Ah, well, I studied at an IIT too, (Madras [Ganga] 98-02 shoutout! :) ) and I do agree that the pressure to jump examination hurdles is rather intense, but this again is a case of striving for very conventional goals, and for a limited period of time.

How many have kept up the effort, after getting through (or not)?

As I said before, a conventional trajectory passing through a marriage in the mid-twenties, is also one that makes the uptake of risk (and consequently effort) much harder in life. I keep bringing up risk because effort without the possibility of significant success is rather pointless. And without risky opportunities that afford that kind of success, people reach for the cruise control after just-enough.

Malthusian scarcity should reward and select for effort, ( and also voluntary birth control and later marriage) as it did in the period right before Industrial England (([1] ; descriptive review: [2])), but, in India, it strangely doesn't! Predestiny, passivity, and fatalism, all predate socialist India. Our mythology reflects this.

I do agree that we are turning a new chapter and we are host to a whole new set of cultural ideas, but the numbers aren't, unfortunately, high enough. Yes, while about 300 million people, are (or were in 2001) technically urban, 50 million are slum dwellers; I'd wager that only a tiny slice is literate enough to accept cultural transmissions.

Still, I hope that this tiny slice of a humongous pie proves to be big enough....

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Farewell-Alms-Economic-History-Princet...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/science/07indu.html?pagewa...