Revert "Add amex summer diary"

Add amex summer diary

_data/categories.yaml

@@ -1,10 +1,16 @@
 ---
+# - name: interiit
+#   title: Inter IIT Cult
+#   subcategories:
+- name: memoirs
+  title: Memoirs
+  subcategories:
 - name: academics
   title: Academics
   subcategories:
-- name: cultural
-  title: Cultural
-  subcategories:
+# - name: cultural
+#   title: Cultural
+#   subcategories:
 - name: columns
   title: Columns
   subcategories:
@@ -33,9 +39,9 @@
 - name: verbatim
   title: Verbatim
   subcategories:
-- name: sports
-  title: Sports
-  subcategories:
+# - name: sports
+#   title: Sports
+#   subcategories:
 - name: internblogs
   title: Intern Blogs
   subcategories:
@@ -45,3 +51,5 @@
       title: Summer 2017
     - name: summer2018
       title: Summer 2018
+    - name: summer2019
+      title: Summer 2019

_data/categories_name.yaml

@@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
 ---
+interiit: Inter IIT Cult
 academics: Academics
 cultural: Cultual
 columns: Columns
@@ -17,3 +18,5 @@ internblogs: Intern Blogs
 summer2016: Summer 2016
 summer2017: Summer 2017
 summer2018: Summer 2018
+summer2019: Summer 2019
+memoirs: Memoirs

_includes/footer.html

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
       <img class="logo" src="/images/logo-black.png">
       <div class="name-container">
         <div class="name">Watch Out!</div>
-        <div class="desc">Official Media<br>Body of IITR</div>
+        <div class="desc">Student Media<br>Body of IITR</div>
       </div>
     </div>
     <div class="social pull-right">
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
       <a href="/about">About</a>
       <a href="/guide">Guide</a>
       <a href="/getinvolved">Get Involved</a>
-      <a  href="http://fb.com/watchoutiitr"><img src="/images/fb-logo.svg"></a>
+      <a href="http://fb.com/watchoutiitr"><img src="/images/fb-logo.svg"></a>
       <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCthZ7tKOzy4EJpuVxtdcp1A"><img src="/images/youtube-play.svg"></a>
       <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/13290672/"><img src="/images/linkedin.png"></a>
     </div>

_includes/head.html

@@ -48,6 +48,7 @@
 
   <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/base.css" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />
   <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/table.css" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />
+  <link rel="stylesheet" href="/css/posts.css" type="text/css" media="screen, projection" />
 
   <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/jquery-2.1.3.min.js"></script>
   <script type="text/javascript" src="/js/bootstrap.min.js"></script>

_includes/navbar.html

@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
       <img class="logo" src="/images/logo-black.png">
       <div class="name-container">
         <div class="name">Watch Out!</div>
-        <div class="desc">Official Media<br>Body of IITR</div>
+        <div class="desc">Student Media<br>Body of IITR</div>
       </div>
     </div>
   </a>
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@
     <a href="/about">About</a>
     <a href="/guide">Guide</a>
     <a href="/getinvolved">Get Involved</a>
-    <a  href="http://fb.com/watchoutiitr"><img src="/images/fb-logo.svg"></a>
+    <a href="http://fb.com/watchoutiitr"><img src="/images/fb-logo.svg"></a>
     <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCthZ7tKOzy4EJpuVxtdcp1A"><img src="/images/youtube-play.svg"></a>
     <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/13290672/"><img src="/images/linkedin.png"></a>
   </div>
@@ -21,7 +21,8 @@
 <nav class="navbar navbar-default" data-spy="affix" data-offset-top="110">
   <div class="container">
     <div class="navbar-header">
-      <button type="button" class="navbar-toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbar" aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="navbar">
+      <button type="button" class="navbar-toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbar" aria-expanded="false"
+        aria-controls="navbar">
         <span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span>
         <span class="icon-bar"></span>
         <span class="icon-bar"></span>
@@ -32,22 +33,24 @@
     <div id="navbar" class="navbar-collapse collapse">
       <ul class="nav navbar-nav navbar-right hacky-css">
         {% for cat in site.data.categories %}
-          {% if cat.subcategories != nil %}
-          <li class = "dropdown">
-            <a class="hover-underline" href="#" class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown">{{ cat.title }} <span class="caret"></span></a>
-            <ul class="dropdown-menu">
-              {% for subcat in cat.subcategories %}
-               {% if site.categories[subcat.name] != nil %}
-                <li><a class="hover-underline" href="/category/{{ subcat.name }}/">{{ subcat.title }}</a></li>
-                {% endif %}
-              {% endfor %}
-            </ul>
-          </li>
-          {% elsif  site.categories[cat.name] != nil%}
-          <li><a class="hover-underline" href="/category/{{ cat.name }}/">{{ cat.title }}</a></li>
-          {% endif %}
+        {% if cat.subcategories != nil %}
+        <li class="dropdown">
+          <a class="hover-underline" href="#" class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown">{{ cat.title }} <span
+              class="caret"></span></a>
+          <ul class="dropdown-menu">
+            {% for subcat in cat.subcategories %}
+            {% if site.categories[subcat.name] != nil %}
+            <li><a class="hover-underline" href="/category/{{ subcat.name }}/">{{ subcat.title }}</a></li>
+            {% endif %}
+            {% endfor %}
+          </ul>
+        </li>
+        {% elsif site.categories[cat.name] != nil%}
+        <li><a class="hover-underline" href="/category/{{ cat.name }}/">{{ cat.title }}</a></li>
+        {% endif %}
         {% endfor %}
       </ul>
-    </div><!--/.nav-collapse -->
+    </div>
+    <!--/.nav-collapse -->
   </div>
 </nav>

_posts/2018-08-25-summer-diaries-michigan.md

@@ -1,40 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title: "Summer Diaries: University of Michigan"
-image: lubana1.jpg
-tags: [wona]
-author: "Ekdeep Singh Lubana"
-excerpt: "I spent my summers working as a visiting scholar (the appropriate term that should be preferred over the standard lingo—Research intern) in the Embedded Systems group at University of Michigan."
-category: summer2018
----
-
-I spent my summers working as a visiting scholar (the appropriate term that should be preferred over the standard lingo—Research intern) in the Embedded Systems group at University of Michigan. My project encompassed working on the brink of software- and hardware-design in order to reduce energy consumption of a camera. 
-
-With a GPA of 7.05, I certainly did not have high expectations with any of the conventional means of bagging an intern. However, a decent research background that had resulted in significant output kept me hopeful. Thus, I started mailing professors around the last week of August. 
-
-Luckily, I did not have to squander a lot of time mailing and faculty-hunting. While my first two applications went dark (I still haven’t received a reply from them *quietly sobs in denial*), the third application got converted into a teleconferencing interview. As I mentioned before, I believe, and my advisor has affirmed this multiple times, that relevant research experience in the field of imaging systems is what bagged me the interview. After that, I spent a week brushing up my computer architecture and digital design basics. The interview went fine and my advisor, based on my previous experience, told me to come up with ideas on a biological principle named “fovea”. 
-
-Off I went and figured how energy consumption in machine vision systems can be significantly optimized if a fovea-like sampling routine—i.e., multi-resolution sampling of analog image signal—is used. Essentially, this results in tight integration of the software algorithms with hardware routines that exist, but are not exploited. This proposition was well received and I started working in remote capacity. Here, I would like to emphasize that most faculties are apprehensive of research interns because of limited time windows. My explorations in remote capacity helped me convince my advisor to have me at U. Mich. as a winter-cum-summer intern. The “wintern” work resulted in 75% energy reduction of conventional machine vision systems and a publication on the same was accepted to IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design. The paper will be presented at CODES+ISSS (International conference on co-design of hardware/software and system synthesis), 2018—a part of Embedded Systems Week, that is set to be held in Italy (Yay!).
-
-![pic2](/images/posts/lubana2.jpg){: style="width:90%;height:auto"}
-
-## Work Culture
-Located in Ann Arbor, University of Michigan is in a relatively remote region that has more folk-culture vibe than a trendy city like New York. That suited me really well. Further, there were no time restrictions and we weren’t even expected to show up—at all. Thus, I reckon I spent my entire time meandering in the library, that had amazing rooms for private study, or CS lounge (or as it is called—the ”foo bar”) which had an amazing ambience. I love this minimalist nature of computer science that renders extravagant resources unneeded. Departments and library were open 24x7 and were connected to my home via the Michigan M-bus route. Thus, I would reach campus by 8 AM and wander around till 12-2 AM, mostly. 
-
-We had research group meetings every fourth Monday and reading group discussions every Thursday, wherein the leading participant would propose a paper on the field of Embedded Machine Learning and the same would be discussed in the meeting. I met my advisor twice a week. While meeting your advisor twice a week is horrendously exhausting, it helps accelerate the overall project. I expected myself to show some progress every meeting and that helped produce significant output. I completed a project in the winter, had a paper accepted, and spent my summers working on really interesting aspects of Embedded Machine Learning and Neuroscience, wherein the focus was to come up with ideas inspired by the latter and make the former efficient. This has led to a novel data compression algorithm based on compressive sensing.
-
-![pic3](/images/posts/lubana4.jpg){: style="width:90%;height:auto"}
-
-## Ann Arbor
-Not a lot happens in Ann Arbor. Alas, being a foodie, I loved the minuscule vegetarian serving places in Downtown. Being a vegetarian is a bummer, take my word for it. I would recommend trying the Indian eateries like Madras Masala to satiate your desires for Indian food. 
-
-The Ann Arbor summer festival and art festival were fun and a must visit. There’s a record store that sells vinyl records and CDs of the oldest artists you can think of. I visited the place quite often. Bookstores in Ann Arbor are really interesting, for if you visit on first or third Saturdays, you can find Bruce Conforth playing folk music (Heads up—Bruce Conforth is the first curator of rock and roll hall of fame and has worked with the likes of B. B. King, U2, The Kinks, etc.).
-
-![pic4](/images/posts/lubana3.jpg){: style="width:90%;height:auto"}
-
-## Takeaways
-In a nutshell, I would recommend to try your hands at research internships if you either have relevant experience or high GPA to bag one via conventional programs. I believe the former is more sensible, though. That said, avoid spamming professors. 
-
-I could recommend two methodologies for mailing:
-(a) Pick a university using QS or some other organization’s ranking system. Narrow down on faculties with relevant interests. Visit their Google Scholar or dblp profiles and go through the recent research work. If the interests align, draft a mail explaining how your interests match their research directions. Herein, boast.
-(b) If you are deep into your field, reading papers is a routine habit. Off of the recent year conferences, if you find interesting research papers, you can explore the authors’ previous work and draft a mail, thereafter. This methodology helped me bag another internship for Winter, 2019. 

_posts/2018-09-23-inaugration-of-DIC.md

@@ -8,17 +8,17 @@ excerpt: "The Design Innovation Centre (DIC) at IIT Roorkee was inaugurated on M
 ---
 
 The Design Innovation Centre (DIC) at IIT Roorkee was inaugurated on Monday by Prof. Ajit Chaturvedi, Director IITR, along with Prof. M Parida, Dean SRIC IITR, Prof. PVM Rao from IIT Delhi and Prof. Praduman Vyas, Director NID Ahmedabad (connecting to the event via skype) as Chief Guests. The DIC, or Navonmesh, was recently been approved by the MHRD with a budget outlay of Rs. 10 crore.
-<br>
+
 The DIC will function under a “hub and spoke” model, wherein IIT Roorkee will act as the “hub”, and the “spokes” i.e. IIM Kashipur, NIT Uttarakhand and CoT, GBPUAT, Pantnagar will be having their own proposals mostly to address local problems. The DIC basically would be inviting proposals for innovative solutions that address issues of the Himalayan region, followed by awarding financial support to the most promising designs to help them yield marketable products or technologies. These proposals will then be considered for registration under Intellectual Property Rights and for commercialization. Some examples of projects might include optimizing agricultural tools such as crop harvester for hilly terrain, and developing assistive devices for those with mobility impairment.
-<br>
+
 According to Prof. Apurbba Kumar Sharma, Coordinator & Principal Investigator(PI), the activities of DIC will be carried out under 3 major categories:
-<br>
-i) Supporting innovative prospects and projects of faculty members and students of the institute through financial support,
-<br>
-ii) Academic activities under which there are plans to introduce 2 academic courses of Masters of industrial design (MDes.) and Masters of Innovation Management (MIM) and organisation of workshops and crash courses for modular designs and innovations. Some laboratory facilities will be developed to compliment the facilities in the institute. Apart from this internships to students from IIT roorkee as well as from outside the institute will be awarded for short terms.
-<br> 
-iii) Outreach Programs like P2P (Prayogshala to Prayogshetra), U2U (Udbhavan to Utpadan) and COMAL (COmmon MAn to Laboratory), under which innovations at the laboratory scale will be taken to the common man. Apart from these, any members of the public who have innovative ideas can get mentorships and follow ups at the DIC.
-<br>
-The Design Innovations Center’s scheme was rolled out in 2014 by the MHRD along with open design school and National Design Innovation network. It started with setting up of 4 DICs across india of which IIT Delhi and IIT BHU were a member. Prof. PVM Rao and Prof. Praduman Vyas who contributed very significantly in formulating these schemes were present in the event. 
-<br>
+
+1. Supporting innovative prospects and projects of faculty members and students of the institute through financial support,
+
+2. Academic activities under which there are plans to introduce 2 academic courses of Masters of industrial design (MDes.) and Masters of Innovation Management (MIM) and organisation of workshops and crash courses for modular designs and innovations. Some laboratory facilities will be developed to compliment the facilities in the institute. Apart from this internships to students from IIT roorkee as well as from outside the institute will be awarded for short terms.
+
+3. Outreach Programs like P2P (Prayogshala to Prayogshetra), U2U (Udbhavan to Utpadan) and COMAL (COmmon MAn to Laboratory), under which innovations at the laboratory scale will be taken to the common man. Apart from these, any members of the public who have innovative ideas can get mentorships and follow ups at the DIC.
+
+The Design Innovations Center’s scheme was rolled out in 2014 by the MHRD along with open design school and National Design Innovation network. It started with setting up of 4 DICs across india of which IIT Delhi and IIT BHU were a member. Prof. PVM Rao and Prof. Praduman Vyas who contributed very significantly in formulating these schemes were present in the event.
+
 A core team of 5 faculty members of IITR was formed under the leadership of Prof. Manoranjan Parida, Dean SRIC when they received a letter regarding MHRD’s plans for setting up a DIC here in 2017. The three associated institutes joined subsequently.

_posts/2018-10-01-chess-at-iitr.md

@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Chess at IITR"
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: verbatim
+image: chess-club.png
+excerpt: "At the 3rd Inter-IIT Chess Meet conducted in IIT Madras during December 2017, IIT Roorkee finished as runners up, out of a total of seventeen participating teams."
+---
+
+At the 3rd Inter-IIT Chess Meet conducted in IIT Madras during December 2017, IIT Roorkee finished as runners up, out of a total of seventeen participating teams. After years of functioning under an unorganized impoverished structure, this success has motivated the institute to form a proper group, the IITR Chess Club under the Institute Sports Council (ISC). Despite having some excellent chess players and an enthusiastic culture for the game that has been hosted by the Students Club for some time now, the recognition of its potential has come about after a bout of struggle, determination and patience. We had a chat with Viraj Tamhankar, one of the pioneers in the development of the club which opened back in March of this year. Here is a summary of our interview with him.
+
+In the days before Inter-IIT ‘17, chess was limited to the Students Club with a tiny designated area right next to its entrance. Enthusiasts who frequented this space had to make do with sub-par equipment, including old chess-boards and pieces as well as outdated clocks which lacked important features used in professional competitions. These trivial difficulties aside, the students’ club was always crowded in the evenings, which made it hard for them to concentrate in a cauldron of music, noise and TV sound.
+
+The competitive side of the game could be observed during the Students’ Club Open, Intra-Bhawan or Inter-Bhawan competitions, and departmental events. However, these events tended to be improperly arranged and unfairly adjudicated, because of insufficient knowledge about the methods of the game and fairness criteria about pairing of two contestants. These deficiencies also affected proceedings during Sangram, IITR’s sports fest, where the need for additional funds was acutely felt.
+Funding was also a core issue when the IITR chess contingent wished to participate in tournaments outside the institute, such as Udghosh at IIT Kanpur, Sportech at IIT Delhi and the Inter-IIT Chess Meets. This issue was not just hindering participation, but practice too. According to Viraj, proper preparation for Inter-IIT requires dedicated practice sessions with a professional coach for a month before the event, much like the organised sports camps that are held before Inter-IIT Sports Meets. Minimal financial support was being provided by the Students Club but it wasn’t near enough to provide for everything.
+
+Above all, there was no official forum for chess enthusiasts to gather and meet. The Institute Sports Council had always been reluctant to take chess under its umbrella, citing fairly debatable reasons for its stance on the game in the institute. A similar rationale was resonated by the different Inter-IIT Sports Meet associations of other IITs, explaining the absence of chess from the Meet until 2014.
+
+A group of chess aficionados, including Viraj, had actively been lobbying the institute, seeking official representation for chess. In 2015, they managed to obtain sufficient funding from the Students Club for Udghosh ‘15 with the help of Rohit Jain (GPT Batch of 2018), who was a member of the Students’ Club Council and would later lead the IITR chess contingent to a bronze medal. After the unfortunate floods in Chennai led to the untimely cancellation of the Inter-IIT meet, meetings were held with the Sangram committee, resulting in the successful inclusion of chess as a sport in the fest for the very first time. This proved to be an important breakthrough.
+
+Following Sangram and into the new session, Chess got an independent expense column in the Students Club thanks to the then Secretary of the Students Club, Suyash Vishnoi and Additional Secretary V. Kalyan, ensuring financial support for the team to participate in Udghosh ‘16 and Inter-IIT. The lack of proper coaching and learning resources was felt by the team, as the performances at the competitions were not up to the mark. This affected the state of the discussions with the ISC, which stalled as a result.
+
+The team worked hard for Udghosh ‘17 and was duly rewarded with the gold medal, with Viraj winning the award for Best Player. By a stroke of good luck, Prof. G.D. Ransinchung, the faculty advisor for the ISC, also became the faculty advisor for the Students Club. He was very supportive of the chess culture, and provided funds for a temporary coach for Inter-IIT Chess Meet ‘17. Viraj’s former coach from Mumbai, FIDE Master Sajandas Joshi joined the team for a 15-day training camp for the Meet, which culminated in a silver medal as already mentioned. This result proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back, as soon afterwards in February 2018 Prof Ransinchung, along with the entire Sports Council unanimously took the decision to include Chess under the ISC.
+
+Now that an official Chess Club has been set up, it is hoped that students don’t face myriad inconveniences and can instead focus on playing chess and representing IITR in different competitions. With a new core team coming in for the upcoming session, the Club plans to take up regular practice sessions, training camps, tournaments and quizzes for chess enthusiasts and promote a healthy chess culture at IITR.
+
+With regards to future engagements as part of the club, there are plans for workshops intended for beginners as well as themed workshops covering tactics, middlegames, endgames among other strategic intricacies. There was an online event conducted in the month of September, an attempt to include more people and with the expectation of another to take place this semester. Rapid tournaments have started taking place on the weekends, with a growing focus on the upcoming fests like Udghosh and Thomso.
+
+Viraj gives a word of advice to anyone looking to learn chess: start with basic queen and rook mates, of which there are plenty of good videos on Youtube. The club regularly conducts events, which provide a great learning experience along with a platform for interaction with really good players. For updates on the same, follow IIT Roorkee Chess on Facebook: [https://www.facebook.com/iitroorkeechess/](https://www.facebook.com/iitroorkeechess/).

