No.DIR/IIT-R
30 Jan. 2002

Dear Prof. Shamsher Prakash,

This is further to my earlier email to you in response to your email of 17th January greeting me on my assuming the directorship of the Institute and informing me about the Roorkee Alumni in North America. I have perused through the document "Overseas Roorkee Alumni" enclosed with your email and I am happy to learn about the tremendous enthusiasm amongst the Roorkee alumni in North America and their zeal to do something for their alma mater. I am particularly impressed with the spirit of targeting about 25 million US $ in 10 years.

However, at this point of time, I have learnt from the Secretary of Roorkee University Alumni Association Prof. A.K. Mathur that the actual contribution from the alumni of Roorkee to their alma mater has been almost insignificant e.g. a total corpus of Rs.5.8 lakhs as compared to Rs.50 crores to that of IIT Bombay alumni who have contributed or a similar amount in IIT Kharagpur. That had been possible because of the large hearted alumni such as Mr. Kanwal Rekhi of IIT Bombay who has given about Rs.15 crores to set up a Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology or Mr. Vinod Gupta who gave five million US $ to set up a School of Management at IIT Kharagpur. So far in Roorkee, we have not seen the contributions from alumni of that magnitude. It is my fond desire to leverage the strength of Roorkee Alumni globally to make IIT Roorkee as the best IIT in the country and this can only happen if our alumni associations look towards a major quantum jump in their contribution to corpus level to help their alma mater and come forward in a big way to contribute towards the academic excellence by way of contributions in setting up Centres for Excellence in specialist areas, endowment of Chair Professorships, liberally contributing to the IIT corpus, institute fellowships for the needy etc.

I will appreciate if you can galvanize the Roorkee alumni in North America to directly contribute to the Corpus of IIT Roorkee as has happened in other IITs. I look forward to your continued interaction on this issue and I will be delighted to meet you whenever you are in India or whenever I am in US to discuss this issue further.

With kind regards,

Yours sincerely,

(PREM VRAT)

No.DIR/IIT-R
24 Jan. 2002

Dear Prof. Shamsher Prakash,

I thank you for your email dated 21st January, 2002 forwarding a letter you had written to my predecessor Prof. D.V. Singh concerning the North American Alumni matters. I have gone through your suggestions and appreciate the sentiments of leveraging the support of the Roorkee Alumni towards excellence of this premier institution. My dream is to synergize
the past glorious history of Roorkee with the IIT brand equity and good work culture in the IIT system to see that Roorkee IIT becomes the best IIT in the IIT system and I believe that the Roorkee alumni who have strong emotional linkages with their alma mater can play a very vital role in this regard.

I shall be delighted to have your suggestions and ideas in this regard so that we can jointly march towards this journey of excellence. I will be happy to meet you if you visit India and Roorkee and would request you to galvanize the Roorkee alumni in U.S. to do something great for their alma mater.

With warm personal regards,

Yours sincerely,

(PREM VRAT)