Field Note 17 of 22

Government Polytechnic College, Warangal

“A storied institution, founded in 1955. Forty years after I graduated, the classroom looked exactly the same.”

I graduated from this college in 1984. I went back in 2024 to speak with current students about getting job-ready, the same conversation I've now had at nearly a hundred campuses across the country.

Walking the same corridors, sitting in the same classroom, very little looked different from four decades ago. Time seemed to have passed everywhere except here.

I met the Principal, and the leadership of the alumni association — people who clearly cared about the place, working with whatever they had.

Still standing. Still the same. I found myself wondering what it would take for that to change.

Field Note 17