#ReopenKGP Series: What was the 15th March protest about?
“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. We must use words to uplift and include. We can use our words to fight back against oppression and hate, but we must also channel our words into action.”
13th March 2020 (incidentally, the ominous Friday the 13th) was probably one of the most impactful days from the perspective of the populace of IIT Kharagpur since what this day held in store was nothing short of an unrealized force pushing us (and those cherished moments on campus) to the nadir, as we remained confined under a perpetual pile of online lectures, tests, assignments and (online?) labs. Voices were raised for the provision of a secure network connection by the administration, against the indiscriminate fees charged (which was partially addressed), and the mental health issues being faced by the students, but to no avail. In order to tackle these concerns, a provisional student body was appointed by the administration, but the administration is still perceived as the de-facto enforcer since the voices of the students were mostly ignored or confronted via some incoherent responses which calmed the fire for a while but did not extinguish it entirely ever. The CDC Internship and Placement Drive culminated online, and so did our autumn and spring semesters (nearly) of the 2020–21 session, with us earmarking an average of six to eight hours each day to be propped up in front of our phone/laptop/desktop screens, with bleary eyes at the end of the day and an unsatisfactory learning experience whatsoever.
Comes the date of 13th March 2021 (which was touted by some as the first anniversary of online entrapment), and the situation remains the same, as far as the administration is concerned. No definitive replies, no medium of communication to address the queries faced by the students (except some on-off Facebook posts the hollowness of which was already exposed in our previous article), and still no conclusive plan on how the students would be summoned back to the campus. Would the gates just be opened up, or will there be some organised proposition such as those laid out by IIT Guwahati and IIT Roorkee?
Citing the Director, IIT Kharagpur, the cautious approach is particularly due to the limitations in clinical facilities in the region, and it is worth pointing out as to why the prescribed budget allocation is not being utilized to build up a full-fledged healthcare facility, with IIT Kharagpur being declared an Institute of Eminence, and an already constructed medical college in place waiting to be inaugurated. Six beds even after a year of inactivity on campus doesn’t seem to be appealing enough as a bid to call students back, which yet again underlines the “no-concern” attitude being exemplified by the administration over and over again. Students have also requested an audit report of the expenditures incurred by the campus during the session of 2020–21 but to no avail.
A hazy paragraph wherein the proposed months of mobilizing the final year undergraduates has been converted to May-June, completely out of line with the dates mentioned in the officially released academic calendar, again raises a lot of questions on the intent of the administration. It’s mentioned that July will be the month to witness 50% to 60% of the students back on campus, but with no clarifications whatsoever regarding the priority groups and SoPs expected, and which again fails to maintain coherence with the previous addresses of the director wherein he was pessimistic of students returning to the campus even till the month of October.
There also seems to be no visible and concrete measures regarding the segregation of hostel rooms and the allocation of external quarantine centers (similar to the lines of IIT Roorkee assigning an external quarantine center in Noida).
The director in his “official” Facebook post also mentions the successful and smooth conduction of SpringFest and Kshitij, which by no means can be credited to the administration but to the Core teams of both the fests toiling away in silence as the administration remained aloof. The administration had even made this difficult by setting up delayed and stringent guidelines which were really difficult to follow to the letter.
On the academic front, students still lament about gaining null hands on experience as Lab simulations do not seem like a viable source of learning, and simulations are impossible as far as all labs are concerned (particularly mechanical, civil, physics etc.). A chunk of the professors still remain unsympathetic to the inability of students to appear for a test or a late submission due to network issues and power cuts.
Not satiated by the patchy responses of the administration to the grievances, the students at last decided to turn defiant as they sought to mass bunk classes on the 15th of March (with due permission from the professors, most of them empathetic and supportive of the cause). Of course, Vision without action is merely a dream, and action without vision may not just achieve anything in the short-term, but small deeds done are much preferable than great deeds planned, and this resistance may at last drive home the point that the paramount assets of the campus- the students, are not to be ignored and silenced, but instead be dealt with absolute transparency without delay.
