Student life and culture in Indian Institutes of Technology

All the IITs provide residential facilities. Research scholars, faculty inside their campus. The students live in hostels throughout their stay in the IIT. There are separate halls for girls and boys, and even for boys. Most of the students get single accommodation. Most of the students keep a computer in their rooms though there is no such rule made by the IITs to do it. The IITs also have high-speed LAN and internet connection. Co-curricular activities Students in various IITs have to compulsarily choose between National Cadet Corps (NCC), National Service Scheme(NSS) and National Sports Organization (NSO) in their first years. The choice for later years vary from one IIT to the other. The NSO is a national level sports organization. All the IITs have playgrounds of various sports including Cricket, Football, Hockey, Volleyball, Lawn Tennis, Badminton, Athletics, and swimming pools for aquatic events. Usually the hostels also have their own sports grounds. Technical festivals All IITs organize annual technical festivals in which students from the IIT and even other colleges participate. Usually the technical festivals last 3 to 4 days. Most of the technical festivals are organized in the month of February or March. Apart from the technical festivals mentioned above, some IITs also organize annual robotics contest and other technical events for the students. The Computer-Centre (referred to by the campus residents as "C-C") has about 100-150 Linux terminals and more than 100 Windows-NT terminals supported by PARAM 10000 super computer, and is continuously available to the students for academic work and recreation. Disk storage is provided using a networked file server system. Internet access is provided by the means of two proxy servers, one for students and another for faculty (the computer science department in IIT Kanpur has its own independent network). It is a major intellectual, social and cultural hub in the campus. The IITs (and especially IIT Kanpur) and BITS Pilani are among the first large academic institutions in India to be extensively networked, with an institute-wide LAN and Ethernet access to every student room in the residence halls. Inter IIT Sports Meet All the IITs compete in a variety of sports held under the purview of the Annual Inter IIT Sports Meet. The competition is organized every year in the month of December in one of the seven IITs by a policy of rotation. The first Inter IIT Sports Meet was held in IIT Bombay in 1961. The total number of participants in any Inter IIT Sports Meet is usually around 700. The award consists of a running shield that is passed over to the winning IIT every year.