_posts/2018-10-09-conversation-with-dr-subra-suresh.md

@@ -0,0 +1,58 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "In Conversation with Dr. Subra Suresh"
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: verbatim
+image: dr_subra_suresh.jpg
+excerpt: "Dr. Subra Suresh is the president of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He has served as the Director of the US government's National Science Foundation, Dean of the School of Engineering at MIT and President of Carnegie Mellon University."
+---
+
+_Dr. Subra Suresh is the president of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He has served as the Director of the US government's National Science Foundation, Dean of the School of Engineering at MIT and President of Carnegie Mellon University. He was invited as Chief Guest at the Convocation '18, where Watch Out had the honour of interviewing him. Here are some excerpts from the interview._
+
+**While you majored in Mechanical Engineering as an undergraduate, you went ahead to specialize in Material Sciences and Metallurgy. Could you highlight some of the barriers in multidisciplinary higher education system in India? What could be done to remove these?**
+
+The barriers between Mechanical Engineering and Metallurgy are very small. I did not have a degree in material sciences, but my work naturally went in that direction. Eventually, I was made the head of the material science department at MIT for 6 years.
+
+However, transitioning between any two other disciplines might not be as easy. I also tried going towards bioengineering, and that was more difficult. The coursework in my time was great in all respects, except that they didn’t have any biology, which made getting into it a little harder.
+
+On the contrary, if you consider thermodynamic machines and cycles, we are looking at liquid-vapor systems, while in material sciences we usually look at solid-liquid systems. The basic underlying thermodynamic principles are the same, so it’s not that difficult to move around.
+
+These problems exist in the United States too. If you are a mechanical engineering student, it is somewhat difficult to move to Material Sciences, either at the undergraduate ot the masters’ level.
+
+**While it might be tougher for the undergraduates in the US colleges to change their disciplines, don’t the students get 1-2 semesters to decide their major?**
+
+This does not happen in all universities. At MIT, the first year is common for everybody. So, you can decide between engineering or neuroscience or business after your first year. But there are still a lot of universities in the US wherein you get into engineering like mechanical engineering, like at the IITs, and there is a provision to switch your major like I did, from Electrical to Mechanical.
+
+**Recently we did an article on professor evaluation forms (the mechanic by which students assess the professors after every semester through a feedback form). We saw that a lot of professors were getting negative responses from the students, and yet, no action was taken, which was (naturally) a great cause of frustration among students. We tried to identify the issues leading to this, and we saw that there were mainly two primary issues: firstly that a lot of professors prefer research over teaching and secondly that often they are forced to teach courses that are not a part of their own field of research. How do universities in Singapore deal with this issue?**
+
+There’s been a shift, at least in the US system and also in NTU, Singapore that I have been emphasizing. In a top research university, you cannot have a divide between teaching and research. Teaching and research have to go hand in hand. So, in some of the top universities in the US, some of the most accomplished researchers also teach freshmen. I think it takes a lot of commitment and passion.
+
+Perhaps in some of the US universities 40 years back, it was that if you were a great researcher but had no interest in teaching, you could go about it without any problem. But today teaching has become one of the criteria, even though it might not be the only criterion, and the institute should emphasise that. At NTU, one thing that I have done as a president is offered the deans lecture opportunities. I am also teaching a masters’ level program voluntarily. I think one of the appealing things about being at a university is the interaction with the young minds and that’s the exciting part.
+
+**You have played an important role in increasing the representation of minorities and women in education in the US. What suggestions would you give to the institutes in India, considering the ongoing debate regarding affirmative action to increase female representation in IITs?**
+
+I don’t know about the Indian Government’s rules, but I can only speak from the US perspective. The motivation behind this is the following. In most of the countries women occupy 50% of the population and hence 50% of the talent pool. The proportion of women in the population might be less for some countries because of the government policies, but mostly they occupy roughly half the population. In the US about 70% of the top ranking students in high school are girls, and both in public and private schools, and they also do well in mathematics and science and so forth. If they are not represented in engineering, then we are losing out on the top talent. Areas like computer science, mechanical engineering are in need of representation of women. In areas like computer science, 18% of the first year students across the country are girls. Women play such an important role in the 21st century, and we cannot have such a small representation. So we did some experiments at MIT, and I think the key things are, at least from our perspective, that we try not to do it through quotas, but instead through something more sustainable in the long term. You need role models; you need professors for women who are good role models for students. Secondly, you have to do extra work to attract talent. When we admit students, they get offers from many different universities. I would offer to make personally call and talk to students whom the departments felt would be a good fit for the university, and it worked. It worked for both genders, but it worked better for women. So, I think there are things we can do, scholarships are one way, and role models and mentoring are very important too.
+
+**In the media, we often hear about how there’s a lot of aspects in which IITs have yet to catch up with foreign institutes, given that IITs are not really well placed in terms of the rankings- let’s say things like the research culture and flexibility of the curriculum. But, from your own experience at IIT Madras, do you think that there’s some ‘USP’ of IITs that differentiates it from foreign universities?**
+
+I graduated a long time ago. IITs today are very different from the IITs back then. At that time, there were only a small number of students, and we pretty much got to know most of them. Besides, our course was for 5 years, so that’s one extra year we had of living together in the hostels. All of them are the top students from the country, and you develop an amazing bond with them. There’s nothing like the bond you develop essentially throughout the 5 years of growing together. At that time, there was not a lot of research being done at the IITs compared to today. The research culture wasn’t developed. We did a lot of projects but they weren’t research projects. And there weren’t a lot of startups like we have today. There was no internet either, it was a completely different world.
+
+One of the reasons why IITs are not amongst the top ranked universities globally is that most of them are mostly based on research metrics. IITs are best known for attracting top students to get a degree who then they go on to do whatever they want. But, I feel it’s going to take time. It requires research support from the government. It requires young faculty members. It’s going to take some time to catch up with the world rankings (and there is a lot to catch up on). It is based on research, how many papers you publish, who reads them, how many patents you make, etc. It depends on the faculty, so if the faculty doesn’t travel abroad nobody is going to know about them. Another matrix is internationalisation of the campus, how many foreign students are there at the campus, how many foreign faculty is there on the campus. In NTU, for example, we have 1500 faculty, of which 70% are non Singaporeans. We have 10,000 postgraduate students, two- thirds of them are non singaporeans. So it’s mostly foreign talent. So we have 55 Germans doing full time PhD at  NTU. Germany has a lot of good universities so I think that’s another factor. The IITs are making an effort but it’s going to take some time and that has nothing to do with the quality of the institution.
+
+**Most of the young professors have done their doctorates and post- doctorates abroad and have been largely successful. In your opinion, should students look to complete their higher education in India itself, or should they look towards foreign universities?**
+
+I think it is very healthy if students do their PhDs elsewhere. Even if they are of Indian-origin and want to come back here for patriotic reasons or family reasons, India has to make it attractive for them by giving them competitive offers, because if they are really good, they will get better offers elsewhere.
+
+**Is there any way in which we can promote collaborations between the industry and the researchers, at least in India?**
+
+In NTU, on campus there is this concept of corporate labs. We have companies like Rolls-Royce, BMW, Alibaba which come on campus to do research with us. Students get to work with them. Something like that can be implemented in India as well. If not in a town like Roorkee, it can be done in the bigger cities. In NTU, we have 23000 students across the 4 years, and we send 80% of them abroad for a semester, to get foreign exposure. We also want foreign students to come. As we speak, there are 250 students from Sweden on our campus and almost an equal number of students from NTU are in Sweden.
+
+**The National Science Foundation which you were heading in the US, has no comparable analogue in India. However, there are a plethora of research funds funded by different ministries/institutes. Which model do you think is better?**
+
+The US model is pretty remarkable. It all started after the second world war. There isn’t a single agency. There are many agencies. So there’s the National Institutes of Health, whose mission is to address diseases. So half of the research is done internally and its organised by disease classes, like National Institute of Cancer, National Institute of Mental Health etc. Then you have NASA for air and space, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), the US Geological Survey and so on.
+
+But what was missing in all of this is the inherent curiosity in research. These were all applications of science. It was argued in the 1950’s that the economy depends on fundamental research and that basic research is best done at universities, where you have the luxury of thinking long-term. Not only are you training young minds for the future, you’re tapping into their enthusiasm to create new ideas. These universities would work closely with the industry and the government, and that it was the government’s responsibility to fund them. This is what created the National Science Foundation. The NSF’s mission is to fund the best people on the best ideas. Leave them alone, so they can develop their ideas. Since 1950, 240 American Nobel Prize winners have had some portion of their Nobel Prize winning work funded by the NSF. That’s the return. We don’t ask them whats the commercial value of their research.
+
+**On a closing note, you’ve mentored a lot of students over the years. Is there any advice you would like to give to the students of IITR, more specifically to the students who’re getting convocated?**
+
+When there is so much societal pressure, people look at getting a degree from an IIT, or any university as a piece of paper which helps you get a job, hopefully a very high paying job. If that’s the reason all of us are striving for a university education, I think we’re missing the point. It is something much grander than this. It's not just about going to classes and getting a diploma, it’s much more than this. And now you guys have many more opportunities than I did through technology. You have access to so much more information, from anywhere in the world. Besides, the IIT brand carries a lot of weight, and not just in India. I would advise you to make the most of that.

_posts/2018-10-09-conversation-with-mr-rc-bhargava.md

@@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "In Conversation with Mr. R C Bhargava"
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: verbatim
+image: suzuki_amped.jpg
+excerpt: "Mr. R C Bhargava is currently chairman of Maruti Suzuki. A graduate of Allahabad University, he topped the 1956 batch of the IAS, and served in the Uttar Pradesh cadre."
+---
+
+_Mr. R C Bhargava is currently chairman of Maruti Suzuki. A graduate of Allahabad University, he topped the 1956 batch of the IAS, and served in the Uttar Pradesh cadre. He later joined Maruti in its nascency as its third employee, and subsequently led the company to its position as the number one automobile company in India. He has been conferred with prestigious civilian awards by both the Indian and Japanese governments. He was invited as Chief Guest at the Convocation '18, where Watch Out had the honour of interviewing him. Here are some excerpts from the interview._
+
+**You were an IAS officer who later switched to Maruti in its formative years. This is an unconventional career path, people generally don’t do this.**
+
+Yes, at the time there weren’t many examples of people leaving the IAS and joining the Public Sector because rules had changed. You could only go for deputation for 2 years. After that, you had to either come back to the cadre or take absorption in the public sector. I was one of the first few who did this.
+
+**Any reasons why you chose to switch to the private sector?**
+
+It wasn’t private sector then.  Initially, the Suzuki stake was only 26% so the company remained a public sector company. That was in 1982. In 1992, it became 50% Suzuki and 50% government. So legally it changed its character and did not remain a public sector company. But with 50% stake of the government, it almost worked like a PSU. The company got listed in 2003 which is when it became a private company.
+
+**Why do you think this career path is so uncommon (going from the civil services to a corporation). Is it because the skill set required is different?**
+
+I’m not sure but I think that one of the factors is that going from the Civil Services to an industry carries a certain element of risk. You are secure with Civil Services, your career path is known to you and your future is virtually mapped out, not much can change. At that time, Maruti was not considered as a normal public sector industry, it was looked upon as a highly political project. Also, not many people expected it to last too many years. So, it was somehow a little more risky than the others. But, I wasn’t particularly enamored by spending my 10 years with the government. I didn’t see any future after those 10 years either because those days are not like today. In 1982, there were very few job opportunities in the private sector as there was virtually no private sector. So there were no job opportunities after retirement. Looking at all of this, I thought to take a risk as it can’t get too much worse than it would be otherwise.
+
+**Were the UPSC examinations as competitive back then as they are now? Nowadays we hear of cases where people spending years and years of their lives trying to crack the Civil Services?**
+
+There weren’t as many tutorials and coaching centres at that time as there are now. The exam was in some way harder because for the IAS, one had to give the three lower papers (three subjects) and then if one wanted to be an IAS or the foreign services, he had to appear for two more papers of higher standards. Whereas, for the other Civil Services, it was just the three lower papers. That has certainly changed now. The exam has become easier but the number of people appearing for it is much larger now. The attraction of the services is still there but actually now the competition to the IAS is much larger from the private sector. Creating things and doing things yourself are much larger outside the government. The government still needs good administration but not beyond the actual areas of admin.
+
+**Maruti has become a household name just like IKEA in Sweden or Samsung in Korea. So your main flagship project throughout all these years must have been the Maruti 800? Do you think that the Maruti 800 started an era of car ownership in urban middle class homes?**
+
+800 is what we started with and it became an enormously popular car at that time. It was almost a status symbol in the first few years, because there was a scarcity and it wasn’t easily available. Later on with the advent of new models, everything became different.
+
+And absolutely! It was the first time that people got a low cost modern car in terms of technology, which drove very well, which had all features that people had not looked at earlier, high degrees of reliability. All of that came for the first time in India. That is why it became so popular, because people were used to Ambassador, Fiat etc. and compared to that it was several levels above in technology. Cars in India had not changed technology since the 50’s. Till the 80’s, it was the same basic technology of cars. And the quality and reliability of cars had only gone down, it hadn’t improved. Then suddenly people got a car which could perform so much better, it had to become popular.
+
+**In the automobile industry nowadays, especially in the US, there is a lot of talk about the self-driving cars and followed by Tesla, even Ford and other big companies are making their own tests. So do you think this has any medium to long term scope in India?**
+
+Well, you have to consider two or three factors in India. First,  there is a huge need for creating employment in India and every year several hundred thousand jobs for drivers are created. For every four or five cars sold, there is one driver. Think of the number of people who rely on driving as their source of employment. When will we be able to afford not having these jobs so that people find alternative employment is a big question mark. The second thing is that if you want to have driverless cars, then the software is based on a certain degree of predictability so as to what people might do in different situations. The behaviour of drivers in India is the most unpredictable. So, I am not quite sure how will we build a software system which could cater to the erratic and unpredictable behaviour of drivers in India. Cutting lanes, people randomly stopping their vehicles on the highways would only create chaos in the system.
+
+**You were involved a lot with Suzuki and Maruti, especially a lot in the formative years at the time when they acquired their stakes and all. So you have seen the automobile industry up close both here and in Japan. Any major differences you see now or you saw back then?**
+
+Not only in the automobile industry, Japan also became a highly competitive nation. It is the most competitive country in the world in terms of its manufacturing industry. Japan has no natural resources (energy, raw materials) and still their products are competitive in the global market. They can ship their products to the US or Europe and they can still beat the local ones. They are able to overcome the cost barrier of import, export, transport etc. Japanese industries manage to do this through human resources working as a single team.The Japanese industry is based totally on team work. Not only with the employees in the company, or labour or management,be it anybody; other associates such as vendors, dealers; industry and the government; industry and the political parties, they all work as one team to promote Japanese industry. None of them believe that the industry is a thief which wants to take out their money, as it happens in India. This is because the industrialists in Japan live a much low-key lifestyle. Their salaries are less, they don’t accumulate wealth as people do in India. They have realised that you can’t take your money with you when you go; it stays behind. And if at all it stays behind, we should think what good can that money do to our children. They have worked these things out very well. The Japanese industry stands very different from the world because of the constant need to be meticulous.
+
+**Do you think it is down to their ethos as a culture or as people to some extent?**
+
+It has become a culture because the people felt the need to become competitive since Japan was totally ruined after the war. Japanese people have a great amount of self-respect. They are very patriotic. They commit ‘harakiri’ which is a ritual in which they kill themselves if they seem to lose faith. After the war, the Japanese actually lost faith and had no other way to regain it. The only way to become competitive again was through economic activities. They decided that if they become the most powerful economy, then they could regain faith which is actually what happened. Japan is a highly respected country not because of their military might, but their economic might. If India wants to grow faster, we’ve got to stop distrusting each other and start to work as a team.
+
+
+**Research in Indian institutes, including the IITs, has been improving a lot in the last decade or so, but yet there remains this perception that research is this thing that academicians pursue in their ivory towers, you know, that it's often unrelated to required real world or commercial applications. The idea of industry-oriented research, the way it happens in the US or in European countries is kind of lacking?**
+
+You want to do research because you want to develop new and better products and technologies, which give customers a better experience. If you do that, then you expect that your company will grow and become more profitable.
+
+In India till 2014 conditions for Industries to grow and be competitive were really quite inadequate. You know if you study our system, industries are the lowest priority of the politicians. Input costs electricity for industry is priced higher than for any other activities. Industry pays the highest, yet gets the last priority.
+
+Things are changing now in certain sectors, it has become competitive with Mr. Modi. The taboo of industry is growing and prospering as gone. He wants industry to grow.
+This is the first time somebody has said that they want the manufacturing sector to grow. The first time that there isn’t any rhetoric against the private sector
+
+**Do you think there is anyway, in which companies like lets say maruti could somehow collaborate with these institutes for research?**
+
+Certainly. Absolutely that’s it there has to be more interaction between the institute's and companies and research has to be taken up.
+
+Apart from the existing theoretical research there should also be more research which is industry oriented.
+
+Here last night, we were discussing that you create patents in the IIT, professors do their research a lot and fight for patent, how many of those patents have become commercial?
+All the research you have done and caught something that you patent, but if it doesn't get used by anybody, then what have you done useful resulted in wastage of your time.
+So that thinking has to change. Academics often don’t think highly of commercial business , instead pursuing knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it can't be the only thing which you push. There has to be some kind of a mix between the knowledge creation and commercialization of knowledge
+
+**What do you think is the most stark difference between India now and India in the eighties?**
+
+Those were the days of control, and the license raj.
+
+So that time you couldn’t do anything without government permission. Imports were not allowed. Today you can import what you want. Those days everything had to be cleared by what is known as director general of technical development. Foreign exchange a huge constraint. And the private sector and money making and becoming rich and all those things were absolutely frowned upon.
+
+Technology of course has made a lot of difference to India that you know things like this.
+
+Everything was in short supply. If you wanted a phone connection you had to wait for years to get a phone. Wanted to buy a car you had to be in for years to buy a car.
+
+When I got to Delhi in 1973, I was in UP and then – mobile for five years, even to buy milk you had to get a permit to get your milk supply. Everything was in short supply. Railway wagons were not available. Telephone calls could not be put through: you had to book a call and wait for your turn before you were connected from Delhi to Kanpur.
+
+These changes are almost unbelievable. One now wonders, how did one manage In those days. This whole computer business didn't exist, internet didn't exist.
+
+**On a closing note, any general advice you would have for students here, especially the graduating students who you will be addressing?**
+
+I think you people here are the elite of India's intelligentsia. by you people I mean in the IITs, and IIMs. You can't leave the task of India's development only to the government. Over many years people in India have built up this attitude. That _ye kaam to sarkaar hai_. Even if it's something to be cleaned ~ _Sarkar karegi_, if there is something not working ~ _Sarkar mein kharaabi hai._
+
+It can’t work that way. If you want this country to become a better country for yourself- and you guys have got 70 years to go- Who will do it for you?
+
+Believe me, the political system won’t. You don't expect things from the government. You have to do it yourself. You have to get involved.
+
+Don't distance yourself.
+
+That is when things will happen.

