That document by Anirbit is very, very old. CMI has changed their syllabus a few times since that. I've e-mailed him a number of times and what he said was that if one is serious about studying physics, going to Europe, America and elsewhere in Asia (he mentioned the NUS; the universities in China and Hong Kong seem to have good doctoral placement as well) would be a better than in India. If one were to stay here, he recommended the IISc, CMI, NISER, IISER, BITS and IITs.
Again, it's just the opinion of *one* person. There's other people who went there and did well. Someone who graduated in the same year as him went to Ecole Polytechnique for his PhD. Anirbit himself is at UIUC for his PhD in theoretical high energy physics - he started last year. Another one who graduated last year is doing condensed matter (theory) at UC Berkeley.
I don't like the IISc because their program, while allowing one the choice of a few different disciplines (math, chemistry, physics, biology, materials science), is still a very rigid one. While I do have casual interests in various forms of science, I wouldn't want to do that many core courses. Their time table also looks a lot like a high school one. Heck, I had more freedom outside of high school. At CMI, there'd be more time between lectures. Apparently they're not very good when it comes to experimental work though, so one may not get a good grounding in that if this what they're interested in.
I think one should attempt the entrance exams and if admitted, go visit each college and talk to the current students and see what they think. I've had some interesting conversations with 2-3 CMI students and most of them are nice enough to reply to e-mails. If you do some digging, you'll find their e-mails easily enough. A few of them actually post here...
