Monday, March 22, 2010

Engineers on the streets

D.C.E. got changed to D.T.U. and all hell broke loose. 
Last summer, the Delhi government decided to upgrade our Delhi College of Engineering to the Delhi Technological University, and ever since the decision materialised, there have been a series of discussions about the viability of the action and its repercussions, among the students as well as the faculty. The government decided to take this action to enable full autonomy to the administration in terms of course revision, hiring of teaching staff and general administrative work. But the students did not take kindly to this, and fearing the degradation of the brand name of the institution, appealed to the authorities to revoke the decision. However, after months of no action, the students and the faculty decided to take the issue in their own hands and show a more salient agitation and disapproval. It all started earlier this month with the students protesting on the roads outside the college, against the Vice-Chancellor, who was asked to step down, and the authorities to repeal the decision. The protests went on till late in the evenings and over the subsequent days spread to Jantar Mantar, C.P., and India Gate. The protest has, surprisingly received complete support from the entire student community, as can be seen by the complete no show of the students in the mid-terms examinations that were to be held last week. The entire college chose to sit in the blazing sun in Japanese Park near the college in silent protest rather than appear for the exams in security of the RAF. My stance, on the conversion, is not what I'm trying to highlight here, though. What I am actually impressed by is the most remarkable feature of the entire unrest, which was that at no point did the students resort to any form of violence to make themselves heard. It would have been very convenient to burn down buses outside the college, disrupt traffic, break things inside the campus or even physically attack people, but kudos to all who chose instead to have a peaceful and non-disruptive and moreover a civilised and Gandhian form of protest against the authorities. All the students participated in the protest out of their own free will and no incentives were offered to anyone to join the agitation. I was quite surprised at how everyone actually turned up for the protests about which they were informed through messages! Everyone participated out of genuine concern for the college and the fraternal feelings running through the entire student group; and this is extremely commendable, as is the way Ravi and his team pulled off the entire protest....great work people (sic)!!!

4 comments:

  1. even though you liked the way of protest but still you were least bothered about the happenings

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  2. why blame me when u dont hv any answers?

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  3. m sick of dis stf sir!
    i will appreciate if u write abt smthng else..
    may b love..;)
    anyways..
    sharp n crisp as always..
    :)
    carry on tuffar!

    ReplyDelete