_posts/2018-10-19-tinkering-lab.md

@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Rethink! The Tinkering Lab, IIT Roorkee"
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: verbatim
+image: rethink1.png
+excerpt: "The Tinkering Lab, also known as the “no curriculum lab”, was inaugurated in March 2016 with the vision to be at the forefront of technological advancements in IIT Roorkee."
+---
+
+The Tinkering Lab, also known as the “no curriculum lab”, was inaugurated in March 2016 with the vision to be at the forefront of technological advancements in IIT Roorkee. To know more about how the last two years have been, we spoke to Prof. Inderdeep Singh, who is the Faculty Lab coordinator, and Anant Vashistha, the Secretary of the newly formed Students’ Body of Tinkering Lab.
+<br><br>
+**After coming into the college, everyone gets briefed about all sorts of labs present in the campus, but the Tinkering lab often remains a mystery. So, to start off, it would be great if you could give us some insight into the tinkering lab.**
+ 
+**Anant:** The Tinkering lab was set up in mid-2016 to serve as a platform to generate innovative ideas. The lab is equipped with several advanced technologies to foster learning and creation. Several types of machinery, tools and facilities have been introduced since then. Currently, we are working on a few new technologies. One is the use of rapid prototyping, which we believe will give birth to new ideas and products.
+All we want is to make the lab equipped enough for young thinkers and innovators to come, tinker and innovate.
+<br><br>
+**Most students are unaware of lab timings and its facilities. Continuing on the same note, when can a student enter and perform projects in the lab?**
+ 
+**Anant:** The lab is operational from 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM during the weekdays. We realise that the timing of the lab is inconvenient for the IITR junta, so we are trying hard for an extended timing, mostly to make the lab operational during the weekends. But as of now, any student can visit and perform projects during the above-mentioned hours.
+ 
+**Prof. Inderdeep:** To open the lab 24X7 has been our primary goal, and with the formation of the Students' Body, this goal is almost achieved. It is quite difficult for us to put in staff members for 24 hours to manage the working of the lab, thus we needed the support of the students. We have planned to hand over the keys to a students' volunteer team, who would make sure that the lab stays functional even during the off hours (when staff isn’t available).
+<br><br>
+**What, if any, technological advancements have taken place in the lab?** 
+
+**Prof. Inderdeep:** The core idea behind starting up such a facility was to give a complementary benefit to what the students were already learning in the classes. At IIT Roorkee, we have a highly structured way of teaching; with a fixed number of tutorials and practicals. At times there are some topics that pique the interest of the students, and one may stumble upon an idea which isn’t a part of the academic curriculum. When you are self-driven towards working on such an idea and building up a product of your own, you would need a place that would provide you with the means to do so and The Tinkering Lab is one such hub at IIT Roorkee.
+
+Campus groups such as Team Robocon, Model and Robotics Section, IITR Motorsports, etc. are fairly active users of the lab. One can gauge the utility of the lab from the fact that when IIT Roorkee secured the second position in the Inter IIT Technical Meet, the Student Technical Council acknowledged the support that was offered by the Tinkering Lab. These are a few contributions of the lab in terms of provision of facilities to the campus groups. We may have not launched a product which can be branded as a product of IIT Roorkee, but the foundation for the same has already been laid. In the due course of time, we may be able to come up with some market-ready products with the help of the TIDES business incubator.
+ 
+We also flagged off the ‘Design Innovation Centre’ recently, with the aim to turn ideas into reality, and create products which could be used by everyone. Apart from this, The Tinkering Lab was chosen as the model centre for the ‘Smart India Hackathon’ because of the facilities available here.
+<br><br>  
+**What role does the Tinkering Lab play in the life of UG/PG students? How has the lab supported the student community of the institute?**
+ 
+**Prof. Inderdeep:** Recently, we have observed many PG/PhD students using the facilities of the Tinkering lab to create products or perform tests and experiments besides their regular research. In other words, they are beginning to think out of the box, trying to develop a certain thought process which would enable them to build products of their own.
+
+The Tinkering Lab is always available to the Students Technical Council. We have supported their projects, be it personal or group, by providing them with the means and tools available in the lab. The lab acts as a wall for the students to rely on, to pursue and build on their ideas.
+
+**Anant:** As of now, more than 60 projects have been supported, and there are around 6 ongoing projects in the lab. These projects include personal projects, projects conducted under the guidance of a professor and Technical Section group projects.
+<br><br>   
+**What are the facilities accessible to the campus junta? Is there any restriction imposed on their use?**
+ 
+**Anant:** There isn’t any restriction on the use of tools and machines in the lab. If someone is interested to work on their product idea, the lab will provide all the tools that they may require to perform their project.
+The lab is equipped with numerous machines and hand-tools. 3D Printers, 3D Scanners, CNC Machine, VMC Machine, are some of the commonly used machines by the students. Other than that, the lab has various computational and electronic facilities, chemicals and a huge workspace.
+<br><br> 
+**There were grievances posted by the student’s community on the SAC IITR Discussion Forum on Facebook about the ill-working of the various types of machinery available in the lab. Why is the maintenance of these facilities poor?**
+ 
+**Prof. Inderdeep:** Up till now, there has been a non-uniform workload distribution on the machines present in the lab. We have a chemical room and a tools room, but they have merely been an exhibition throughout the year. Rapid Prototyping 3D Printing machines are used extensively by almost everyone, thereby leaving less maintenance time.
+
+We have 18 Rapid Prototyping 3D printing machine out of which a few have turned non-functional due to its extensive use. The reason for the machines remaining non-functional is that these machines have been imported, therefore the functional parts that get damaged need to be imported as well and importing such parts take around 15-20 days. In order to tackle the problem of faulty machines, where the students may suffer, we have scheduled the ongoing projects in such a way that the students would always find one idle functional machine out of the available 18. In the Tinkering Lab, we’ve never failed to provide the facilities to anyone who has asked.
+ 
+Purchasing the components of the faulty machines in the market isn’t possible, so whenever we face such a situation we make sure to order the component in a stack so that if some other machine faces the same problem, we wouldn’t have to wait for a long time to get the component replaced. The only downside of ordering components in a stack is the longer time it takes to reach us.
+ 
+Apart from these, the financial model of the Tinkering Lab is not yet fully matured. If we have a complete model of money flow and appropriate resources, then we can easily plan the activities down the year. We are in a process of creating a financial model which would address to all of these issues.
+<br><br> 
+**A new Students' Body has been formed for The Tinkering lab. How will this body be organised, and what are their responsibilities and functions in the lab?**
+ 
+**Prof. Inderdeep:** The organisational structure of the Tinkering lab comprises a Faculty Coordinator, an Assistant Workshop Superintendent, two Project Associates and the Students' Body. The main aim of the body is to act as a link between the student community and the administration of the Tinkering lab. All the problems faced by the students are first addressed to the students’ body before being taken to the administration. They basically are our eyes and ears, staying active on social media to answer the queries of the students and also present in the lab to assist the students in the machine work of the labs. They give feedback to the lab administration about the usability of the equipment present along with the account of the difficulties faced by every visitor.
+ 
+The Students' Body is also responsible to disseminate the information about the labs to the students of the campus. One of the major responsibilities of the body is to know the demands of the students. There might be a group of students who need a new set of machines in the lab to further fine-tune their ideas; in such cases, the Students' Body has to step in and let us know about the requirements of the students.
+<br><br> 
+**As you have stated that the student participation in the tinkering lab is pretty low; what outreach initiative has the Students' Body taken?**
+ 
+**Anant:** Higher student participation has been our primary objective since the inception of the Students' Body. For the same, intro talks and lab visits for all the students have been conducted and a healthy participation was witnessed as well. Moreover, we’ve also conducted a 5 Day workshop (Open to all) on 3D Printing, 3D Scanning, Laser Etching and Wood Milling. We are increasing our team strength for proper execution and organisation for the various events being conducted by the lab. To display everything available in the lab, we wish to fully digitise the Tinkering lab. The first step towards digitisation is the induction of a website, which we will launch soon. We plan to showcase the operation of every machine on our YouTube Channel. LinkedIn and Facebook promotions remain our priority. Other than that, we have planned to conduct Guest lectures, from both academicians and industry experts, organise semesterly competitions and workshops. We would also try to participate in national and international level competitions.  
+<br><br> 
+**Running this place must be a very difficult job, and you would need to have a strong team to pull it through. What sort of challenges are you currently facing? Moreover, what changes have been made after the appointment of the new Students' Body?**
+ 
+**Anant:** The major challenge that the students here face is the time restriction. Lack of student participation is another issue. The maintenance of machines is also a huge concern. 
+After the appointment of the Students' Body in November last year, we have been working on policies to improve the lab. We have started right from the scratch, scheduling events, activities, competitions, keeping our primary objective of more student participation on our minds. We have already supported more than 60 projects with very few people within the restricted time slot and with the increase in participation, we believe the tinkering lab can do wonders with the number of facilities available. 
+<br><br> 
+**You’ve mentioned about launching your website. Could you elaborate on the functions and facilities of the website?**
+ 
+**Anant:** Launching a website will be our first step towards digitisation of the lab. It will contain information on all the machines, tools and facilities available in the lab. Few functions like Digital Inventory column to check the availability of inventory items, Student Portal where students can put up project request, submit reports, etc, Feedback form, Query management system, Idea sharing forum, have already been incorporated into the website. To promote industrial collaboration, we have planned to create a portal for industry experts and companies. All the completed and ongoing projects would be displayed on the website. Anyone who finds interest in any of the projects is welcome to collaborate through the Idea sharing forum.
+We believe that we will be able to launch a fully functional website before the end of this semester, fostering outreach and transparency.
+<br><br>
+**What are your expectation from the Tinkering Lab and the future plans to expand the functioning and facilities inside the lab?**
+ 
+**Prof. Inderdeep:** I believe that there is huge scope in product development in India these days. In my experience, I’ve seen that students create ‘something’ during their B. Tech. years, but that ‘something’ never gets to the real market. I believe with the help of Tides Business Incubator and the Design Innovation Centre (DIC), the students would be able to take their product to the real market. Such projects would be funded by the DIC so that the students are able to make working prototypes and field test the same. Also, the link between the conceptualization of ideas and making it a market product has been missing till now, and this link needs to be bridged with the help of the Tinkering Lab, the DIC and the TIDES.
+My future vision is to make at least 5 different products in the next 2 years, developed in IIT Roorkee, fabricated in the lab, available to the market. I am confident that the students of IIT Roorkee are highly capable of doing so.
+<br><br> 
+**Are there any plans for making the lab self-sustainable? If so, what are the initiatives that you’ve planned to make this happen?**
+ 
+**Anant:** Making the lab self-sustainable is one of our objectives as well. Although we aren’t rushing with it, we would push for industrial collaboration. LinkedIn connections with industry experts and collaboration with groups like CIG will be our first step. Before that, we have several other challenges that we have to work on. A website and an active LinkedIn profile are prerequisites in making the lab self-sustainable.

_posts/2018-11-28-conversation-with-kalpana-saroj.md

@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "In conversation with Ms. Kalpana Saroj"
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: verbatim
+image: kalpana_saroj_1.jpg
+excerpt: "Mr. R C Bhargava is currently chairman of Maruti Suzuki. A graduate of Allahabad University, he topped the 1956 batch of the IAS, and served in the J&K cadre."
+---
+
+*(Before the interview, Watch Out had the opportunity to meet up with Aayush Gupta, the secretary of E-Cell IIT Roorkee. A brief about the initiative taken by E-Cell is as follows)*
+
+*The Entrepreneur Lecture Series is a joint endeavour by TIDES Business Incubator and E-Cell IIT Roorkee to motivate students to pursue their dreams, take risks and explore the opportunities the world has to offer via candid talks from the selected lot of seasoned experts pioneering the core qualities of risk-taking, persistence and a never ending passion to reach their ambitions.*
+
+*The Entrepreneur Series aims at organising talks by various eminent entrepreneurs and distinguished alumni from IITR. The vision behind this series, as stated by the director, is to "stir the minds of the student citizenry of IIT Roorkee and come up with miraculous innovations in varied technical domains. Therefore, in an attempt to upgrade the scope, scalability and innovation of their ideas, I have conceptualised this series to equip the students with the knowledge, industry expertise and experiential inferences of pioneers in the field of entrepreneurship, leadership and other related domains."*
+
+The inaugural speaker of this series was Ms. Kalpana Saroj. Christened the “Original Slumdog Millionaire”, she was born in a destitute locality in Maharashtra and now is the Chairperson of Kamani Tubes in Mumbai, India. Commanding a fortune in excess of 120 millions U.S.D, she is a parable of relentless perseverance overcoming all odds.
+
+Having been appointed as the Board Member of IIM Bangalore recently, she also met with the Director IIT Roorkee Dr. Ajit K. Chaturvedi in the Director’s office. The following are some excerpts from our illuminating interaction with her.
+
+![pic_with_director](/images/posts/kalpana_saroj_2.jpg){: style="width:70%;height:auto"}
+
+**On campus, students get a plethora of opportunities in a variety of fields that they are free to explore. However, this choice often creates problems where students feel disheartened and confused, and quit when their efforts don’t yield results as soon as they hoped they would. How can  students learn to be more patient and perseverant in their endeavours?**
+
+I have seen this problem prevalent among the youth of the country. But they need to understand that constant hard-work, patience and self belief is the only way to make your dreams come true. Life will always have problems to face and issues to be resolved. Some obstacles require incessant toil over long periods of time to overcome and understand. Giving up is a guaranteed road to failure while putting time into something, with or without quick results, creates chances for success. There will come times where your hopes become bleak and you see nothing but the darkness of failure shroud your life but standing strong and having faith in yourself will lead you towards the right direction.
+
+**You have traversed multiple hurdles and problems in your life that we can’t begin to fathom the severity of. Could you tell us more about the struggles you had to face in reaching your current stature?**
+
+I was born in Roparkheda (a village in Maharashtra) to an impoverished family of 3 sisters and 2 brothers, of whom I was the eldest. Under the then existing societal norms, I was married off at the tender age of 12.As a result, I was vindicated of my right to get educated and had to drop out of school in the 7th standard. I was recognised as a bright student and this violent uprooting from school was a harrowing experience. I moved to a slum in Mumbai with my in-laws but suffered abuse and neglect there. Eventually, my father became aware of this trauma and rescued me from those inhumane conditions. I was ostracized by the society for my unsuccessful marriage and even attempted suicide but fortunately, I was rescued.
+
+Determined to work and earn a living for myself, I relocated to Mumbai at the age of 16. The wide streets of a metropolitan cement jungle like Mumbai was daunting for a young, inexperienced girl like me. Rambling in a state of complete helplessness my only aim was to secure a government job but due to my lack of a formal education, inexperience and age I couldn’t make it and had to sustain myself by working as a tailor. This was the first time when I started thinking of a business model. Sewing and working with clothes gave me an avenue where I could earn and bring food to my family’s table.
+
+**You mentioned the roadblocks that the lack of education created in your life. In Spite of this massive disadvantage, you were able to develop a refined arsenal of business acumen and entrepreneurial skills . What enabled you to keep learning?**
+
+तूच आहेस तुझ्या जीवनाचा शिल्पकार
+
+(You are the architect of your life)
+
+Life is full of events and situations which an act as sources of infinite wisdom. Having to find ways out of the multitude of adversities I had to face taught me invaluable lessons on the importance of will power and hard work. I utilised this knowledge in my business dealings and life decisions which eventually lead to good results.
+
+**The  problems you faced are enough to deter even the most inspired of people in the pursuit of their dreams. However you faced them with your head held high and were awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India in 2013. What was the journey from earning a bare sustenance a day to earning one of the most prestigious awards that a citizen can be bestowed with?**
+
+After sewing blouses as a job, I utilized governmental schemes that benefited the marginalized to take a loan of Rs. 50,000 and start my own business. I used to put in 16-17 hours of work everyday, working through each day only on a cup of tea and a single roti. I had lost my sister to a curable disease because my family couldn’t afford the treatment. This taught me the importance of money and also made me empathetic to people who were undergoing similar ordeals. When I gained relative financial stability, I felt deeply moved by the deplorable conditions of those who were unemployed and suffered due to shortage of funds. I took it upon myself to create an organisation - Sushikshit Berozgar Yuvak Sanghatana, that would cater to the needs of these unemployed people. I brought together collectors, bank managers and officials associated with welfare schemes under an umbrella who educated the youth about these schemes via the channel of this organisation; they were educated on how to solicit as well as how to repay loans. As this organization’s influence increased, I was approached by a group of workers from Kamani Tubes who wanted assistance to prevent the business from a total collapse.The government had transferred the ownership of the company to these workers but due to a lack of managerial experience, they were struggling. Many voices told me that it was suicide to put money in such a failing enterprise After all, many industrialists and big firms had capital but no one was willing to invest. After assuming a leadership role in the company, I brought it out of a debt of Rs. 116 crore as well as over 140 litigations at a fraction of the time predicted. The workers who were on the brink of getting their livelihood stolen were given back their money with the company becoming a booming success. As a symbol of gratitude they entitled me with the tag of “Maa Bhawani”.
+
+The government took cognizance of my efforts and toil by honouring me with a Padma Shri, for Trade and Industry in 2013. I became the first member of my community to reach this pinnacle. It was at that moment when I could feel my shackles break and wanted to spread my wings to fly free above the clouds.
+
+**Even after your life was riddled with hardships and problems, you still took definitive steps to improve the condition of the people who are often neglected by society. How do you think society can become more selfless and collectivistic? Also, what are some future plans you have in mind?**
+
+Everyone indulging in business activities works on the incentive of profit. This is how businesses have always worked and will always work. However, my approach to business has an added dimension of philanthropy and humanism. I try look out for ways of how I can improve the world around not only for me, but for everyone else as well. I have undertaken some projects with the same philosophy in mind.
+
+One of my initiatives is to build a well equipped aviation school in the country.On observing the issues that my son faced during his training as a pilot, I decided to work towards addressing this problem. India severely lacks in the equipment and technology that realises the training of aviation students forcing them to enter overseas flight schools. This costs heavy expenditure and leads to the draining of our country's economy. Our vision is to ensure that every student gets quality education in India itself. We are working with the government and various airlines firms to systemize the resources and strategies.I have also been involved in creating shelters(Nandini apartments) for women that are shunned and ostracized by society into a dark corner, with the aim of providing them a means to rebuild their lives. We provide community housing to these suffering women where they live without rent, provisions of food and healthcare and an environment to bring them out of the trauma and helplessness they faced.
+
+In my new capacity as the Board Member of IIM Bangalore, I look forward to facilitate fruitful collaboration between various industries.
+
+**Given the intensive nature of your undertakings, how do you unwind after a hard day at work?**
+
+When you have to work throughout the day and at times, even through the night, you rarely have time for leisure. I find pleasure in my work and am always on the prowl to get more documents ratified, more meetings concluded etc. I do like to listen to music and when I feel dejected and upset, uplifting melodies remind me to keep moving forward.
+
+When I was in school as a child, my classroom walls bore quotes and aphorisms that catalysed optimism and motivation in me. I still recall them fondly.
+
+**On a closing note, Is there any advice you would like to give to the students of IIT Roorkee?**
+
+All students of the IIT must realise that they are at the cusp of doing brilliant and impactful things. They should realise that they belong to a progressed era, they have access to the best resources and the society encourages them to learn and do wonders. I faced a time when the society was always pushing us down, parents didn't want to educate us and poverty wrapped its arm around me tightly. Now, the internet is full of information for anyone to grow and blossom new talents and ideas. If a person who has faced hardships like me can create a positive impact on society, any person with a firm resolve and intention of making a change can do so. What one needs, is the will to change, the will to do something and the guts to walk on the chosen path despite the obstacles.
+
+The only thing that holds us back are our apprehensions of what might go wrong and the fear of failure. This apprehension is what prevents us from putting ourselves wholly into the task at hand. I used to detest nightfall as it meant the day had ended and I couldn’t get more work done.This is the kind of unflinching devotion that culminates in the fulfilment of a dream
+
+This is the kind of fire you need to kindle within yourself.
+
+*\*\*The interview was conducted in Hindi. The above is a translated dialogue.*

_posts/2018-12-07-anushruti.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Anushruti"
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: bigstory
+image: anushruti4.jpg
+excerpt: Nestled in a silent corner right at the entrance of IIT Roorkee, Anushruti - Academy for the Deaf was established on November 11, 1989 at IIT Roorkee (the erstwhile University of Roorkee).
+---
+
+Nestled in a silent corner right at the entrance of IIT Roorkee, Anushruti - Academy for the Deaf was established on November 11, 1989 at IIT Roorkee (the erstwhile University of Roorkee). Originally founded as the Roorkee School for the Deaf by Prof. S. C. Handa, a professor at the Department of Civil Engineering, it was later renamed to Anushruti.  The word ‘Anushruti’ is an amalgamation of ‘anu’(small) and ‘shruti’(sound), and throughout its altruistic journey of 29 years, Anushruti has been actively engaged in the nurturance of children with hearing impairments. It started operations with Mrs. Handa being the first president and their son being the first student.
+ 
+One of the primest and noblest social initiatives of IIT Roorkee, it is the first such organisation catering to the hearing-impaired to be based within an institute of national importance.
+
+Watch Out spoke to Mrs. Parvati Pandey and Dr. Tashi Nautiyal about the philosophy behind the school, its functioning and about help it could use from students of the institute.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/anushruti1.jpg){: style="width:80%;height:auto"}
+
+## The philosophy behind anushruti
+
+Formed with the motivation to help children born with aural impediments adjust and rejoin mainstream society, the school is dedicated to bringing such people under its ambit.
+
+For an unattended hearing impaired child, the process of learning and comprehending unfamiliar concepts is a daunting task. Having their faculty to hear and articulate words underwhelmed leads to a multitude of cognitive barriers, ranging from limited vocabularies to an inability to grasp complicated sentences. Another pressing concern is the prevalent lack of understanding and diagnosis of these problems by parents. Because hearing issues aren’t obvious and readily identifiable, they often go unnoticed and ignored until it’s too late, exacerbating them. These issues necessitate interventionist measures to adapt and change educational techniques so that the development of these children is ensured to be at par with the mainstream. This is where specialised schools come into the picture.
+
+Anushruti has taken up the initiative of providing free assistance to these children at the tender avenue of pre-primary school, where the impact of adaptive education is most profound. The school provides full fledged education, ranging from pre-nursery to class 8, upto which it is registered. Due to the students’ unique requirements, they are also supported through class X and XII if the institution is approached. The school also functions to provide a moral and emotional support system to its beneficiaries, catering also to the students who have graduated from the school for their professional and personal needs.
+
+Anushruti is also engaged in providing free diagnostic, audiometric and speech therapy facilities to the community. The intention is to develop a centre which may provide free diagnostic and therapeutic consultancy regarding aural and oral problems to the proximate demographic of people residing in nearby areas. The audiologist-cum-speech therapists associated with Anushruti, working in tandem with interns from the Himalayan Hospital, Jolly Grant, are agents that actuate this humanitarian vision.
+
+## Methodology
+
+![pic](/images/posts/anushruti5.jpg){: style="width:80%;height:auto"}
+
+### A) Admission process
+
+The process begins with the filling of an application form, made available free-of-cost at the school’s office. Awareness for the same is generated by educational drives, visits to areas to make people cognizant and by personal reference of students who might benefit from the architecture of the system put in place by the school. In supplement to these awareness drives, volunteers from NSS, IIT Roorkee also intimate the school’s authorities about students which can be helped by the school. Prospective students and their kin then have a direct interaction with the school’s team, intended for comprehensive evaluation of the prospectus and informing their parents about Anushruti’s philosophy and methodology. As these students are primarily from impoverished and destitute backgrounds, the team tries to make hesitant parents assured and comprehensive of the holistic development actuated by the school . Their apprehension regarding transport, funds, future scope etc. are accommodated and placated via intensive counselling sessions to ensure that support and help reaches those who direly need it.
+
+### B) Integration into the school 
+
+Grade-appropriate knowledge of subjects are tested via standard tests, whereas short selection tests are deployed for audiological and psychological evaluation, according to which classes are allotted temporarily. The student’s dexterity, adaptability and comfort in the classes’ environment are assessed before their teaching scheme is finalised.
+
+### C) Teaching scheme
+
+![pic](/images/posts/anushruti2.jpg){: style="width:80%;height:auto"}
+
+The institution relies on modern technology and methods to help these children learn better. Standard speech and auditory equipment is complimented by computer-aided speech development systems. (Loop Induction System, Electronic Learning Wheel to name a few.) Communication is built on oral-aural techniques with supplementary usage of sign language. These techniques are used with the aim of holistically developing the student by providing mediums to engage in multifarious activities like art, craft and poetry parallel to routine education. These efforts are realised by skill and vocational development workshops covering dramatics, choreography, computer education, apparel designing, accessory designing and miming among other fields. 
+
+Primary education follows a specifically crafted syllabus tailored to the esoteric requirements of the students. The rest of the school’s curriculum is based on NCERT guidelines.
+
+## Milestones
+
+At the time of writing, 88 students are enrolled in the school, coming from nearby localities such as Deoband, Roorkee, Saharanpur, Shamli and Muzaffarnagar. The farthest serviced location is 120 KM from the school, with the child using public transport to travel the distance with their parent as an escort. So far, a total of 286 students have registered in the institution, whereas the efforts to provide audiometric evaluations and counselling have benefitted 4940 individuals.
+
+Students have participated in a multitude of sports events including The Regional Abilympics (Organized by the  National Abilympic Association of India, New Delhi), and have showcased commendable talent in regional and district cultural competitions, with participation in national events as well.
+
+## Community based- financial model
+
+The school is structured as a community based establishment, with most of its finances being sourced from donations.Though it began as a social initiative of IIT Roorkee, the institute doesn’t have formal financial obligations to the school. In their stead, IIT-R facilitates these benefactions by making them 100% tax-free (under Section 80-G) if made through the Institute Registrar. Anyone can contribute financially to the school’s cause via this channel.
+
+Companies,industrialists and enterprises that visit Roorkee during Thomso and Cognizance also often donate to the school as a part of different fundraising initiatives. 
+
+Rallies and deaf-awareness events bring to focus the requirements of hearing impaired children and encourage the community to contribute in some way to the upheaval of these children so that they can have a shot at a luminous future.
+
+Being independent from the governmental machinery enables efficient utilisation of collected funds and ensures that they are wholly channeled to the students in need.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/anushruti3.jpg){: style="width:80%;height:auto"}
+
+## Administrative structure
+A team of dedicated teachers and educators trained and specialised in interacting with hearing impaired children are involved in Anushruti’s endeavours. The teachers don’t function on a fixed time table as the curriculum of primary education for these students varies and is different from regular students. 
+On the administrative front, the Director, IIT Roorkee is a patron while the Vice-President, Manager, Joint-Manager and Treasurer are faculty members of the institute. The constitution of Anushruti has been drafted by personnel from IITR and was ratified by the Board of Governors. The Managerial Committee is required to submit the the annual reports and audited balance sheets to IITR.
+
+## Relations with IIT-R
+The community of IIT is also actively engaged with the school’s working. Certain faculty members have ‘adopted’ students; the expenses incurred as part of the child’s education are borne by them. Coaches from the institute also interact and guide students having a penchant for sports. As mentioned previously, students from NSS contribute by intimating the school about students that can be helped. Moreover, the Department of Management Studies organizes the annual  ‘Deaf Awareness Week-BHOR’ every September. On one occasion, students from the Architecture Department visited the school interacted with the pupils who had a gala time forging new friendships.
+
+The school motivates IIT Roorkee students / faculty to undertake research on the development of latest technologies to develop assertive devices and other educational teaching aids, various software's, teaching learning material and appliances to help educate and train hearing impaired children.
+
+Through an in-school gift shop, the school also engages in selling a variety of artistic creations from its students such  greeting cards, dolls, toys and a whole paraphernalia of gorgeous objects. These works are available for purchase by anyone who wants to contribute, they need only reach the school via the designated contact number.
+
+The school will greatly benefit from technical inputs from IIT-R’s community, which include volunteerism to take these children under tutelage and assist the school in its endeavours. The school is always on the lookout for such people, and anyone who wants to lend a helping hand towards making the world a brighter and more jubilant place for these children just have to bring their motivations to the notice of the school .
+
+_The official website of anushruti: <span style="color:#0645AD">[iitr.ac.in/RSD/]( https://www.iitr.ac.in/RSD/)</span>._

