Chennai: Under the shade of a tree on the IIT Madras campus, a group of students stand in a tight circle, arms outstretched and eyes fixed on a student standing on a table. Facing away from them, the student cannot see what is behind him. The group calls out in unison, “Buddy, are you ready?” When he says yes, they ask him to fall backwards into the carpet (durrie) carried by them. This is called trust fall, and it is one of the many activities under outbound training (OBT), which has been made mandatory and included in the curriculum for all PhD and MS research scholars joining IIT Madras since last year.One session of outbound training roughly lasts for about two hours, with other activities including caterpillar walks, crawling on a rope, snake race, blind soccer (Zu-Lu) and minefield crossing, and a debriefing at the end.Trainers said these activities are designed to stress the importance of teamwork, coordination, leadership and communication.“OBT is designed to push participants out of their comfort zones and prepare them for life challenges,” said retired Lt Colonel Jayakumar, also a guest faculty member at IIT Madras, who designed and introduced the outbound training programme.“In this training, physical coordination, emotional intelligence and collective problem-solving are reinforced,” he added.Students also get an opportunity to mingle and work with students from other depts and make new friends. Senior students act as trainers for each activity.“These games improve communication and social skills of the participants. It will help research scholars to work better in a research group. Activities like caterpillar walks will teach the importance of coordination, as they can move forward only as a team,” said IIT Madras dean (students) Sathyanarayana N Gummadi.OBT training programme is unique to IIT Madras, and about 400 new research scholars have undergone this training this year.“The feedback is positive from students. We are planning to introduce OBT games for other IITs in south India by conducting inter IIT competitions,” he added. This training was already made mandatory for UG and PG students at IIT Madras a few years ago.
