When Professor D.P. Kothari sees a cell phone, he thinks of his days as a student of BITS Pilani over three decades ago. He had to call his parents in Hinganghat, a village in eastern Maharashtra. "The long-distance telephone operator would tell me that the call couldn't go beyond the nearest small town Wardha.'' Kothari, director-in-charge of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, can afford to laugh when he reminisces about the pre-telecom revolution days. His mother and three brothers in Hinganghat are now just a call away and besides, IIT Delhi now has the Bharti School of Telecommunication Technology and Management. This niche school, one of the few providing the brains that power India's distance-crunching telecom revolution, is only one of the reasons why IIT Delhi has claimed top spot for the first time after being a steady second runner-up for several years. The institute was established as the college of engineering in 1961 and formally baptised as an IIT two years later.

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As expected, the top 10 list of engineering colleges is dominated by the IITs. There are gains for bit, Mesra, Ranchi, which appears in ninth place this year-it did not appear on the top 10 list in 2004. BIT was the first technical university to establish overseas extension centres in 2000 and one of the few universities to be accorded a Super Computer at the core of its ultramodern it infrastructure.

The 149-year-old Bengal Engineering College, Kolkata, which appears for the first time, makes an entry in the 10th spot.

This year also sees IIT Mumbai and IIT Madras, third and fourth runners- up respectively for the past two years, move up by one place behind IIT Delhi. These are two of the most resilient IITs. "IIT Mumbai has the best faculty and attracts the best of students because we are located in the country's industrial capital. Last year, we got 47 of the top 100 JEE students," says Dipan Kumar Ghosh, deputy director, IIT, Mumbai.

Meanwhile, this year's winner IIT Delhi doesn't confine itself to the 4,800 students who live on its 320-acre campus in South Delhi. They are also beamed down all over the country on a free-to-air 16-hour-a-day Eklavya channel by its Educational Technology Services Center. Besides churning out world-class engineers each year, the institute also pioneers cutting-edge technological research in its nine research centres and two special centres. Its newest breakthroughs are for the armed forces-a smart card which establishes a wounded soldier's blood group in a minute and a magic rod, which purifies the water it is stirred in. For fume-choked cities, there is a battery-operated electric bus, developed by the Instrument Design and Development Centre, which carries 150 passengers.

According to Kothari, the top billing for IIT Delhi is the cumulative effect of several factors like a global ambience and a dedicated faculty besides its proximity to scientific research hubs like the Council of Science and Industrial Research (CSIR) and apex bodies like the Department of Science and Technology. "I can think of three factors that set it apart-the best faculty, the best students and the best facilities,'' says Siddhartha Gupta, a student of mechanical engineering. "But what sets us apart is the great importance we place on close interaction and collaboration with both Indian and foreign industry."

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The latest chapter in this on-campus synergy is a partnership with HCL Technologies for drug development and discovery. There is a reason why the institute lays such strong emphasis on sponsored research and collaborative research. Technology transfers and consultancies also help IIT Delhi generate over Rs 30 crore or nearly a third of its Rs 100 crore annual budgetary allocation. It helps the IIT create infrastructure and strengthen facilities in five emerging areas of technology which the institution has identified as future thrust areas-bio-sciences, nano-technology, energy and environment, nano-sciences, rural industry and embedded systems.

Then there is the IIT alumni, the brain drain turned brain bank. IIT Delhi alumni not only raise funds-Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla gave it $5 million to set up an it school two years ago-but also identify faculty wanting to return to India and help establish contact with US-based industry.

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