_posts/2018-12-24-choreo-section.md

@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Know Your Cult: Choreography and Dance Section"
+image: choreo2.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: interiit
+---
+
+_With the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet being just a few days away, all cult sections are busy practising away. Watch Out dropped by each section of the Cultsoc to get a sneak peek into their practise regime and to find out their expectations from the meet._
+
+**Give an insight into your performance and the practise sessions.**
+
+The majority of our routine is what we performed in Thomso, along with new impressive additions like ‘Stomping’, in which there is no music and we create our own beats with claps and taps. We have used interesting props which will add sensation to our performance.
+We have a team of 28 people, each performing 7-8 songs on an average. We started our practices from August-September. Initially sessions lasted 3-4 hours but they now stretch to 9-10 hours or even more.
+
+**How do you manage your contingent dynamics and keep your team motivated?**
+
+Our team has members from all the years. We all love dancing and revel in it. We live for that moment when we perform on stage and it is very special for us. Talking about the bigger picture, there is no personal benefit from cultural activities but we do it for our respect of the art and our passion constantly drives us.
+
+**What do you feel is the difference between the Cult in other IITs and IITR?**
+
+I believe that in Roorkee, the junta is more career oriented. If you look at Bombay, Delhi etc they are more zealous and comprehensive. I have been involved in Cult for the past three years now, and I see students drifting away and it is getting weaker. Quality has definitely improved but comprehensiveness and enthusiasm are decreasing.
+
+**How does a platform like inter IIT affects the growth of your section?**
+
+We always existed as a group and used to perform in Thomso and Jashn but Inter-IIT has pushed us to become performers and work towards improving the levels of our dancing. It has incorporated professionalism with dancing we get a competitive environment and an exhibit of the Culture in our sister IITs which compels us to better and match their levels.
+
+**What are your expectations from the competition this year?**
+
+As we are the host IIT, we definitely want to win. We are experimenting with new things, pushing our limits and working hard. From our last performance, we have set a benchmark that we have to surpass. We have great competitors. So it's definitely challenging, a mix of nervousness and enthusiasm.
+
+**So out of all the events that are under your section, which one is the most challenging to prepare for?**
+
+We have Group Dance, Duet and Street Battle. The group dance is the most challenging one because we have to coordinate between a large no of people and it yields the maximum points.
+
+**What support have you received from the institute, for the inter IIT?**
+
+The institute has been supportive. They have provided us with the props, good quality costumes, money and everything. We are not restricted from trying new things.
+
+**As far as the Choreography and Dance Section is concerned, do you think our institute is infrastructurally and technically equipped to host an inter IIT event?**
+
+Well yes, we do lack in infrastructure. Our section performs in the Convocation Hall which has a marble stage. It is not meant for dancing and it is scientifically flawed from the audience point of view as well. The Mac Audi has a smaller stage with less sitting capacity.
+
+![The team](/images/posts/choreo1.png){: style="width: 100%;"}
+
+**Give us some insights into the fun that you guys have in the long practice sessions.**
+
+There are a lot of interesting personalities in our group who are fun to be with.The dance room is full of laughter, jokes. When we get tired of our routines we dance off-beat on random songs which is really tough and fun.
+
+**So any ending remarks and message for the incoming teams?**
+
+Roorkee hosting the Inter-IIT has been instrumental in improving our section’s quality in terms of resources as well as performance. We are excited to see what happens this year. We are working hard and well prepared. We're really looking forward to seeing our competitors, knowing they'll come with all guns blazing but yeah Beware!

_posts/2018-12-24-culinary-council.md

@@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Know Your Cult: Culinary Club"
+image: culinary1.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: interiit
+---
+
+_With the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet being just a few days away, all cult sections are busy practising away. Watch Out dropped by each section of the Cultsoc to get a sneak peek into their practise regime and to find out their expectations from the meet._
+
+**Tell us about the events under your section in Inter IIT.**
+
+We have two events. The first is the Tag Team Challenge. Each team will comprise of two members. During the hour-long cooking challenge, the team members will have to switch in every 15 mins. The second event is making a complete 3-course meal (starters, main course and dessert) within a time limit of 2 hrs. The list of ingredients will be same for both the events. The teams are allowed to bring their own equipments if they require but the list of ingredients is fixed.
+
+**This is Culinary Club’s debut in the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet. How has the response been so far?**
+
+None of the other IITs has a culinary club. So it was a challenge to encourage them to participate since they lack proper teams and resources. But now many teams are up for it and they are excited to try this for the first time.
+
+**What was your motive behind introducing cooking to Inter-IIT platform?**
+
+We want every IIT to have its own Culinary Club. Food is an integral part of any culture. So a Cultural Meet without the element of food is sketchy. The inter-IIT platform is likely compel other IITs to kickstart their own culinary clubs. This will flourish the culture of food and it will be taken more seriously.
+
+**How are you sourcing the ingredients and other essential equipments for your events?**
+
+Everything is being arranged by the Inter-IIT core team. We have sent them the list of all the ingredients, pots and pans, knives, spoons and chopping boards that we’ll be needing. The vegetables and fruits will probably come from the campus messes.
+
+**Give us an insight into your practice sessions.**
+
+We recently got the canteen space in the new SAC building to practice and set up our instruments and ingredients. We practise for 4-5 hours daily. It involves a lot of discussion as to what should be cooked, which flavours to work on, what should be the sequence of our dishes etc. We have selected dishes that are less risky since there are high chances of screwing up under the pressure during competitions.
+
+**Who will be judging these events?**
+
+Jayanandan Bhaskar, MasterChef Season-1 runner-up is one of the judges. He came to judge in Thomso as well.
+
+**What were the challenges you faced during Thomso?**
+
+It was a test run to see what problems can arise while organising a cooking competition. There was some miscommunication with caterers so at the last hour we had to arrange everything from the induction cooktops to the venue at LHC (about which the professor wasn’t too happy. )
+
+**Cooking competitions involve many contingencies, say the dish gets burnt. What are your emergency plans for dealing with it?**
+
+We have selected dishes with minimum risk, less cooking time and can be prepared in bulk. So, we’ll be making, say 3 batches in one go and then serve the best one. Also, we have the arrangements of basic first aid for burns, cuts etc.
+
+**How has been the support of SAC, the Inter-IIT core team and the administration?**
+
+Ours is an equipment-intensive group. Financially, the administration hasn’t been very helpful. SAC has been more supportive. We got initial funding of 50,000 for our café and all our things have been purchased from it. The funds are sufficient for our event.The contractors will be providing the stoves for the flame-based cooking and we have 7-8 induction-cooktops as a backup.
+
+**Your club is still in its nascent stage. How an event like Inter-IIT helpful for the growth of your group?**
+
+Many students on the campus are still unaware of the existence of our group.Through, Inter-IIT they’ll get to know more the section.Cooking is an essential part of our life. At some point in life, you have to cook and it’s good that students learn it during their college years.
+
+**Tell us about your plans for the student-run café.**
+
+It will open every Saturday and Sunday and students will cook a single dish on a particular day. Cleanliness will be our topmost priority. We want to be responsible about what we serve. Also, at least once a month, we’ll cook especially for the Africans. Africans in our campus struggle a lot with the food. The species, the kind of rice, the vegetables etc doesn’t suit them. We’ll try to cook Tapioca and plantains which can be procured from Delhi.
+
+**What are your expectations for the inter-IIT events?**
+
+The participating teams are all charged up. Every other day, we receive their messages asking doubts which shows they are prepping well. I feel elated about putting in the efforts. It will be fun!
+
+**Any message to your competitors?**
+
+It’s a Food War. Let’s gear up and give our best!

_posts/2018-12-24-dramatics-section.md

@@ -0,0 +1,62 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Know Your Cult: Dramatics Section"
+image: drams1.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: interiit
+---
+
+_With the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet being just a few days away, all cult sections are busy practising away. Watch Out dropped by each section of the Cultsoc to get a sneak peek into their practise regime and to find out their expectations from the meet._
+
+**Tell us what are the events are under your section?**
+
+Under the category of dramatic arts we have 3 kinds of events- stage play& street play, these are group competitions where we participate in teams of 20-30 and monologue where a single person performs.
+
+**Give us an insight into your practices for the cultural meet.**
+
+For the street play, we are continuing over our semester play. We are already prepared for it and just improving on places where we lacked, how it was perceived by the audience and other minor details.For the stage play, we have selected an entirely new script. Practise for stage play goes on from morning till 12 at night. It involves a lot of work, choosing the scripts, writing dialogues, working on the characters, music selection, setup etc. For the street play, we practise from morning to evening, before the sun sets, in the ABN ground. After this, the street play members work as the non-cast for the stage practice in OP Jain Auditorium.
+
+**Are only original plays are allowed or adaptations can be performed?**
+
+Both adaptations and original plays are allowed but they do not have any marks for the script. Marking will be on acting and direction, creativity and overall impact through music, lights, costumes and stage.
+
+**In the process of preparing the play which is the most challenging and difficult task?**
+
+Everything requires a lot of hard work but I would say it’s in terms of direction and acting where all the IITs would be at par. So, to be a step ahead we are experimenting with our creativity, music and light. Execution of the idea is the most important task.
+
+![The team](/images/posts/drams2.png){: style="width: 100%;"}
+
+**Being the host contingent the advantages and disadvantages that you face.**
+
+Advantages as a host contingent are that you have a very good idea of the stage, the props, furniture etc. We are getting good resources, we have bought a new xylophone, the OP Jain stage is getting revamped and the lights are also improved. The disadvantage is that you lose a part of the team who are are helping with the organising of the cultural meet and that we are not getting to go to another place (laughs).
+
+**So, is it a pressure or an excitement to be the host?**
+
+I wouldn’t say it’s any extra pressure. If we were going to any other IIT we would have put in the same amount of effort that we are putting in now.
+
+**Till now how has been the support of the administration and the Inter IIT core team and what are the problems you faced?**
+
+Regarding the rules and resources we got a good amount of support but infrastructurally one of the biggest problems is that we have to practise besides the Choreography Section and they play loud music which causes a lot of inconveniences. Also, another problem we face being in Roorkee is that it is difficult to arrange the costumes and props. We try to arrange it locally or get it stitched from the tailor. Similarly, it is difficult to get a wig so we even ask people to shave their head off.
+
+**Comparing to the previous editions, what challenges you faced that you are trying to overcome in this performance?**
+
+We haven’t won any place in the street play yet, so of course, we are collecting everything from the winning teams that we missed and combine all of those to execute our idea.
+We won the second position in the stage play last year and we went to the judges who told us the places where we lagged like a few costumes didn’t go well, a few places where acting could have been better etc. So have all the points in our mind and trying our best to execute them.
+
+**How does an inter-IIT platform aids in the improvement of your section?**
+
+We have always been performing semester plays which are for the campus Janta, an audience which does not know much about dramatics and nobody to judge. But Inter-IIT is a competition and it comes with pressure. We tend to act differently under pressure and try to be the best version of ourselves. There are professional Judges who will observe the details and technicalities and there are teams who are also part of dramatics section of their college.We get an opportunity to see where we stand, where we lag, where we are good and this overall helps in our growth.
+
+**In previous versions, you have faced problems in the management, so what do you think that Roorkee must improve on?**
+
+Last year in the event there was no coordinator from The Dramatics Section during the dramatics events. When we had issues with the lights we needed someone from the section who knows about the technical details to help. This created a big problem and so we are trying to ensure this does not happen here.
+
+![The team fun](/images/posts/drams3.png){: style="width: 100%;"}
+
+**You might have good days and bad days, so how do you deal with the bad days?**
+
+Well, we laugh at mistakes. I think that any of the cult activity has a lot of energy associated with it. When something is not going good in a stage play then we go and see the practice of the street play where they will be singing the chorus and so you get the energy from people around you Any kind of blunder becomes a joke. For example, if there is an intimate scene between two characters it’s usually funny to see the actors getting awkward and laughing but we have to maintain professionalism.
+
+**Any ending remarks?**
+
+Go for Gold ! We will give our best.

_posts/2018-12-24-music-section.md

@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Know Your Cult: Music Section"
+image: music1.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: interiit
+---
+
+_With the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet being just a few days away, all cult sections are busy practising away. Watch Out dropped by each section of the Cultsoc to get a sneak peek into their practise regime and to find out their expectations from the meet._
+
+**How have been your practices for the Inter-IIT so far?**
+
+We practice from the afternoon all the way till midnight or sometimes even later.. It’s Inter-IIT so we are targeting higher, beyond what we do regularly in our shows. So yeah, it’s strenuous and it is demanding a lot from us.
+
+**What are the events that come under the music section in Inter-IIT?**
+
+There are three events. First is solo singing – two participants from each IIT. And there’s “Pair on Stage’.The team consists of a pair and they can do anything, like they can sing, loop, play the guitar etc and be as creative as possible.The last is our Band Performance which is most challenging as there are a lot of people and it's difficult to maintain synchronisation.
+
+**So what do you think about your competition? Is it tough this time around?**
+
+It is extremely tough this time. Madras and Kharagpur are both extremely intimidating and strong teams. And we hope we beat them this time.In both the previous editions, we have been second. We will be trying our best to change that this time for the better.
+
+![The team ](/images/posts/music2.png){: style="width: 100%;"}
+
+**What problems have you faced, especially with respect to for Inter-IIT, considering you have only one room and so many different events?**
+
+The number of rooms is not really a constraint. The solo singing is something which we can practice at our own rooms also. We just need a tabla and a vocalist. So the room is not a constraint.
+
+**How has been the infrastructural and the technical support from the institute and Inter-IIT team?**
+
+Our chief advisor has been quite supportive. And in terms of equipment, we can’t ask for more. We just purchased a guitar and drum set. It’s very crucial for this event. We requested some special audio setup for the event as well, hoping that we will get it. Inter IIT team too is quite co-operative as well.
+
+**What were the challenges that you faced previously, that you are hoping to overcome or avoid this time?**
+
+We haven’t always found any new challenge. The challenges have remained same; getting a good mix and completing everything under a time constraint. If that doesn’t come right, the event doesn’t go well.
+
+**So who are the judges this time?**
+
+I don’t think it has been revealed yet. We have just given our proposal to the core team for the judges.
+
+**You have long practice hours. So how do you maintain the contingent dynamics among yourselves?**
+
+Everyone is quite motivated by themselves. We don’t have a lot of other things to do during vacations so we devote our time to the section and work towards putting an electrifying performance.

_posts/2018-12-26-audio-section.md

@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Know Your Cult: Audio Section"
+image: audio1.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: interiit
+---
+
+_With the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet being just a few days away, all cult sections are busy practising away. Watch Out dropped by each section of the Cultsoc to get a sneak peek into their practise regime and to find out their expectations from the meet._
+
+**What are the events under your section in the cult meet?**
+
+The only event that the audio section is managing is the DJ Battle which is introduced for the first time in the cultural meet.
+
+**What is a DJ battle?**
+
+Basically,the job of a DJ is to play music according to the mood of the crowd,There are a lot of techniques to accomplish this and different DJs use different ones. For example, club DJs try to stick to the mood of the public and raise the tempo of the songs being played. Then there are turn tabelists, radio DJs who play theme specific songs or a playlist. Since this is a competition, the participants will be judged on several criteria like scratching, faders, the techniques we use, and so on. The interaction with the crowd would be a major factor in judging.
+
+**Will the competition have a crowd dancing to your beats?**
+
+Basically we’ll be facing a crowd and their reactions will be the basis of the points that we get.
+
+**Will the crowd will be casual or staged?**
+
+The crowd will be the general populace from all of the IITs. We expect a heterogeneous public since the competition will be on the UG floor.
+
+**Tell us about your practice sessions for DJ battle.**
+
+We are preparing specific mixes that we’ll be performing there. I, for example, will be using a launchpad in my performance. It helps in building a drop or mixing songs and it gives a beat to the music.
+
+**What goes behind all the preparations for the competition?**
+
+First, we decide what type of songs we want. Some attention also needs to be paid to the beats-per-minute (BPM) of the songs. You cannot mix any two songs randomly. They must have the same BPMs. There has to be a connection between the songs that we are mixing, and the list is prepared accordingly. We can also arrange songs in a way so that the public can feel the tempo rising, having it start off slowly and then pacing till the major drop comes. Then, we also have to take care of the mood. We have to give time to the crowd to relax, so the songs cannot be too fast and there have to be moments in the mixes where we can actually interact with the crowd. So, these are things we try to manage behind the walls.
+
+![The team](/images/posts/audio2.png){: style="width: 100%;"}
+
+**What is the contingent size?**
+
+There can be at most two members in a team, and two teams from each IIT are allowed.
+
+**You need a lot of instruments for DJing. What was the technical support you received from the inter IIT team and the administration?**
+
+We have a controller which is similar to the DJ system that will be provided in the competition. We give commands, and the system performs actions accordingly. However, it will be a challenge in switching to the actual system from the controller.
+
+**What were the challenges you faced while practicing?**
+
+The actual DJ setup is quite expensive so we won’t be provided with that. We will be given a specific instrument a day before the actual competition and 1 hour practice slot is allotted for every team. So, we’ll only have that time for practice on the actual system we will be using.
+
+**What are your expectations from the competition?**
+
+We are expecting a boost in the section name after the competition. It’ll also be a great experience for us, along with providing a much needed exposure.
+
+**How is the DJ culture in other IITs?**
+
+Since the setup is really expensive, it is not very popular. However, most people are really into DJing on an individual level.
+
+**Any ending remarks or message to the incoming teams?**
+
+I would like to wish them luck. Although we are suffering from a lack of technical support, but we certainly hope to give them the time of their lives.

