Biography|Dinesh Paliwal — The Engineering Degree Taken on This Roorkee Campus

People treat this lawn as if it had always been an IIT when Dinesh C. Paliwal walked it.

In 1979 the brass still said University of Roorkee.

He finished his engineering studies on this campus that year, the date later market biographies give as his undergraduate year from what is now IIT Roorkee.

Official company CVs written decades later list the same work as a master's in chemical engineering and paper science from IIT India.

The place is not in dispute. The label on the gate is.

The college opened in 1847 to train surveyors and engineers for the Ganges Canal.

James Thomason's administration block still faces the inner lawn. A camera on the steps reads 29.8656 N, 77.8970 E.

Paliwal was born in Agra on 17 December 1957, the youngest of seven children in a family of modest means.

His father, Ram Chandra Paliwal, had worked in India's independence movement.

The son took the older engineering road north to Roorkee rather than a private city campus.

He married Ila Sharma after the Roorkee years.

From 1979 to 1981 he worked in manufacturing and quality supervision at Ballarpur Industries.

In 1981 he left India on a scholarship for Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Parliament converted the University of Roorkee into IIT Roorkee by ordinance on 21 September 2001.

A visitor today walks an Institute of National Importance.

The paper he carried out this gate in 1979 was issued by the University of Roorkee.

That is the fact that still sits under every later title on his resume.

Photo: Sanyam Bahga, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (James Thomason Building, 2013).

Photo: Dshewch, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (portrait, 2009).