On the necessity of required change.

How I want to change the system. First, the problem!

The following was written almost a year ago. In a random post on a random group. Those were good times I guess, back when I was a dreamer and the ruthless pragmatism of society hadn’t caught up with me yet. It’s quite different now. Though I guess a glint of hope still remains. Anyway, do tell me what you think.

When I was young my dad would tell me stories, and, more often than not, they’d be true stories. My favorites were the ones about his college days; it was fun to imagine my dad, young and active, doing things like they show in the movies. He would tell me about college riots and marches, about debates and rallies, about the culture of his college and the various traditions it followed and, more than anything else, he would stress on how much he missed them.

Time passed and my dad stopped telling me stories, but I wasn’t worried, because I knew it was time to make my own. Stories I would tell my kids and then look at the awestruck look in their eyes and feel the pride of my actions. It was with this zeal that I stepped through those iron gates of Manipal Institute of Technology. It has been over a year now, and I have realized that times have changed, quite a lot actually, since the days of my dad.

We live in a fiercely competitive world today and we have all been part of the rat race at least once in our lives. We know exactly how difficult it is to make that mark that would set us apart. We all strive to be unique; yet unfortunately today it has become our nature to be a part of the crowd. We have friends in colleges that are much renowned and friends in colleges less so, and now we know that it doesn’t really matter.

The reason I am writing this to you is because I believe we are facing a problem today that needs solving, and the sooner we do it the better. The symptoms of said problem are pretty obvious of course; all you need to do is look back a little. Remember the time you asked your friend, a brilliant musician, to participate in Revels, yet he turned that down saying there are better people out there and anyway, who gives a damn? Remember when you didn’t start that project because: (a) It isn’t a part of our syllabus and (b) Who gives a damn anyway? Or the time when you realized that out of a class of 80 you barely know 40 of your classmates?

The major issue in colleges today is the population, the sheer number of students who join. Of course when joining, they all enter with the same enthusiasm, with thoughts of doing great things and making a mark in history, of creating stuff that will be respected and, more than anything else, to carve out an identity for themselves. Yet, as time passes, (and not a lot of time mind you), these same individuals are the ones who attend classes for attendance, write exams for marks, join clubs for a line on their CV and are just waiting to get out of the place with a degree. Some would call these the causes of many problems the youth is facing today. What they have failed to realize is that these aren’t causes; they are the symptoms. The cause is a very simple one — they all wanted that one thing which was denied them: recognition.

I remember my first meeting of IE-CSE. The 100 or so young freshmen were met with the head of the club who stressed on just one aspect in his concise speech. “The population of this place is over 9,000 and if recent rumors are to be believed it is on the rise” he said, “All you have to do is one thing, make sure that at the end of the four years of your stay here, people know you; that when somebody mentions your name, they have an idea of who you are and what you do. And if you have managed that with a decent grade, then you have achieved what you came here for. The rest will follow.” I remember leaving the meeting with a warm feeling in my heart and a mad urge to fist-pump.

I later found that a very, very difficult to do. From my irritation at the chaos I was faced with trying to accomplish any task, even one as simple as paying my dues, to the same bland reply I got from the board of any club I joined, “the authorities won’t agree to it”; the sheer underestimation of the talent and brains of the people here, not by outsiders but from their fellow students, which I experienced quite clearly during my time as a writer for various clubs and teams here, I found obstacles everywhere. I couldn’t understand that, couldn’t find a valid reason as to why things were this way.

Of course we all know the sort of reputation Manipal has garnered over the years, we all remember the rumors we heard before we came here, but they weren’t all true, indeed things are quite different here. There are some seriously talented individuals here, people with the capacity to actually change things. Yet they sit in their dorm rooms finishing another season of Breaking Bad or trying to figure out how Sherlock faked his death. Some say the reasons for this happening are procrastination or the embracement of lethargy. But that is not the case, those aren’t causes. They are the absence of action.

What astounds me even more is how we seem to not understand this, to not respect our own fellow classmates. How we, time and again, underestimate the capabilities of the students of our college. My dad didn’t study in a good college, he came from a small place in a small town, yet sometimes it surprises me when he speaks of his fellow classmates, tells me stories of his seniors who went on to do great things with respect to their backgrounds.

What I soon came to understand form the year I spent in college is that each person seems to have their own agenda. Gone are the days when a college would be a single united body. Today we seem to look at it as a service providing education and a degree, not so different from the various coaching centers we attended.

This is wrong.

And that is why you are reading this. Because when I asked around and said these same things at a table at DeeTee or while holding an umbrella and standing near the Foodcourt, yours were the names mentioned. They told me that if anyone else is as passionate and also in a position to create an impact it is you people. I may have missed some names, feel free to add them.

The objective of the discussion is simple. Manipal today is buckling under the stress of the sheer number of students, and its reputation throughout the country, in the homes of the middle class, isn’t one too great. The reasons are plenty of course; we can say it is because the teachers don’t give two hoots about the students, or that the students don’t care about anything but the degree, or that the system is this way. The blame can of course be passed around. As it has been.

I don’t want that; I don’t want to be told by a graduating fourth year, who was a prominent member of the Student Council, that I shouldn’t hold out too much hope of benefiting from this place. That I should just look after my grades and apply for an MS in the US or do an MBA. I don’t want to look at the blank faces of my classmates when I talk about a new event happening or mention the competitions scheduled that weekend. We have all seen this; indeed as the Media team reported last year, TechTatva seemed more like an event conducted by the organizers for the volunteers who doubled up as participants. One look at the measly turnout of a few hundreds from a population of over 8,000 seems to be evidence enough.

We have 49 clubs/teams and 16 departments at the service of over 9,000 students. Yet we know that most of us haven’t joined even a single club or participated in a single event. Why does that happen? Isn’t college the place where we are supposed to explore and experiment? Why do most of us, and I mean a huge majority, sit around doing nothing? Why does this happen? Do not say they don’t have the capability or didn’t find anything interesting. Because we both know that isn’t true.

These are some pretty big questions, and if we can find the answers to them, then just maybe, with the help of more people like you, we might finally be able to change something. We might finally be able to go out in public, proud to be from MIT, Manipal.

We might finally have stories to tell.