_posts/2018-12-26-cinematic-section.md

@@ -0,0 +1,59 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Know Your Cult: Cinematic Section"
+image: cinesec1.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: interiit
+---
+
+_With the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet being just a few days away, all cult sections are busy practising away. Watch Out dropped by each section of the Cultsoc to get a sneak peek into their practise regime and to find out their expectations from the meet._
+
+**What are the events that come under your section and give a brief detail about it.**
+
+We have two events, one is the online short film making competition and other is the offline short film making competition. In the online competition the topic is given one month prior and in the offline competition the topic is given on spot on which the movie is to be made in 48 hours. Everything needs to be done in those 48 hours starting from the story, scripting, shooting and the editing. This year we have a screenwriting competition as well which is right after the offline film making competition. We are supposed to write a 3 minute screenplay on the given topic.
+
+**Talking about the online short film making competition have you guys prepared the movie?**
+
+Yeah, we have submitted our movie. This year the theme was ‘The show must go on’. The theme was given on 7th November and after our end sems we started developing the story and the script. We prepared 3 to 4 scripts and then picked the best one. The shooting was mainly done in the campus and some shots were taken outside. We got help from Jha sir . We used his apartment for one of our scenes. Our movie is around 13 minutes. The shooting was completed around 14th December and it took us one week for the editing.
+
+**How long were the shooting hours and how big is the contingent?**
+
+Actually, the pre-production part is more than the shooting. So, the most important part of film making process is the scripting and the actors. We first prepared the script and chose the actors from the dramatics section and our section
+
+**So, what does the platform of Inter IIT mean to your section in terms of growth and exposure?**
+
+In the first Inter IIT cultural meet at Bombay we won the Film and Media Category. From there on, being the first winners, we have always been excited about the event and we always look forward to it. Moreover it’s much better than what we do during the course of year. It’s Inter IIT, it‘s competitive, we try to outperform other IIT’s and it brings the best out of us.
+
+**You might have had good and bad days. How did you guys manage the bad days and what were the team dynamics throughout the process?**
+
+Most of the problems were before we started shooting, because it is very difficult to choose 1 script from 3-4 scripts that members come up with. Whoever has made the script fights for it and lots of discussions happen. And after that the pre-production because before we shoot everything has to be decided. Ideally the shoot must take the least time as everything is pre planned. With some many ideas it’s difficult to incorporate all and make the best out of it.
+
+![The team](/images/posts/cinesec2.png){: style="width: 100%;"}
+
+**How was the support from the administration and the Inter IIT cultural team?**
+
+We wanted an apartment to shoot. Jha Sir is the first person we go to in such cases. He readily agreed and in fact he even prepared lunch for the entire team. We were there for around four hours in his apartment and after the shoot he prepared lunch and that was fun. But we lack a dedicated room for our section where we can store our equipments and work together. It would have helped us a great deal if we had one.
+
+**What are the preparations for the offline completion?**
+
+There’s nothing much to prepare as such because we are given the topic on the spot and unless we know the topic we can’t really do anything. We have participated in the 48-hour filmmaking before so we know what goes into it and the kind of mindset required. I think all of us are ready for it. There are 15 people in the team and all of them have been to at least one such competition.
+
+**Compared to previous Inter IIT meets how do you think this will be different?**
+
+It’s definitely better, partly because this is the third time and also because it is our home campus. So it’s much simplified and we know what to do regarding administrative roadblocks and getting the things we want. In 48-hour film making we definitely have an advantage as we know the locations pretty well and we can shoot easily, because in previous editions we had to scout for locations as well in the given time. We can definitely sense some home advantage but the rest is pretty even.
+
+**So being the host is an advantage rather than extra pressure to perform.**
+
+There is pressure and it‘s fun, after all it is competitive and we definitely want to outperform when we are the hosts.
+
+**Do you think that IITR is infrastructurally adept to host such an event on this scale.**
+
+Yes, I have been a part of planning since August -September. We do have enough places and auditoriums. I don’t think there should be any infrastructural problem or administrative. I am assuming everything would be sorted out by the time meet starts.
+
+**Any ending remarks?**
+
+We are eagerly looking forward to it. Especially after our good performance in Tech and Sports meets, we feel the pressure to perform well in Cult plus we are the host institute. We wish the entire IITR contingent all the best!
+
+**Any message to the incoming teams?**
+
+(Laughing) We are ready! Are you?

_posts/2018-12-26-debating-society.md

@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Know Your Cult: Debating Society"
+image: debsoc2.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: interiit
+---
+
+_With the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet being just a few days away, all cult sections are busy practising away. Watch Out dropped by each section of the Cultsoc to get a sneak peek into their practise regime and to find out their expectations from the meet._
+
+**What is the debating format in the inter IIT Cultural Meet?**
+
+The debating format followed in the Cultural Meet is Asian Parliamentary Debating with 19 teams registered. There are prizes for the top 3 teams, best speaker and best adjudicator. A debate is competitive in two ways- speaker team against another speaker team and the people who judge the debates. The speaking team also score the adjudicator (or judge) on the basis of how well they understood the debate, the arguments, pitched them against each other and consequently came up with a fair verdict. This year in inter IIT we have a 70-30 point split for the speaker team and the adjudicators.
+
+**Tell us about your practice sessions for the inter IIT meet.**
+
+The practice for inter IIT is just like we have had for other parliamentary debates conducted throughout the year. Firstly there are knowledge sessions which are organized by the members of the debating society on a variety of topics like economics, geopolitics, history, feminism etc., These topics pop up frequently in the debates so we need to have awareness and general insights about these domains. With regards to preparation, we are often up against teams studying Arts and Liberal Arts who have a more extensive knowledge base because many of the topics we discuss are a part of their curriculum, implying that we have to put in extra efforts. Hence, we try to include as much knowledge sessions as possible and in general try to accrue more and more information actuating a competent performance on these platforms. This time, we are against IIT’s so the tournament will be more equal-footed and involved. Preparation for debates is not like studying for an exam. We cannot prepare or study a week before a tournament by binging on the material. It’s the effort that you put in consistently over the course of a year which involves several things like expanding your knowledge base, learning to speak fluently and fast along with keeping your words comprehensive. Therefore, even if there is no tournament we meet at least 3-4 times a week to conduct debates which usually last for a couple of hours and during tournaments, we ramp up the frequency. We also participate in tournaments throughout the year through which we get a lot of exposure.
+
+![The team](/images/posts/debsoc1.png){: style="width: 100%;"}
+
+**On the basis of your previous experience, what are your expectations from the meet?**
+
+Some of the IIT’s like IIT Delhi, IIT Bombay and IIT Kharagpur have well established Debating Societies, whereas our Society is relatively new. We expect good competition from them but we can not underestimate the newer IIT’s as well.
+
+**What were the major challenges you faced while practising and organizing the debating event?**
+
+For every debating tournament, there are a certain number of core adjudicators who are meant to be the core organizers of the tournament and they are not competing with the general adjudicators. The core adjudicators are usually people who have a lot of experience in debating and have a really good idea about how tournaments are conducted. Given that the inter IIT is scheduled in the Christmas season, a lot of people are busy with their vacations and a lot of law colleges have their exams at this time as well. As a result, inviting the core adjudicators had many hassles and we had to make a lot of extraordinary efforts.
+
+**Tell us about the fun that you have during your practice sessions?**
+
+Debating practices are a healthy mixture of fun and serious work. Working your way through an argument, trying to convince the adjudicator (who happens to be a friend), while at the same time coming up with counters to the opposing side (who are friends as well) adds a lot of adrenaline rush to these debates. No doubt, these discussions sometimes turn passionate with loud-mouthing involved (all in good humour) and both sides trying to convince each other way past the actual debate.
+
+**What were the challenges you faced in the previous editions and you are trying to overcome this time?**
+
+Last year, a major problem was that the IITR Debsoc was formed 6 months prior to the inter IIT. Due to this our core team didn’t have as many people as we would’ve liked (that’s changed now though). There were also administrative issues, but the administration has by and large been very helpful to us, in particular, our faculty advisor Dr. P K Jha.
+
+**So are you better equipped and prepared this time?**
+
+Considering the still nascent stage of our Debsoc, we have tried to prepare well. We practised throughout the semester and went to different tournaments to learn and understand what efficacious debating entails.
+
+**Any note for the incoming teams?**
+
+The main reason we participate in any tournament, especially in debating, is to learn and to be better as we have fun in engaging with a myriad of people with a vast span of ideas and debating styles. We have invited esteemed core adjudicators and tried to make this tournament a great learning experience for all the participating teams. In the end, we wish all the teams luck and hope for great debates ahead.

_posts/2018-12-26-fine-arts.md

@@ -0,0 +1,69 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Know Your Cult: Fine Arts"
+image: finearts.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: interiit
+---
+
+_With the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet being just a few days away, all cult sections are busy practising away. Watch Out dropped by each section of the Cultsoc to get a sneak peek into their practise regime and to find out their expectations from the meet._
+
+**Tell us about the events which come under the Fine Arts section in Inter IIT.**
+
+There are 4 events which come under the fine arts. Actually the heads name is fine arts and design but there are only four events which are under the fine arts. Two events are under design. Our events are namely – costume design, live sketching, charcoal art and canvas painting.
+
+**So how is your preparation different for all four?**
+
+Costume design is a team event and a team of 6 will be participating in this event, so coordination is very important. That’s why, we called the team members to the campus 15 days before the Inter-IIT
+
+**The topic was given beforehand?**
+
+Yeah! Theme was decided a month prior to event and the theme was conveyed to the respective IITs. For charcoal art, theme is on the spot, and for that our strategy to practice is different. For example, in last Inter-IIT the theme was ‘Happiness’. We pick different words daily like afraid, fast, escape etc. and practise. We prepping so that the participants may not be ambushed by the theme on the spot. And for live sketching, we are most confident because our sketchers are really really good. We are expecting gold in live sketching.The theme of the costume design is futurism as in what the events in the future will be like. The practice is going really really well. See it’s not a team event, it’s an individual event. So our members have already started practicing for it way before Inter-IIT. And the last one is canvas painting for which the theme was decided a week before the event.
+
+**So do you guys practice together or do you practice in your rooms?**
+
+No, we practice together, at the section. We get the feeling of unity. In room everybody gets lazy. Seeing everybody is practice, keeps you motivated and charged up.
+
+**So how are the contingent dynamics among the fine arts members? How do you guys deal with the bad days?**
+
+We just deal with it. We don’t experience bad days too often. Whenever we are practicing, we are also playing some music that keeps our mood light.
+
+**So what are your expectations from the competition?**
+
+From the competition, we are expecting to learn a lot. When you are practicing alone, you don’t know what your scope of improvements are. When you participate in the competition, you see others’ skills and figure out the places where you lack. So we are expecting to improve a lot from this competition and hopefully, we’ll win too.
+
+**In what ways is this Inter-IIT cultural meet platform important for you section, in terms of growth and exposure?**
+
+This is just the second edition, and before this fine arts didn’t participate in any competitions. We just went to Rendezvous or Kashi Yatra, the other cultural fests of different IITs. Seeing different IITs come together and compete with one another, is a different kind of atmosphere. You get so much exposure and learn a lot from it.
+
+**Among your events which is the most challenging for your section to tackle?**
+
+I think that charcoal art is most challenging because the theme will be given on the spot. We will have to think of something to draw and execute it in four hours. So that’s difficult.
+
+**So how was the support from the administration and the Inter-IIT cultural team?**
+
+The support was really good and I think it was the best. All the material requirements were fulfilled by the team and they been supportive. All the queries have been clarified.
+
+**For the incoming teams, will you be providing material or is it the rule that you have to bring your own?**
+
+It’s different according to different events. For canvas painting, the paints have to be brought by the teams. In live sketching and charcoal, we’ll be providing the pencils. In costume design, we’ll provide the sheets but they can bring it along if they want to.
+
+**What was your flow of tackling these events?**
+
+We researched a lot. The initial seven or eight days were spent in researching as to what could be done to represent the theme and impress the judges.
+
+**Do you think our institute is infrastructurally well adapt to host such an event as Inter-IIT cultural meet?**
+
+Yeah I think it is. It’s quite spacious and fine arts events can be hosted really well.
+
+**What is the most fun and interesting part about the Inter-IIT?**
+
+Our contingent size is fifteen and when we are in a section there is a lot of brainstorming with people working passionately . To see all your juniors, seniors and colleagues tackle a problem and revel in the same art is what makes us elated.
+
+**Any funny incident that you want to share?**
+
+In costume design, fun incidents happen almost daily. Actually we have to decorate a person. Our team consists of 4 males and 2 females. And when the girls are not available, we try to experiment the dresses on the boys. And that is totally hilarious!
+
+**Any notes for the incoming teams?**
+
+We are expecting a really healthy competition and we are conducting it for the first time. So if there are any mistakes from our side, please overlook them. We are trying are best to avoid any errors or loopholes.

_posts/2018-12-26-kshitij.md

@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Know Your Cult: Kshitij"
+image: kshitij.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: interiit
+---
+
+_With the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet being just a few days away, all cult sections are busy practising away. Watch Out dropped by each section of the Cultsoc to get a sneak peek into their practise regime and to find out their expectations from the meet._
+
+**What are the events under your purview how are the practices for them?**
+
+Under Kshitj, we have 4 events- English Slam Poetry and Kavyanjali Hindi Slam poetry, creative writing (hindi and english). For English slam, there is not much to practise so we 1-2 hours daily. It starts with the writing sessions. We brainstorm ideas, write the content and edit the pieces in multiple rounds. There are points for poetic language, clarity of message and vocabulary. Then we start working on voice modulation, emotions, body language, posture etc which determine the major impact of our performance.
+
+**Can you brief about the culture of slam poetry in IIT Roorkee?**
+
+Slam poetry is something very new to our campus. It was introduced 2 years back and from then Kshitij is trying to propagate it through various workshops, annual slam poetry fest where members of our section perform and friends of section (FOS) in which non-kshitij members can learn and perform on stage.
+
+**How an inter IIT platform will impact the culture of Slam Poetry?**
+
+Slam poetry is very new art in our campus and it’s something that we do for leisure. So when we will get a competitive platform like inter IIT, more people will get to know what the art is about. Writing is something that we do for leisure, it's our hobby. But when we get a competitive platform we tend to work on the technicalities, put solid efforts, get to know where we stand, analyse where we lack which leads to our personal growth as well as improve the culture in our campus.
+
+**How has been the support of inter IIT core team for your event?**
+
+The interIIT team has been very supportive. All our demands have fulfilled and we have got very good judges. Our institute have a lot of auditoriums but not every stage is suitable for a spoken word event. So they arranged the biotech audi and provided us a spotlight.
+
+**What are your expectations from other IITs?**
+
+Most of the IITs don’t have a slam poetry group. As far as we know, people who are participating are doing by themselves. Slam poetry is something that does not take place on a competitive level. There are no rules or a fixed format for a slam. We can write about anything- a story, a social issue, any emotion or incidence. So it will be good opportunity to see what our sister IITs will present.
+
+**Any ending remarks?**
+
+We are looking forward for good exposure, and I think we’ll definitely get that. Also we are the defending champions so there is a positive pressure on us. Good luck to the incoming teams. We are ready!

_posts/2018-12-26-quizzing-section.md

@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Know Your Cult: Quizzing Section"
+image: quizzing.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: interiit
+---
+
+_With the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet being just a few days away, all cult sections are busy practising away. Watch Out dropped by each section of the Cultsoc to get a sneak peek into their practise regime and to find out their expectations from the meet._
+
+**What are the events under quizzing section?**
+
+There are 6 quizzes- India,Sports,SciTech,Business,MELA and General under our purview.Along with these, members of the section will also be partaking in the Word Games as we don’t have a separate club for the same.
+
+**What were your practise sessions like?**
+
+Our practises last throughout the semester as quizzing isn't something you can practise for just one event. We had an increased frequency of regular quizzes on various genres throughout the semester, we also conducted various practise quizzes of other quizzing circles like KQA and K-Circle. Apart from these we travelled to three outstation quizzes to strengthen our preparations for Inter IIT.
+
+**How do you compare the quizzes of Inter IIT with other quizzing events on a competitive level?**
+
+So this year, the Inter IIT Team has managed to get hold of some of the best quizmasters, who’ve conducted quizzes in Nihilanth, which is the Inter IIT-IIM Quizzing Meet and that has made this years event a great challenge for us. Competitively,Inter IIT is an easier platform than other quizzes we’ve taken part in this year as some of them were open quizzes and had much more experienced quizzers. But from our standings in those quizzes, we’re confident of a good performance this year.
+
+**What are your expectations from the incoming teams this year?**
+
+Quizzing has always has had a cut throat competition and we don’t expect anything less this year. There is the added pressure of being the host contingent. But we hope to perform well and get at least a stage final presence in most of the quizzes. At this point, it is anybody’s game.
+
+**Can you briefly explain what goes in one of your practise quiz?**
+
+We have pre decided teams for every genre based on every member’s trong suit and in practise quizzes we work on building up team dynamics amongst us. Working out an answer as a team is crucial for our performance. Quizzing isn’t just about remembering a set of random trivia, it’s that and much more.
+
+**How does an Inter IIT platform impact your section?**
+
+The Inter IIT is a great reality check platform for us. The high level of competition and exposure help us pinpoint exactly on the areas we are lacking in and problems we need to iron out. It also helps immensely in our preparation for Nihilanth, which takes place in January every year.
+
+**Were the venues sufficient for the number of practice quizzes you conducted?**
+
+So this year we faced a slight difficulty with regards to booking of venues.Last year the process was smooth. But this year we had problems as the venues weren’t booked for us on time and we had to cancel or reschedule our quizzes at the very last minute. This affected our practises but then we took over the Ravindra Bhawan common room and conducted all our quizzes informally there without booking other venues.
+
+**Ending Remarks.**
+
+We’re ready with all guns blazing and confident of a good performance this year.

_posts/2018-12-26-standup-club.md

@@ -0,0 +1,43 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Know Your Cult: Standup Club"
+image: standup1.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: interiit
+---
+
+_With the Inter-IIT Cultural Meet being just a few days away, all cult sections are busy practising away. Watch Out dropped by each section of the Cultsoc to get a sneak peek into their practise regime and to find out their expectations from the meet._
+
+**Tell us about your practice sessions and preparations for the inter IIT meet.**
+
+Unlike other contingents, we cannot have fixed practise sessions. We need to rack our brains and brood to come up with good jokes. Sometimes it takes us days to build a decent joke while someday we prepare the entire script in one go. It takes a lot of brainstorming, research, voice modulations, hand and body gestures to make a complete standup piece.
+
+**What goes behind writing a comedy piece?**
+
+We either build imaginary scenarios or talk about real life incidents. Comedy is more about being observant and picking up tiny details of common day situations and characters. Our pieces should be written according to the target audience. For example, in the inter IIT meet, according to our audience our content can include jokes on Indian society, college students, engineers, IITians, exams, JEE preparation, teenage romance etc.
+
+**Based on your previous experience, what are your expectations from this meet?**
+
+Last year, quite a few stand-ups involved vulgarity and obscenity which caused heckling in the audience. Though we have the freedom to do include anything in our performance, we expect a healthy competition and that people come up with good jokes keeping vulgarity at bay.
+
+**The stand-up club is in a very nascent stage in our campus. How the inter IIT platform will affect its growth?**
+
+Since there was a standup competition in the previous cultural meet, I was motivated to start a formal stand-up club in IITR. It is a different form of art and should be given a space to flourish. Competition is usually helpful in bringing out the best in us. Therefore, through this platform, we will grow as individual comedians as well as a team.
+
+![The team](/images/posts/standup2.png){: style="width: 100%;"}
+
+**How has been the support from the institute and the inter IIT core team?**
+
+When we pitched our idea to start an official club we knew that we will have minimal requirements and the administration showed full support. Unlike metro cities like Bombay and Delhi, which have various comedy circuits around the city, Roorkee needed an independent club to bring like-minded people under one umbrella and practise comedy in a professional way. The administration has constantly helped in our promotions and encouraged us to try new things.
+
+**There are times when you don’t get the expected reaction on a joke and have to face awkward silences. How do you deal with it?**
+
+One important thing about this art of standup comedy is that the entire authority of your performance is in your hand. We face negative comments, booing and awkward silences quite often but a good comedian always has a way out. It takes a lot of guts and confidence to be a stand-up comedian along with good portions of humour of course.
+
+**Who is judging the event?**
+
+Shashwat Maheshwari will be judging our event in the inter IIT meet. He started out on youtube but now he is a writer in Filtercopy and works with Scoop-Whoop and Being Indian. He was a contestant in Comicstaan which earned him popularity.
+
+**Any ending remarks?**
+
+We do sense some home advantage because there are points for the crowd. We are geared up and look forward to a good competition.

