75 percent are comfortable with homosexuality.
By Sreekanth A. Nair
A survey conducted at Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, found that 95 percent of the freshmen were virgin and 75 percent are comfortable with homosexuality and homosexual marriage, reported The Times of India.
The survey conducted exclusively for freshmen by student newspaper — Insight — revealed that 30 percent of them were in a relationship. Most of the freshmen were moderately liberally in their political ideology.
The Insight group undertook the survey to study the beliefs and lifestyles of their incoming students. Taking inspiration from the Harvard Crimson freshmen survey, the student newspaper group interviewed 254 students of the 875 newcomers.
“The survey aimed to understand the institute’s demographic better. It’s important so we can see how we’re growing as an institute and what demographic we are catering to,” Shreeyesh Menon, Insight chief editor, was quoted as saying by Times of India.
The questions in the study ranged from their social background to political and religious belief.
The study noted that about 60 percent of the students don’t believe in practice while 30 percent of them somewhat follow them. Interestingly, 18% of the freshers are atheists, 35% are agnostic and 47% believe in God.
“Halfway into the first semester, every respondent was spending 1.6 hours on Facebook every day. The percentage of people not using Facebook at all decreased from 37.7% to 6%,” said the study.
When it comes to drinking, 83.5 percent said that they have never tried alcohol. While 94.8 percent don’t smoke, 5.2 percent started smoking before joining the IIT.
The study noted that 40% spent four to seven hours daily for cracking Joint Entrance Examination, the national level entrance examination to IITs; 30% took seven to 12 hours daily for preparation.
After their studies, 32% expect an annual salary in the range of $14706 – $36765 and 11% anticipate a salary above $88235 per annum.