode of the Netflix series, Alma Matters, where a student says something to the effect of “People (in IITs) don’t work because they want to. They work only after they see someone else working.” It’s an insight that is simply worded, but one that speaks reams about the culture inside IITs and the Indian education system at large.

Set up in the 1950s in a newly independent India, the Indian Institute of Technology (IITs) were earmarked as institutions to lend scientific temperament to the society, and take a young nation to newer technological heights.