_posts/2019-01-11-rfid-inaugration.md

@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Inauguration of the RFID cards"
+tags: [wona, tech]
+image: rfid-inauguration1.jpg
+category: tech
+excerpt: "The process to issue RFID (RF for Radio Frequency) cards to students started off in 2011, and has finally borne fruit."
+---
+
+The process to issue RFID (RF for Radio Frequency) cards to students started off in 2011, and has finally borne fruit. Thanks to the efforts put in by current and past technical teams along with a conducive administration, RFID cards have been produced and are in possession of the institute. The idea behind RFID cards is that they can be used as a unified ID card for a variety of purposes - entry/exit from the campus, access to the library, payment of fines/purchase of coupons, and so on. Some of these initiatives will be under way soon, while other might take more time as the required infrastructural changes are made.
+
+Watch Out spoke to some of the concerned persons at the inauguration about the cards, how they will be rolled out, and what effect they will have on campus life.
+
+**Prof. A. K. Chaturvedi, Director IIT Roorkee,** stressed the need for information dissemination about the newer initiatives being undertaken at IITR. RFID cards are a major component in his vision of having a 24x7 campus, and he urged students to take advantage of round-the-clock access to the library and departments. He also echoed a message of optimism at the positive changes taking place at IITR.
+
+**Prof. M K Barua, ADOSW Student Activities:**
+
+_“This particular proposal was started about 18 months ago under the tenure of the previous General Secretary Technical Affairs, and today RFID cards have become a reality. The point of these cards is to facilitate students to have smooth entry into different labs, student activities, technical and cultural festivals. Students in foreign universities make extensive use of such cards, using them to enter hostels, labs and even messes._
+
+_A lot of students have not provided their data for the RFID cards. They have not uploaded photos, signatures and so on. This was the major reason for the delay. We cannot print the cards unless we have everyone’s data.”_
+
+**The General Secretary of Technical Affairs, Mr. Ankit Alok Bagaria, along with Mr. Divyansh Jain from his technical team\*, explained the RFID card rollout plan:**
+
+_“Students will be required to collect their cards as per their Department’s notification after submitting their current IDs. In case a student doesn't have their current ID card, he/she need not go through the whole procedure of creating another one but some alternative provision will be made to facilitate this process of distribution._
+
+_While these RFID cards were made two months ago but were delayed because RFID scanners were not installed in the required areas, and a lot of students had not provided the relevant details. While most cards have been issued, if some are still found missing, students would have the facility of filling up the details on-the-spot using a QR code._
+
+_The RFID cards are to be implemented in three phases._
+
+_The first phase would involve the cards being used to track entry and the exit from the campus area, specifically after 11 PM, which was being handled manually until now. This would also aid in improving the security of the student populace on the campus, since previously the guards only asked entering students their bhawan name. The second phase might facilitate the cashless campus initiative by using Paytm (if we get a positive response from them), with a Payment Gateway integrated into these ID cards for payments  for institute expenditures like mess coupons, library fines, snooker table fees etc. The third phase would involve infrastructural changes like changing the entrance doors of departmental laboratories to make sure they are RFID activated ones._
+
+_In the coming few months, it is expected that the first phase will be complete. Since a lot of the work in the second two phases is infrastructural, or depends on how our payment partners respond, it may or may not be completed within my tenure. But the necessary paperwork for them will be completed._
+
+_Major focus will be paid to make sure this becomes a sustainable system such that in case a student loses his RFID card, certain provisions shall be established for continuing the regular activities unhindered until a newer one is made._
+
+_As far as restricting entry of outsiders is concerned, we have observed that it is generally students who create problems when asked to fill in their details. Outsiders don’t create this issue. Outsiders will still fill their details, only now, the students will be asked to scan their RFID cards at entry and exit points.”_
+
+**Watch Out’s Two Cents**
+
+![RFID](/images/posts/rfid-inauguration2.jpg){: style="width: 100%;"}
+
+Finally, this is a positive step taken towards a better R-Land, but there still lie some issues which need to be taken care of. While the cards have been finalised from the side of the administration, they are yet to be delivered to the students. We cannot comment on the efficacy of these cards and whether infrastructural changes will follow until they are actually distributed among the students.
+
+The Director has rightly pointed out that the paramount issue facing us currently concerns awareness and the dissemination of information. This holds true especially in the case of RFID cards. A number of people have yet to fill in their data for the IDs. We urge anyone who hasn’t to fill the form at the earliest. They can find the form at [http://bit.ly/RFIDiitr2](http://bit.ly/RFIDiitr2). We sincerely hope that this endeavor reduces the porosity of the campus and makes it a more secure place.
+
+
+_\* The technical team assisting Gensec. Tech. consisted of Anunay Joshi, Chandra Pratap Singh, Divyansh Jain and Vipul Ghate_

_posts/2019-02-11-e-summit.md

@@ -0,0 +1,35 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "E-Summit"
+tags: [wona, tech]
+image: e-summit2.jpg
+category: tech
+excerpt: "The first weekend of February saw the arrival of almost 900 students and almost 60 speakers and guests as part of the E-Summit, organised by the E- Cell."
+---
+
+The first weekend of February saw the arrival of almost 900 students and almost 60 speakers and guests as part of the E-Summit, organised by the E- Cell. The two day event was packed to the brim with talks by top business leaders and policy makers, workshops, competitions and networking events. The theme for this year’s event was, “Building for the Billion”. 
+
+The first day saw the inauguration by the Director of the institute who indicated the event as an opportunity to showcase the innovations made in technology to the guests. He stressed the importance of the startup culture, saying that the establishment of more successful startups has the potential to bring the country out of the tag of developing countries. This was followed by the speech by Mr. Ajay Prakash Sawhney, the current Secretary to the Government of India - Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology. Mr. Sawhney is a 1984 batch Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of Andhra Pradesh cadre. His work on the National Policy on electronics was a starting stone for Electronics reforms in this sector. 
+
+![Mr. Sawhney ](/images/posts/e-summit1.jpg){: style="width: 100%;"}
+
+Mr. Sawhney started with an unusual remark that If he could rewind back and restart his career probably would be an entrepreneur. He was encouraged by the growth of startups in India and mentioned that India comes 3rd, only behind the USA and China when it comes to number of Unicorns (Startups with a valuation of over $1 billion). He went on to say that connectivity has reached almost the entire nation via the Digital India initiative, with an apparent 1.2 billion people being digitally connected. He also stressed the importance of emerging technologies like the Internet of things (IoT), Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Deep Learning.
+
+
+This was followed by a visit to the new SAC building, the Tinkering Lab, Design Innovation Centre and the Business Incubator.
+
+Watch Out got a unique opportunity for a short interview Mr. Sawhney, in which we gained insight into his beliefs and vision. The transcript of the same is given below:
+
+***Watch Out***: Sir, how was your experience here at the E-summit organised by the E-cell?
+
+***Mr. Ajay Sawhney***:  I’m quite delighted to come to Roorkee. This had been an extremely well regarded university earlier and is now an IIT with an amazing presence of an alumni base in all domains across the country as well as abroad. IIT-Roorkee has already made its presence felt in the start-up ecosystem but I believe that it is extraordinarily important that IIT-Roorkee register a much larger presence at a much larger scale across the world through its start-ups. Through the foundation courses such as computer science, electronics, nanotechnology, materials, biotechnology and the presence of tinkering labs, 3D printing, additive manufacturing as well as the strength of the core fields such as civil engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering we have abundant sources of knowledge at our hands but technology will only be able to generate wealth and solve problems once we as engineers begin to apply it at something useful.
+
+***Watch Out***: A lot of start ups are coming up in the electronics and IT fields, also IIT-Hyderabad recently launched a course in Artificial Intelligence. So what according to you are the steps that the IITs should take in order to incorporate all these changes and to produce better results?
+
+***Mr. Ajay Sawhney***: The area of Data Analytics is going to be extremely important. India is endowed with a massive data pools, large amounts of data being generated at any giving point of time. Some of this data is systematically harnessed while most of it is left to waste. Most of the data collected with regards to a specific purpose, say for example Kisaan Soil Cards, is often used for that purpose only but not combined with any other sorts of data. What we don’t realise is that when the same data is combined with the data of irrigation, weather, land holding, post harvest loss, market prices etc. the value of the same data increases manifold.
+
+Data is the fuel for anything in artificial intelligence, so first it is important to get our act together in how this data is to be harnessed and secondly, whenever you start looking at data, there are concerns about privacy. So coming out with a personal data protection bill on the lines of what other countries in Europe and what California has done and in fact improving on these international models is imperative to ensure development along those lines. Building expertise in areas of Machine Learning and Deep Learning and further expertise in the areas of cyber security to ensure that whatever we do with in the country and the industry, the security remains paramount. I think as we move closer to the area of A.I. we need to ramp up our capacities to handle the ecosystems. Having startups in areas such as these would be a step in the right direction. But then again, it’s not just A.I. either, it may be robotics, but it is also using sensors and internet of things, analytics of data etc. So it is a combination most of the times. In the case of additive manufacturing our labs have finally started to use the 3D printers. So now I ask you this. In today’s world, why shouldn’t we be manufacturing our own 3D printers and the materials that go into it. It is known that this is going to be very big business. Are we going to continue to import such things forever? When it is known that it’s a near certainty that we are going to move toward additive manufacturing from the traditional methods of manufacturing, then why is it that we don’t take the initiative. 
+
+These are the thoughts I ponder upon. Whatever we start using, we must think about producing it on our own rather that looking for outside help. The R&D of such things along with the core elements and patents coming from within the country. A grip on all of those key technologies is extremely important and that is the message that I’ll like to leave.
+
+***Watch Out***: Thank you Sir. 

_posts/2019-02-14-on-love.md

@@ -0,0 +1,113 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "On Love"
+tags: [wona, column]
+author: "Surya Raman, Lanka Adarsh"
+image: love1.png 
+category: editorial
+excerpt: "It is not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you"
+---
+
+Disclaimers/ Assumptions central to the hypothesis presented under:
+
+1. True love does exist (why else would we write this?).
+2. *“It is not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you”* - Rachel Dawes, Batman Begins (i.e. actions take precedence over emotions and intentions).
+3. This is an idealized overview of a rather complex emotion, written by two authors who have **_never_** been in a relationship themselves. They have, however, been accommodating of contradicting and diverse viewpoints while concocting this checklist.
+
+Follow it at your own peril.
+
+
+*He sees her at work every day; her low, mellifluous voice soothes him over the cacophony of ringing phones. He watches, gasping, enthralled by her bewitching smile. She gracefully tucks her straight, auburn hair behind her ears. A sigh escapes his lips; he’s new to the place, and she feels awfully familiar.*
+
+*She catches him looking at her. He quickly looks away, blushing.*
+
+*He tries to think of the last time someone made him blush. He marvels at her perfection. There couldn’t possibly be anything he’d want to change about her.*
+
+Is *this* love?
+
+If you’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies, perhaps it is.
+
+If you prefer Bollywood, a buffet of stalkerish tendencies, threats to slit wrists, letters written in blood, and an undying enthusiasm can be said to constitute this emotion.
+
+If you’ve grown up in an orthodox Indian household, love is embodied in the act of the patriarch bringing home the bread, or the act of chiding children when they do something “wrong”, never being openly expressed.
+
+If you’ve been particularly unlucky, continuous emotional and physical abuse can also seem to be manifestations of a deeply-rooted love.
+
+![On-love](/images/posts/love2.png){: style="width:70%;height:auto"}
+
+But none of us have a singular, isolated mode of existence; we are a part of many miscible worlds, armed with a power to introspect, retrospect, and theorize. Our conceptions of love are shaped by the many relationships we observe, as well as external sources (movies, books and music). There are potentially infinite ideas emanating from these sources; it is only upon introspection - upon evaluating each idea against the filter of our intuition - that additions or amendments are made. These, in turn, influence the way we express love.
+
+It becomes important, at this point, to expose a rather troublesome impostor: *Infatuation*.
+
+The narrative in the opening paragraphs encapsulates the illusion of love. The rather unthinking and indiscriminate overuse of the word ‘love’ has rendered people’s ability to tell apart ‘infatuation’ from ‘love’, useless. Perhaps infatuation is love in its infancy -  but that’s where the overlap ends.
+
+Infatuation can best be described as being in love with either
+
+(i) The idea of someone: ill-informed conceptions we associate with their personality
+
+(ii) The idea of being in love: wanting to be in love - either to tell every living soul about your predicament, or to enjoy the benefits you think it carries.
+
+It is infatuation that is blind; love is a high-resolution image that captures a person in their entirety. It is (characterised by):
+
+To begin with, love is **rooted in irrationality<sup>1</sup>**. What is meant by this is that one crosses the tipping point (i.e. the point at which one is said to have “fallen in love”) due to factors beyond their control. Thereafter, love becomes at least a partly conscious act.
+Giving one the freedom to act on their dreams and desires without being bogged down by obligations that are part of standardized contracts (i.e. of marriage, committed relationships, etc.) is the second characteristic of love – **sans possessiveness**.
+
+Another less accepted feature of love is the **conscious ignorance of flaws<sup>2</sup>**. When one is in love, one does acknowledge the shortcomings of the other person, but chooses to overlook them.
+
+Perhaps the best attribute of love is its **unconditional nature**. Although the expectation of a “reward” might exist, the person is okay with his/her love not being reciprocated; sadness may be the eventual outcome, but it is deemed to be worth it (i.e. the person continues to act on their love - refer assumption no. 1).
+
+And lastly, the **self-sacrificial** nature of love. Doing things that are inconvenient or avoidable just because it means something to the other person/ benefits them in some way is a particularly irrational characteristic of love
+
+*The duration of love is not always indicative of its “trueness”; i.e. true love and lasting love are discernibly different. Lasting love can only be cultured when true love is supplemented by compatibility.*
+
+What, then, is compatibility? Two models come to mind:
+
+(i) The MBTI model: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a “psychometric instrument” that draws on the theories of Carl Jung (but has faced flak for being pseudo-scientific, having poor reliability and poor validity). Various parties have drawn on the theory to propose “ideal pairings”, the basic principle of which is stated under:
+
+*“The partner that we choose for ourselves will have a very different approach to dealing with the world. If we are laid-back and indecisive, our partner will be structured and decisive. If we are reserved, our partner will be outgoing. For all of our apparent differences, we will share a common vision of what's truly important in life.”* - The Personality Page
+
+(ii) *Games People Play*: Eric Berne’s book analyses how two people in a relationship “transact”, drawing on the theories of Sigmund Freud. Given below is an extract from a popular tabloid:
+
+“His theory argued that every person has three “ego states”:
+
+- The parent: What you've been taught
+
+- The child: What you have felt
+
+- The adult: What you have learned
+
+When two people are really compatible, they connect along each tier. Pearson [a Couples Therapist] gave us a few questions for figuring out compatibility at each level: 
+
+- The parent: Do you have similar values and beliefs about the world? 
+
+- The child: Do you have fun together? Can you be spontaneous? Do you think your partner's attractive? Do you like to travel together? 
+
+- The adult: Does each person think the other is bright? Are you good at solving problems together?” 
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Independent
+
+Both models stress on having outward differences (a response to our desire for completion, also adding an element of excitement) while having deeply-rooted similarities (i.e. values) and shared long-term goals (which keep them together).
+
+
+> *“In this terrifying world, all we have are the connections we make.”*
+> 
+> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;*BoJack Horseman*
+
+Perhaps love (the way we have defined it) does not exist.
+Perhaps love is incredibly selfish, egotistical, and extremely conditional. The thought that humans are incapable of this idealistic model of love is equal parts reassuring and saddening.
+
+Or, perhaps, “true love” does exist - only, it comes with swords sheathed in scabbards of red and gold. People shy away from relationships that might cause them pain; it is this very fear that keeps them from experiencing the sort of pain that might ultimately give way to the spring of love. Kahlil Gibran captures it best :
+
+*“When **love** beckons to you, follow him, though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.”*
+
+<hr>
+
+##### <sup>1</sup>In this context, a rational act is one which has a reason stateable explicitly in objective terms. Irrationality, therefore, implies that - although a reason might exist - it is not known well enough to be put into words
+
+##### <sup>2</sup>Flaws can be taken to mean any mixture of the following:
+
+##### (i) Idiosyncrasies/characteristics that you can live without
+
+##### (ii) Idiosyncrasies/characteristics that the world finds irksome, but are accepted by the person in question
+
+##### (iii) Idiosyncrasies/characteristics that when found in other people may prove irksome, but are acceptable when found in this person

_posts/2019-03-20-highlights-of-senate.md

@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Highlights from the Institute Student Academic Meet"
+image: image2.jpg
+tags: [wona]
+category: sac
+author: ""
+excerpt: "This meeting was mainly called to give an update on the changes made to the academic structure and make student body of the DAPCs (Departmental Academic Program Committees) aware of their duties and responsibilities. It was convened by Sarim Khan, General Secretary Academic Affairs, UG."
+---
+
+This meeting was mainly called to give an update on the changes made to the academic structure and make student body of the DAPCs (Departmental Academic Program Committees) aware of their duties and responsibilities. It was convened by Sarim Khan, General Secretary Academic Affairs, UG.
+<br><br>
+
+A. The Dean of Academic Affairs sent out the following directives to all departments:<br>
+  &emsp;  1) The departments are to ensure that the professors show the answer scripts of the MTEs before the last date of course withdrawal.<br>
+  &emsp;  2)  The breakdown of aggregate marks is to be given to students via the academic portal (acad.iitr.ac.in).<br>
+  &emsp;  3)  The departments are to ensure that professors follow the class schedule. This includes the courses for which an insufficient number of classes are being taken, classes being taken on weekends etc. The branch CRs are expected to get in touch with the student body of DAPC in case a professor is not following the class schedule.
+<br><br>
+
+B. The student body of the DAPC is expected to keep themselves updated with the latest department policies and convey any change to the relevant authorities(DAPC/HOD). They are also expected to ensure that the changes are being implemented in the respective departments.
+<br><br>
+
+C. __NPTEL courses__: If a student wants to take up a course offered by NPTEL, the channel to be followed is as follows:<br>
+  &emsp;  1) The student has to go to the DAPC of his/her own department with a request to pursue the course.<br>
+  &emsp;  2) Once the student gets the request approved, he/she is to go to the department which offers the course. The DAPC of that department will review the syllabus to ascertain that the course meets the standard of teaching of IIT Roorkee.<br>
+  &emsp;  3) The student can ordinarily not pursue a course which is already being offered in the institute, unless the student has been detained in the course and is already in the final semester.<br>
+  &emsp;  4) PhD students can take up ONE course related to their area of research from NPTEL.<br>
+  &emsp;  5) The student might have to travel out of Roorkee if the evaluation of the course can not be done in Roorkee. The grades assigned in such courses is dependent on all students enrolled in that course, even those who are not from IIT Roorkee.
+<br><br>
+
+D. The monetary allowance for research has been shifted to Non-Planned Grant (NPG) with    effect from last year. However, the students need to get clearance from the department to avail benefits of the NPGs. The DAPCs are expected to increase awareness about the sort of things students can get NPGs approved for.
+<br><br>
+
+E. The SMP plans to start a research mentorship programme for undergraduate students, where the post-grad and PhD students educate the undergrads on what research is, how to go about building a career in research, how to write a research paper and get it published. The undergraduate students will be able to collaborate with the PG/PhDs on their projects if they have the required skill set. The plan is to implement this via a two-month long “orientation”, where PG/PhD students interact with the undergraduate students. This programme is aimed for the second year and third-year students. SMP hopes to inculcate a research culture on campus through this programme.
+<br><br>
+
+F. There have been steps taken to digitize the process of obtaining NOCs from the respective department. A drop down for the same is expected to roll out on the academic portal (acad.iitr.ac.in) by April. It is claimed that students will be able to obtain their NOC within 4-5 days once the website is updated. The student body is expected to raise awareness about the website among professors.
+<br><br>
+
+G. __Redressal System__: The proper channel for students to go is via the ombudsperson, Himanshu Joshi, from the Hydrology department. Once a complaint has been lodged with him he sends the complaint ahead to the Deans/Director, as deemed necessary and they issue directives to the people concerned. 
+All department level conflicts are to be resolved by a three-member committee (HOD, DRC (Department Research Committee) and a volunteer nominated by the HOD).
+<br><br>
+
+H. To raise awareness about the changes in the IITR academic system, the administration plans to send each subtopic of the Academic Booklet published in collaboration with Watch Out to the students’ GSuite ID.
+<br><br>
+
+### A Note on the Departmental/Centre’s Academic Programme Committees (DAPC/ CAPC) 
+
+<span style="color:#0645AD">[_The Senate Manual_]( https://www.iitr.ac.in/Main/uploads/File/RTI/2016/senate%20manual(17092015).pdf )</span> &nbsp;lists the composition and functions of the DAPC as follows:
+(A list of members of the DAPC of each department is not easily accessible, but can usually be found on the site of each department).
+
+![pic](/images/posts/image1.png){: style="width:100%;height:auto"}

_posts/2019-03-23-srishti19.md

@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Srishti'19"
+tags: [wona, tech]
+image: srishti19.jpg
+category: tech
+excerpt: "An Overview, and an Interview with the Chief Guest, Mr Sanjay Peshin"
+---
+
+Srishti, the Annual Technical Exhibition of IIT Roorkee, held on 9th-10th March 2019 marked its Diamond Jubilee this year. The students of our campus showcased their talents and prowess in a plethora of avocations of technology such as Modelling & Robotics, Motion Gaming, Artificial Intelligence, Quadcopters, Electronics, Astronomy etc. This year Srishti instituted corporate and industrial relations and invited various dignitaries as Honorary Guests. Sanjay Peshin, Asia-Pacific Head of Tata Consultancy Services was the Chief Guest and Madhukar Sharma, Pan-India Chairman of American Society for Mechanical Engineering, was the Guest of Honour for the inaugural ceremony. The Director, IIT Roorkee, was also present at the ceremony. 
+
+The Inauguration ceremony, held at the New SAC building, began with the felicitation of the invited guests followed by the lamp lighting ceremony. Ankit Alok Bagaria, GS Technical Affairs, addressed the gathering and invited the Director for his keynote. In his speech, he stressed the need for evolution of Srishti's vision and said that the primary metric to judge an individual project is innovation. He also motivated the crowd to build projects that can secure business incubation through TIDES IIT Roorkee, thus setting a higher benchmark for upcoming editions.
+The Director’s address was followed by keynotes from the invited Chief Guests.
+
+Mr Madhukar Sharma encouraged the students to gear up for the fourth Industrial revolution and made the audience realise how Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence will be equivalent to the Oil Industry in the coming years. He also mentioned various research fellowship programs under the ASME and motivated the students to pursue those.
+
+Mr Sanjay Peshin shared the experiences of his long career and expressed his concern on the declining relationship between academia and Industry. He introduced students to the industrial applications of Machine Learning and AI through practical problems which form a major part in the R&D sector. He also talked about the business aspects of industrial innovation. Watch Out got a chance to interview Mr Peshin who further expressed the need to bring the innovation to industry and make it available to consumers.
+
+**Watch Out**: Greetings Sir! How has your experience been with the exhibition and projects so far?
+
+**Mr Sanjay Peshin**: It’s an excellent exhibition! I saw a variety of interesting projects that the kids came up with and in many cases, I realised that they were actually at par with what the industry is looking for. The challenge we face from the perspective of the industry is that the academia is still working on very theoretical projects. To convert them into business opportunities seems like a distant task but the projects that the students displayed have immediate business applications. I highly appreciate it!
+
+
+_Srishti’19 witnessed the exhibition of over 100 projects under STC, 10 projects from different campus groups and 4 self-made projects with a rise of about 50 percent in the number of projects from the last edition. This year, two projects, named Laser Harp from ArIES and AR-based map projector from MaRS, received a cash prize of Rs 5000 for the best innovation from the Design Innovation Center of IIT Roorkee._
+
+
+
+**Watch Out**: In your address, you talked a lot about the relevance of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in the fourth industrial revolution. Do you think an undergraduate degree from IIT in a stream such as AI would be useful? 
+
+**Mr Sanjay Peshin**: I believe that an undergrad degree should help a child to build his breadth of knowledge rather than going into a specific domain or subject. I don’t think a second or a third-year student has really understood what he actually wants to pursue. A specialised degree seems a little premature at this point of time. When I look at engineers, I look at them being able to solve a breadth of problems. Specialisation happens over a period of time, it is not what I would want students to start with. From an engineering industry perspective, an engineer has the knowledge of product design which includes both mechanics, mechatronics, electronics and software. Masters programme comes into play where we say okay I have a fundamental ground knowledge of what all is happening and then go into the specialisation.
+ 
+**Watch Out**: With ever increasing automation in today’s industries and at the same time increased generation of skilled labour, what are your predictions for job opportunities in the future? 
+ 
+**Mr Sanjay Peshin**: I think job opportunities for skilled labour will keep on increasing. When we talk about automation we are talking more from a mundane job perspective instead of a skilled job perspective. The industry still requires skilled labour and domain understanding but the mundane repetitive jobs could be relooked and revamped. I’ll give you a very simple example. Look at an automatic quality inspection done for a consumer company. Till date, they had an inspection process which was more labour oriented. A person picks up a sample looks at the quality and then decides if its good or not and today we have put up an image based quality analysis. So now you have a 100% quality sampling happening, 100% inspection happening. To me, these are repetitive mundane jobs which have to be evolved. But someone still needs to teach the program what image is good or bad. So here we’ll need the skilled labour in the quality inspection process and the jobs won’t die but shift to a new domain.
+
+**Watch Out**: Does the fact that now Indians cannot move to the US due to H1 Visa restrictions affect our jobs?
+
+**Mr Sanjay Peshin**: The restrictions that have been brought up by the US are more towards the unskilled labour perspective. I think they still are very open and are looking at a lot of skilled labour to come. From the skilled labour perspective, I don’t see that as a challenge. From unskilled labours yes that would be. But then the US is only one global market there are a lot of other global markets which are open to talented people in technology. Last year, Japan has apparently issued a public notice saying that they need about 2 lakh engineers and they are more than happy to have engineers from India who can relocate to Japan and work there. Another thing I believe in is that opportunities in India itself are abundant. With Make in India campaign being given a thrust, we are seeing a very positive acceptance of Industry 4.0 based components or technology in the Indian manufacturing market. The need for skilled talent in India itself will increase.
+ 
+**Watch Out**: You had a look at our projects in Srishti. Can you suggest any programs or collaborative measures that can bridge the gap between students, innovation and industry? 
+
+**Mr Sanjay Peshin**: This is a point that I made yesterday as well - you should bring out the business usage of the technology that you are developing. If you don’t understand why am you are doing a particular thing, that becomes a gap. The articulation of business usage is something which I feel should be improved. Students being in an IIT are obviously great at technology but when you talk to the industry, you should know about the application of your innovation and how is it different from what already exists. I talked to a few students who developed drones that are available in a toy store today. It was a novelty 15 years ago. What new thing have they done that makes it a unique product. Students need to address- “What is my differentiating factor?”
+ 
+**Watch Out**: But isn’t that where the industry comes in?
+ 
+**Mr Sanjay Peshin**: Yes, it is the industry that takes the idea to the market, but unless you articulate well about what it can do, the industry won't know. As soon as I heard the boys I was able to visualise the possibilities of their models but had it been someone who had to rush through things if he is not able to hear the keywords he will possibly miss the link.
+ 
+**Watch Out**: Right now in our college, we have the technology and raw talent, and companies like TCS take students from here and bridge the innovation-industry gap that we have been talking about. What would your idea be of taking the student itself to the finished level?
+ 
+**Mr Sanjay Peshin**: TCS has something which we call an academic interface plan. We have a team which actually interfaces with universities and colleges to develop various plans. In the southern parts of India experts from TCS sit with the universities to define the curriculum because we understand that what comes out of college is not necessarily industry ready. So as we talked about AI and ML and whether that should be a full-time curriculum those are the things that we discuss with educational institutes. We discuss the expectations of a student when he comes out of college and how can they be cultivated through the curriculum. 
+
+So what we do is that when you are hired in TCS there is a three-month induction plan. In this plan typically what we do is we would have earmarked students for a certain set of businesses or a certain technology. So we train them to lessen the gap between the theory and the industry, the academia and the industry. We train them for this and then start inducting them on how to get going in those spaces. But that happens after you join the organisation. In academia, the best we can do is suggest what would help from a curriculum perspective.
+ 
+**Watch Out**: Speaking of academia, do you think that research not for the market, not for consumption for consumers is not required research?
+
+**Mr Sanjay Peshin**: That’s a wrong way to state that research is not required but if the intent at some point of time is to not commercialise, it doesn’t add value to the ecosystem. It is for your interest rather than for a result. Whether it needs to be commercial or not is not the point of debate. The researcher might not have the end product in mind but if he couldn’t think of an application of his research/innovation then that research doesn’t make sense. Understand that the end product is the summation of lots of small researches that happen and somebody needs to be orchestrating them. Not each of the small innovation would end up into a commercial product but they would end up as a component of the end product. 
+
+**Watch Out**: A general trend that is observed in Roorkee is that it is geographically disprivileged as compared to places like Delhi and Bombay. This poses a challenge in the sense that even though the talent is available, the companies don’t want to come here. How do you think our students can circumvent that?
+ 
+**Mr Sanjay Peshin**: If you had asked me this question thirty to forty years ago that would have been a challenge. But today in this age of social media and instant communication I think branding can help your institute a lot. Social media is only one way of doing it. I don’t see communication as a challenge today. What I see the real challenge is branding.  Are you branding yourself sufficiently strongly through the social media platforms available? You are a technology institute so obviously, you have a lot of technological talent and you could have many communication opportunities across the country. Industries are actually looking for institutes to come forward and share knowledge and information. Collaborative innovation is something which cannot be done by a single entity. You will need various entities to come together and build an innovation. And therefore in our group of partners, we have included educational institutions as well as startups to be a part of the innovation process.
+
+
+
+The valedictory function, at the end of day 2, marked the successful end of the techno-scientific exhibition. Ankit Alok Bagaria, GS Technical Affairs, addressed the audience, thanking the Dean SRIC office for making Srishti‘19 possible and the DIC for presenting cash prizes.
+The Guest of Honour for the Valedictory function was Mr R. P. Singh, Director, Directorate of Forest who implored the students to use technology to produce marketable products. His address was followed by keynotes from the various Guests of Honour.
+All the dignitaries present in the function appreciated the work of the students for successfully managing and conducting the Sci-Tech exhibition and thanked all the corporate delegates and guests who were present during the Fest. The function concluded with the award distribution to the winners and felicitation of the managing team of Srishti’19.
+

_posts/2019-04-01-social-credit-system.md

@@ -0,0 +1,33 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: Radio Facilitated Institute Domination
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: phekingnews
+image: socialcredits.jpg 
+excerpt: "The makings of a nefarious orwellian system of surveillance, intrusion, and behavioural conditioning"
+---
+
+After more than a decade of waiting, IITR was finally graced by the introduction of RFID cards on campus in January this year. Despite all the hype surrounding their arrival, no one has actually bothered to find out their actual use on our campus. Eyeing the fact that the administration was solely focusing on their use in the library, Watch Out decided to probe further into the matter. After some digging, we found the makings of a nefarious orwellian system of surveillance, intrusion, and behavioural conditioning.
+
+While over the last few years a lot of the decisions taken by the administration have been under a lot of scrutiny, they do not hold a candle in the face of what is yet to come. Taking inspiration from one of our more prolific neighbours (read: China), the administration intends to implement a new system to evaluate students: the Social Credit System. 
+
+Under the proposed system, every student is to be assigned a score based on a set of metrics that judge how well they conform to the established norms and rules, and fit into the community around them. It provides a metric to gauge the trustworthiness, morality, productivity and the overall character of the individual. The system will be implemented through a number of monitoring mechanisms to track students’ actions on campus and categorising their behavior based on said metrics. 
+
+A member of the inner echelons of the administration when questioned about the motivation behind the implementation of such a system, cited the steady corruption of moral values in the student populace: “In recent years, the attitude and philosophy of the student community has gone in the wrong direction, with far too many young minds embracing radical postmodernism and Neo-Marxist ideas. We have seen an alarming increase in alcoholism, substance abuse, politically motivated violence and hand holding among the opposite sex.” It is also likely that a blatant increase in demands for administrative reforms from the populace (which up until a few years ago was unheard of) may have also played a part in the administration deciding to crack down on the flippant attitudes pervading the student community.
+
+Among other things, the administration will track and record internet usage, both LAN and wireless. Accessing content deemed immoral or illegal such as pornography and piracy or activity such as cyber-bullying or voicing negative views on the national political scenario will lead to severe deductions on the score. On the other hand, time spent on educational sites like Coursera or NPTEL leads to a better score. This is intended to counter the recent underperformance of IITR students as compared to a number of other universities.  
+
+The recent excavations around the campus in the name of a new fiber optic system (think about it: do we really need even faster LAN?) are actually meant to cover up the installation of sensors that track your location using the new RFID cards. Students will be forced to carry these cards with them in a number of ways including but not limited to card + biometric sensors at all gates, departments, LHC and the library. This data will be used to determine the places you frequent and your company. Behavior such as frequent visits to the JD gate or to remote locations of the campus in pairs are deemed undesirable. Time spent at the library/departments/LHCs will be rewarded. Security at the entrances to the campus shall be equipped with breathalysers, which will be used at all hours post sunset.
+
+Based on the score, students may receive higher or lower preference for a variety of needs. Low scores may lead to lower internet speeds or fewer weekly servings of sweets in the mess (once Appetizer is integrated with the system). A more severe downside is the possibility of having more frequent room checks. Anything incriminating found in these checks, such as potted plants with medicinal qualities or bottles of fermented grape juice, can then be used to further deduct the student’s score. 
+Higher scores are given greater choice in applying to companies for placements and internships. This scoring system will be recognized by companies who come for the placements. Other benefits include being given your choice of hostel and room, and students with exceptionally high scores during the first semester may also be preferred for branch changes. A cutoff score will be declared for PoRs, including both the SAC as well as club secretariats. 
+
+## Our Two Cents
+
+While the administration has quoted security as the primary reason for introducing the RFID cards, that is clearly not the case as RFID is unlikely to ever completely replace biometric verification. The true purpose of these cards is to monitor and moral police the populace, which is a severe breach of privacy. The campus, meant to be a safe space and home for students, will now be a place of discomfort, with a constant sense of being watched. Further, as the administration unilaterally decides these metrics, it does not account for the opinion of the student community at any point. This is, unfortunately, within the jurisdiction of the administration since IITs are autonomous institutions. 
+
+This move does not actually benefit the institute in any way, but, in fact, is against its own interests. It is already against institute rules to consume banned substances. Those who do this are fully aware of the implications of their actions and adding a different deterrent does not make a difference. Besides, there is no saying when these policies might change. Today, it may just be consumption of alcohol that is penalised, but tomorrow, talking to people of the opposite gender may be outlawed. Such a distrustful atmosphere makes new entrants reluctant to join the institute, resulting in a drop in the quality of students. Further these metrics are very subjective and can easily cause unintended harms. Even the friend of a friend of an alcoholic may suffer collateral damage in the form of a lower score despite not doing anything wrong. Isolation from such vices leads to unrealistic expectations from the real world, and leaves the students unprepared for life after graduation. This entire system of moral policing really begs the question of why an academically successful student who engages in the occasional drink should be penalised at all. The careers of such people take a big hit for no justifiable reason. 
+
+This is a huge step backward in the name of progress. 
+
+Beware. Big Brother is watching you.

_posts/2019-05-16-anti-natalism.md

@@ -0,0 +1,61 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "The Moral Bankruptcy of Giving Birth"
+image: anti-natalism.png
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: editorial
+excerpt: "Anti-natalism: The moral/philosophical standpoint posits that it is morally impermissible to procreate and give birth"
+author: "Sudhang Varshney, Surya Raman"
+---
+
+> “If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate not take it upon himself to impose that burden upon it in cold blood?”
+>
+> \- Arthur Schopenhauer
+
+The author of the critically acclaimed study in philosophy “The World as Will and Representation” speaks here of the anti-natalist stand. **This moral/philosophical standpoint posits that it is morally impermissible to procreate and give birth.** This editorial aims neither to criticise nor condone this philosophy, but to clear its nebulous representation that plagues popular media.
+
+A tranquil, almost languid warmth, gushes through our innards at the mention of life -- a silent agreement to the fact that it has a certain inherent value that is enough to warrant its sacredness. This notion is fortified by how religion -- the invisible thread of beliefs that dictates our moral compass -- generally places life at an olympian pedestal and consecrates it as a divine creation that mankind is unqualified to take in its own hands. This bleeds into the laws that shape the tramlines of how an ideal citizen should behave within society, a few demonstrative examples being the debate around euthanasia, capital punishment, abortion et cetera. The sanctity of an inalienable right to life, the ramifications of violating that right and the apotheosis of the human spirit have been indoctrinated into us by a multitude of factors that function similarly. Murdering is the ultimate sin, loss of life is a catastrophe. Mothers are revered as life-givers and the act of childbirth is the ultimate purpose that provides completeness to an individual's stay in the cosmos.
+
+Given how it has become instinctive to buy into this belief, it becomes imperative to take a moment to ask ourselves **‘WHY?’.**  David Benatar voices:-
+
+> “Creating new people, by having babies, is so much a part of human life that it is rarely thought even to require a justification. Indeed, most people do not even think about whether they should or should not make a baby. They just make one. In other words, procreation is usually the consequence of sex rather than the result of a decision to bring people into existence. Those who do indeed decide to have a child might do so for any number of reasons, but among these reasons cannot be the interests of the potential child. One can never have a child for that child’s sake.”
+
+This inquiry motivated cliques of people to look into the true nature and quality of human life as they appraised it. One of these philosophies that has gained traction right now is anti-natalism. A blanket claim associated with the anti-natalist sentiment is the idea that **the one guaranteed way to protect your child from suffering is to not give it birth in the first place.**
+
+Those espousing this idea generally invoke the ethical theory of negative utilitarianism, which gives greater weight to a reduction in human suffering than an effort to maximise happiness. For an illustration, R. Ninian Smart presents that negative utilitarianism would entail that a ruler who is able to instantly and painlessly destroy the human race would have a duty to do so. This is again contingent on the belief that human life is miserable, one of the characterisation(s) of which is called the **‘terminality of being’**. A human being is affected by three types of friction: physical pain (in the form of illnesses and catastrophes to which it is perennially exposed); discouragement (encompassing phenomena such as lack of will, fatigue, meaninglessness  and depression); and "moral impediment"( the incapability of humans to be altruistically ethical in all circumstances, a consequence of conflicting self interests in attempts to survive). In the case of assuming the generalisation that life assumes the binary of being miserable or not miserable, a decision theory matrix provides us with 4 case-scenarios for the existence of a chubby little boy called Jeff, who would’ve been  thrust into this world if his parents procreated -
+
+{:.mdtablestyle}
+|                  | Scenario A (Jeff exists)        | Scenario B (Jeff never exists)    |
+| ---------------- | ------------------------------- | --------------------------------- |
+| **Life is pain** | (1) Presence of pain (sucks)    | (2) Absence of pain (great)       |
+| **Life is nice** | (3) Presence of pleasure (nice) | (4) Absence of pleasure (Not bad) |
+
+1) Jeff navigates through life with the joys of ice-cream, watching cat videos, and a stable family while dealing with depression, injuries, stepping on lego pyramids and anxiety - the weighted average of which assigns his life a red stamp of being miserable. He has desires: spiritual needs which reality is unable to satisfy. He silently suppresses those desires to shield himself from the pain and ends up in a frigid unfeeling numbness. He still exists only because he limits his awareness of what that reality actually entails. Jeff’s existence amounts to a tangled network of defense mechanisms, which can be observed in his everyday behavior patterns . He was too easily forgotten for anyone to care when and how he died. This Jeff arouses our pity and his story is turned into a Netflix Original.
+
+2, 4) Jeff isn’t born and remains a fictional kid with a copter hat that makes us smile for the purpose of this article.
+
+3) Let’s here assume the absolute best of case 3. Jeff is born with a jawline that will cut through stone. He learns all languages across all species before he is in kindergarten and proceeds to amuse himself by creating one of his own. He has never not been euphoric: lady luck is his accomplice and all of the metaphoric oceans between him and his desires part to his whim. He looks like a million bucks even after stuffing his 80kg muscular frame with a tub of nutella that is processed immaculately by his ungodly metabolism. We don’t like this Jeff.
+
+**Case 1** is problematic and it seems morally incongruous to force this situation on someone- It is wrong to create someone so that they can try to make their life bearable by struggling against the difficult and oppressive situation we place them in. It seems more reasonable simply not to put them in the situation to which they will have to react, when its results are always uncertain.
+
+**Case 3** on the face of it feels like a desirable situation, as someone is leading a fulfilling and joyous life, and by refraining from procreation we preclude someone's pleasure. Therein lies the catch: **the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.** If there isn’t a 5-year old to snatch an ice-cream sandwich from, nobody goes home crying. Case 4 doesn’t have a Jeff for which the absence of this happiness is a deprivation and hence, the anti-natalist stand doesn’t suffer from the aforementioned quandary.
+
+**Case 2** doesn’t have our protagonist Jake, because he is but the thought-child of hypothetical anti-natalist parents. Nobody has to suffer.
+
+Hence, if we look across the first column in a world with Jeff, the first situation is terribly abhorrent while the second isn’t a moral necessity. That is, **we have a moral obligation to refrain from creating unhappy people, and we have no moral impetus to generate happy ones.**
+
+Here, it’s prudent to pause and note that life in general lies between the two extremes of pain and pleasure. However these arguments can be applied nevertheless.
+
+**Another crucial aspect of the ethos of giving birth is the consent of a future Jeff.** It isn’t feasible to educate an unborn person about the myriad possibilities his life might end up being like and then to obtain his informed consent to be brought into this world. For this very reason, Julio Cabrera argues that procreation is the violation of autonomy gullible Jeff, who might have opted to not be born had he been fully aware of the human situation and the ordeals associated with existence. So says Ashleel Singh -
+
+> “However one need not believe that coming into existence is always an overall harm in order to favour an anti-natal perspective; one need only believe that it is morally problematic to inflict serious, preventable harms upon others without their consent.”
+
+If one does not desist from having children, one can hardly expect one's descendants to do so. This would have been fine and dandy had our society allowed people to have on opt-out from the world that they felt was nasty to them, but that choice is killed by the ostracization and social sanctioning an individual harboring these thoughts is bombarded with. We are forced to live and be responsible for the happiness of others when we might barely have our own heads above water.
+
+_A gentle reminder from the authors is necessary here that none of this amounts to rampant suicide, genocide and murder for the very reason that the arguments made are on the morality of giving birth, and not the morality of choosing to continue one’s existence._
+
+**The natural course of the anti-natalist utopia will be rapid extinction of the human race.** In the cosmic scale of things, humans are a hairy enclosure of a soup of organs and gooey innards just like the diabolical rat that your mom calls a ‘shaitan’. Our species’ termination can’t be objectively justified to be a bad thing. All of the importance we attach to life is a belief that we have agreed to hold, and it isn't possible to either prove or disprove it.
+
+However , from the vantage point of an exoplanet-inhabiting green sentient sludge, humans have wrecked nature and led to the extinction of millions of species. After having been abused by mankind with reckless abandon for a morbidly long time, the Earth could really use a divorce.
+
+But there’s a saving grace, albeit not an absolving one. Society is rife with weird notions of morality. A person spending 50 lakhs on a luxury car ( which he doesn’t need to subsist) instead of channeling funds to saving hundreds of children who die of starvation is perfectly acceptable. That is to say, at the end of it all, it seems that it’s best to trust our inner conscience when taking calls on the morality of an action. If birthing a mini-them is someone’s jam, the anti-natalist is no one to whine.

_posts/2019-05-20-summer-diaries-gsoc.md

@@ -0,0 +1,81 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Summer Diaries: GSOC - What, Why, How and When"
+image: geesock.png
+tags: [wona]
+author: "Mohit Sharma, Vaibhav and Ishan Rai"
+excerpt: "Now that you’ve stepped into R, you might hear a lot of new buzzwords flying around in your first few weeks. Right beside Ghissu, Machau and chapo, you might catch wind of something called Gee-Sock."
+category: summer2019
+---
+
+Now that you’ve stepped into R, you might hear a lot of new buzzwords flying around in your first few weeks. Right beside Ghissu, Machau and chapo, you might catch wind of something called Gee-Sock. Unsure of what it really is, you’re intrigued and eager to learn more, only to find that the guy who uttered the word to you knows no more about it than you do. The hype and mystique that surrounds this word exhorts you to dig deeper, and so begins your descent into an abyss of medium blogs and quora articles, each of which makes less sense than the last to someone who, at this point, barely knows what code is. That’s where WatchOut comes to the rescue.
+
+## So What is GSoC?
+
+First of all, GSoC stands for Google Summer of Code. This information is imperative if you plan to flex on your batchmates with this newfound treasure-house of knowledge. Before we delve further into what GSOC is and how it works, you need to know about a little something called ‘open source’ which constitutes the essence of this esoteric endeavor.
+
+If a piece of software is open source, it means that its source code is freely available . It’s on the cloud for everyone to see, use, and hopefully contribute to. Contributions include everything from simple bug fixes like **“Hey, I center aligned this sidebar button”** to major enhancements, updating the documentation or even simple suggestions on what can be done to improve the technology. In a way, open source is the Self-Service equivalent of the coding regime.
+
+More often than not, open source orgs (short for organizations because programmers like to be cool) are not big on contributors. GSOC is more or less a platform for these organizations to attract new developers. A bunch of such organizations apply to Google for entry to GSOC with a list of projects that they would be offering to interested students. A list of the selected organizations is then released on the official GSOC website.
+
+Projects can be anything from “Oh that’s easy” to mildly intimidating to absolute monstrosities that can only be described as herculean at best and nigh impossible at worst, the range in topics being just as wide. There could be a project that requires you to change the css of a web-page to bootstrap, right next to one that requires you spend hours reading up on bioinformatics to even understand the terminology that is casually thrown around in the project description. But most importantly, you can always find something that you’re interested in. Computational physics? Machine learning? Aerodynamic simulations? Making mini-games for a website? There’s always something for everyone. So pick whatever floats your boat.
+
+Getting selected for GSOC means being singled out by an organization to work on one of their projects for the duration of your summer vacations, which is typically the period during which GSOC takes place.
+
+## How do I participate?
+
+First things first, go through the <span style="text-decoration:underline">[list of selected orgs](https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/organizations/)</span> and pick one you would be happy working with. Though interest and interest alone is often hailed as the quintessential standard for picking an organization, practically speaking, that’s not always for the best if one actually aims to crack GSOC . The key is to be at just the right place on the spectrum between ambitious and complacent. Don’t go with it just because it sounds cool, it may turn out to be very different than what you initially thought . Also don’t pick something just because it seems easy; remember the main goal is to learn as much as possible. If it intrigues you, take a look, see if you find it interesting. Feel free to experiment a bit before you finalize on which organizations to go with.
+
+Having gotten that out of the way, comes one of the most important steps of this adventure: **Contributing**.
+
+In order to be selected by an org, one has to prove their calibre by contributing to their codebase in any way possible. Their code is usually linked in their page on the organizations list. This usually requires you to have a grip on the fundamentals of **Version Control Systems**. Learning, atleast the <span style="text-decoration:underline">[basics of git](https://www.atlassian.com/git)</span> is crucial to open source.
+
+Git is what you call a version control system, meaning it helps you track all changes made to your code and recall specific versions later. VCSs are often not the prettiest things in the world and may even seem useless at first, but once you get used to them, it’s objectively better than having multiple folders of the same project with names like “Project final” “Project final-est” and “Project final-est v2.o”. It also makes collaboration much easier as multiple people can work on the same file at the same time, which surprisingly enough is essential for an open source environment
+
+**“What is Github?”**
+
+Github is a website for developers to host their code and build their egos. It’s quite similar to google-drive, except for code but with a bunch of fancy vocabulary tossed in to make it sound cool. In order to make a contribution to an organization, stalk them on github, pick a repository (fancy word for a folder that contains the source code of an application) that you can and want to work on and fork (copy)  it. Scan through the Issues tab on the original repository to find something you can work on. A vague overview of how it works: you pick an app you wanna work on and make a copy of it in your own account. Then make whatever changes you want to that copy and once you think you’ve done something significant enough to be integrated into the original application, you “open a pull request” which is basically you asking the admins (benevolent dictators)  to review and accept your work i.e merge it with their own source. The more merged requests you have, the better. Brownie points if you also reported some issues.
+
+If it’s the first time you look at the codebase of an industrial application, just reading it, let alone modifying, may seem like a daunting task. But get this, no-one reads the entire code. Just pick an issue to work on and try to get a grip on the relevant segments. Try to start with small and simple bugs or improving documentation, slowly making your way up the ladder.
+
+Contributions should be kept as concise and useful as possible. It’s also useful if you already have in mind what project you’re going to work on and contribute to the parts of the codebase most relevant to that project.
+
+Then comes THE most important part. **Drafting a proposal.**
+
+Now that you have everything you need to think that you’re the best person in the universe for a project, that sentiment has to be communicated across via a well written, comprehensive project proposal highlighting your contributions to the org, which project you wanna undertake and how you plan to execute it. Consider this your first and only impression at the higher-ups so it needs to be as polished as can be with a well versed timeline, execution details full of all the technical jargon you can muster without sounding too pretentious and a motivations section describing your undying passion for the organization that you mysteriously developed over the past month. There's nothing about reaching out to the community. Keeping in touch with the core team, talking and updating them with what you're working on. Bonus points if you also get your proposal reviewed by one of the mentors before the final submission.
+
+That’s just the gist of it. A more formal and comprehensive template for the proposal is usually provided by the organization on their website or github and should be followed as accurately as possible.
+
+All set with a considerable pile of contributions and an eloquent proposal, given one plays their cards right with the existing community, an eligible candidate may make his way into the GSOC-student roster of the org. Their efforts are duly rewarded as they  become the subject of discussion among their friends, the discussions being mainly focused on chapos and GPLs, and gain the respect of peers. Congratulations, you are now eligible to utilize the entirety of your summer vacations, working 8-10 hours a day for the organization you worked so hard to get in.
+
+**“Wait, so all the effort I put in was just so that I could work even harder?”**
+
+Well, Yes but NO.
+
+## Incentives
+
+### MAD MONEY
+
+The organizations in GSOC don’t make you work for free. The monetary perks are obviously essential motivators for incoming participants whether or not they like to admit it. The profuse stipend also calls for more lavish chapos.
+
+**\#AndhaaPaisa**
+
+### KNAAWLEDGE
+
+Let’s not forget what the primary aim of GSOC is. To bring in talented, dedicated students to open source organizations in need of enthusiastic contributors, providing a talent pool to the org and exposure and work experience to the students involved. 
+
+### MAD RESPECT
+
+Clearing GSOC not only imbues an individual with wealth and wisdom but also an intangible accolade that you are now free to flaunt around for the rest of your college life, though at the risk of coming across as a an arrogant know-it-all but can play out quite well if used right.
+
+**“Sharma ne GSOC nikal liya. Andha machaya!”**
+
+So here you are, a few months since you began your GSoC odyssey after first coming to know about it from a loquacious chap who probably  went on to forget all about it a couple days later. You have now conquered the exigent battle that is GSoC,  gaining experience,opportunities and bragging rights that you couldn’t have gotten elsewhere, along with the universal respect of the opposite gender*. You are now the epicenter of chapos and GPLs that, under any other circumstance, would’ve physically and financially fatal but now seem all the merrier.
+
+## Oh you didn’t make it? 
+
+You know what awaits you? A second chance. The thing with GSoC is, if an attempt doesn’t kill you (which it rarely does), it makes you stronger. If you put in effort and fail, you still get contributions and community exposure in the org that you tried to get into, giving you a significant head start for your next try. 
+
+So don’t be afraid to give it a second go, especially considering that the stipend is known to go up with each passing year. 
+
+**\* Some conditions may have been exaggerated to inspire more people**

_posts/2019-05-23-memoir-arnav.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title: "Memoir: Of Debates and Doggos"
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: arnav1.jpg
+category: memoirs
+author: "Arnav Bhardwaj"
+excerpt: "I remember my first morning at IIT Roorkee as I woke up to witness a procession of dogs marching into the room since the door had been accidentally left open and apparently, the dogs saw that as an invitation to my humble RJB abode."
+---
+
+I remember my first morning at IIT Roorkee as I woke up to witness a procession of dogs marching into the room since the door had been accidentally left open and apparently, the dogs saw that as an invitation to my humble RJB abode. The treatment of these R-land dogs was to subsequently become the biggest topic of debate on this campus with people proposing extreme measures ranging from almost giving them citizenship rights to conducting a doggo massacre. Dogs are said to have premonitions and in retrospect, the dogs might have expected me to lend support to their cause in light of their upcoming troubles. But my affection for endearing biting doggos was as short-lived as my affection for mess food. Having embraced myself for all sorts of culinary disasters, the mess food initially seemed much better than expected. However, soon the horrors came to light as the pulses began to be ‘water’ed down along with my resolve to tolerate mess food. The saying - ‘If you can tolerate RJB mess food, you can tolerate food anywhere’ helped me survive through the first year.
+
+Apart from that, I got in touch with some amazing people, who became an inalienable part of my life in the coming years. It was great to meet people coming from various cultures and places and get to know about their lives and perspectives. However, despite the diversity, a common culture persisted on campus. A prominent part of this culture was the lingo. Within a few months, I got accustomed to the quintessential R-land lingo and was soon throwing around words like ‘ghissu’, ‘machau’ in random conversations. I especially remember the overuse of the word ‘ghissu’ to the extent that we were using it to describe even someone, who started studying a night before the exam. It was just one of the many slangs that stuck and subsequently lost all meaning.
+
+The turning point came in my 2nd year, when I realised that a Debating Society existed on the campus (it wasn’t very active back then). I came in contact with some stellar senior debaters, who would go on to become my mentors in debating and otherwise. I grew fond of debating not only because it remarkably improved my public speaking skills but also because it improved my analytical abilities by allowing me to deeply explore complex issues from multiple viewpoints. I attended my first debating tournament at the National Law University in Delhi. While witnessing stellar debates by seasoned debaters from DU and prominent law colleges was quite intimidating, the gained exposure proved to be a great learning experience. These learnings proved to be extremely useful in the 1st Inter-IIT Cultural Meet at IIT Bombay, in which I was selected as one of the five panellists for judging the finals. Towards the end of the year, I realised that the impact of debating went beyond making me a better public speaker. Debating transformed me completely by making me much more confident as an individual. This unwavering faith in self helped me excel in numerous presentations and interviews, making this the single most useful skill acquired in my college life. In order to allow the DebSoc to grow further, the seniors helped establish the DebSoc as a full-fledged separate entity of the Cultural Council. This proved to be a watershed moment as this single move was to facilitate the rapid growth of a debating culture on campus in the years to come.
+
+The third year arrived and I got busy with the whole internship process, which typically begins with writing glorified odes to oneself, in a process called ‘CV-making’. I remember myself and many those around me turning into heroes overnight, improving the profits of random companies by GDP-rivalling numbers as interns or spearheading (and not leading) mammoth-sized campus groups, which could put armies to shame. Setting the amusement of judging each other’s glorified CVs aside however, the internship process turned out to be a stressful affair. I had a disappointing run in the first semester with the limited analytics and core companies that arrived on campus. Thankfully, I managed to get two internship offers at the end of the year - a Process Consulting internship at KBC Singapore and a Business Analytics internship at Penguin RandomHouse. I chose the former.
+
+Apart from that, I had assumed the position of Additional Secretary of the DebSoc and a significant portion of my time was devoted to setting the foundation of the newly-established Debating Society on campus. The take-off stage involved the DebSoc’s first-ever recruitments, subsequent training of the recruits and participation in major debating tournaments. All these efforts seemed to finally pay off as we broke into the quarter finals of a national-level debating tournament and ended up at the 3rd position in the Inter-IIT held at IIT Kanpur. I remember a failed attempt at recreating a Federer-style trophy-kissing Wimbledon moment after the lnter-IIT. Considering how weird that looked with the miniature second runner-up trophy, I realised the need to get a bigger one in the coming years for a not-so-weird recreation.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/arnav2.jpg){: style="width:100%;height:auto"}
+
+Once the rosy period of my internship in Singapore ended, the fourth year arrived like a sudden storm out of the blue and I got busy with hectic placement preparations. Friends could be seen huddling together like penguins to brave the impending storm of placements unitedly. Every new company appearing on Channel-I gave a beacon of hope and yet, a sinking fear of the placement process coming closer. This period made me realise the importance of good friends in life. Whether it be helping out with interview preparations, giving last-moment ego boosts or simply lending morale support, each one of them selflessly helped me in different ways during this period. As the storm subsided, I finally got placed at OYO as a Business Analyst.
+
+Once the storm was over and hashtags like #andha_paisa had faded away from social media, life began to crawl back to normal. Since this was the last semester, I indulged in activities, which I couldn’t earlier because of time constraints or other reasons. I participated in my first-ever slam poetry in Kshitij’s FOS-Eunoia. The immense free time allowed me to read books, play snooker and tennis, hang out with friends or simply laze around. Late-night campus walks with friends, which often involved random discussions related to philosophy or politics, were also great memories. As this journey comes to an end, I am taking with me not only great memories but learnings from all the people I got to know on the campus. Parting with R-land was sad. But at the end of the day, I will remember the wisdom of one of my friends – ‘Life is meant to be sad. If you are expecting it to be happy, you are feeling uselessly entitled’.

_posts/2019-05-25-memoir-indroneil.md

@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Memoir: Outside the Wall"
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: indroneil.jpg
+category: memoirs
+author: "Indroneil Kanungo"
+excerpt: "Humans are today the most dominant species on the planet and it wasn't always the case. It is because we developed a unique evolutionary advantage: our ability to socialize and communicate complex ideas using a language."
+---
+
+Humans are today the most dominant species on the planet and it wasn't always the case. It is because we developed a unique evolutionary advantage: our ability to socialize and communicate complex ideas using a language. In prehistoric times, this is what helped us gain the strategic advantage over creatures with superior speed, agility, claws and teeth. And today it helps us with much more than that. One way it significantly improves our lives, that we usually take for granted, is that we have not only the ability to learn from our mistakes, but also from the mistakes of anyone, anywhere on the planet, alive or otherwise. In that spirit, I would like to share with you guys the mistakes I've made, and the things that went wrong for me, so you can  avoid them.
+
+For reasons that are too personal, I was severely depressed through my second until about the middle of my fourth year. And as far as we know, depression is more common today than has ever been. It's my opinion that at least a part of the reason is  capitalism - which forces us to go against our natural instincts to cooperate and requires us to compete against the same friends that we help cheat in an exam. Our entire economy and education system is based around that principle - of competition. But regardless of the reasons, you have to live with it. When I look back at myself 5 years ago, I see a person who could have succeeded in any of the fields he desired. I had a really nice social life. I was pretty good at physics, math, coding, badminton, music and I could have chosen any of those but instead what I chose was to lie on my bed all day, staring at the ceiling, contemplating ways to kill myself. It's impossible to imagine a better version of yourself when you're in that state. You feel that you're a burden to everyone. As a result, all your attempts at convincing yourself to get help or to reach out to your friends will be in vain. This only makes it worse. But if there's one thing I could say to that person, I'd tell him to seek therapy or psychiatric help without a second thought. It's easy to forget that no matter how "sentient", you are really just a very complicated arrangement of atoms, and tiny things like talking about some stuff to the right person, or the right chemicals in your bloodstream, can have a drastic effect on your mood. So if you think you're feeling depressed, please don't throw away your career like I did, and get professional help. And before you ask, NO, you're not "too smart for therapy".
+
+I should have probably started with this. But as some of you may know already, I haven't really graduated. I have dropped out of college as I didn't think the time and the effort I'd have to give in order to get a degree would be worth it, and I hope I will not be proven wrong. I am going to pursue a career as a full-time musician. I have joined a music school in Mumbai and will be staying there for the foreseeable future. Deciding what I had to do was rather easy for me because all of the other options had been destroyed. But most of you people reading this likely do not have their lives as "sorted out" as mine so I think you could use some help. Through most of your life and especially in your college, you will struggle to please a set of people around you. It could be your parents, relatives, your teachers, employers, friends or even yourself. Life is easy as long as you can please every one of those at the same time. But here's the thing : after a certain point, you can't. That point typically comes around adolescence. And I think it should be the objective of your college life to figure out, who it is that you want to please. You should keep in mind that there are no wrong answers here. There's no right way to live life. But not having an answer could make your life potentially difficult in the future. Not that you asked, but I have found my answer. I have realized that I want to try my best to make myself happy irrespective of whether the other people in the list disapprove. Writing and listening to good music is something that makes me very happy and if you haven't already, I think all of you should try to figure out what the thing is that makes you just as happy.
+
+Your college life is a very critical time of your life. The tiniest of your actions have enormous, unpredictable consequences. So choose your actions carefully, think before you speak, and don't do drugs kids.
+
+But what do I know.

_posts/2019-05-27-doggie-doggie-what-now.md

@@ -0,0 +1,79 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Doggie Doggie! What Now?"
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: bigstory
+image: doggoz1.png
+author: "Surya Raman, Vedant Kumar, Harshit Dubey, Aditya Ramkumar"
+excerpt: "For some time now, cases of individuals being hounded or bit by stray dogs within the campus have been piling up. A meeting of the ‘Dog Menace Committee’ was convened on the 15th of April to address these issues."
+---
+
+*For some time now, cases of individuals being hounded or bit by stray dogs within the campus have been piling up. A meeting of the ‘Dog Menace Committee’ was convened on the 15th of April to address these issues. Watch Out got in touch with Professor Gargi Singh and K.P. Singh, Chief Security Officer to cut through the noise and try to understand the measures taken, their degree of success and the impediments encountered in the same. A link to the minutes of the meeting of the Dog Menace Committee has been provided at the bottom. Readers are also encouraged to go through a previous article on the issue by WatchOut.*
+
+<span style="text-decoration:underline">*[{{ site.url }}/2017/03/dogs-are-here-to-stay]({{ site.url }}/2017/03/dogs-are-here-to-stay)*</span>
+
+### The Menace
+
+#### *Chew you up, spit you out*
+
+They may be fuzzy, cuddly, floofy, smooshy balls of cotton candy or even scrawny, terrifying howling scoundrels, but the one uniting feature of all dogs is their need to gnaw and bite at anything they fancy, and as observed from the recent cases of dog bites reported in the campus, students are often at the receiving end. Dog bites are at the very core of the menace surrounding dogs. Fortunately, we haven’t had any cases of rabies - yet.  Aggression amongst dogs is very frequent near certain perilous locations and depending on how unfortunate someone is, this aggression can quickly be directed towards them.
+
+Another qualm that is voiced is how the presence of aggressive dogs effectively hijacks certain routes and forces pedestrians to take alternative paths. Seeing your favourite road being patrolled by a growling four-legged single-headed Cerberus that can outrun you (even if armed with Reebok’s Ultra Speed 2.0 Running shoes) is not quite appeasing.
+
+#### *Poopity Doop*
+
+The sight of trash strewn across the corridor, coupled with the mellow fragrance of poop in the air has been long been established to be not the best start to the day. And who wouldn’t want to share the water cooler with a pupper? The start of a new plague has never been easier.
+
+### Student Opinions
+
+> “There are "good" dogs, there are "bad" dogs, I was bitten by a "bad" dog. I don't want the campus to be dog-free, just we must have some kind of check on dogs.”
+
+Spending a quality Sunday evening on the SAC discussion forum reveals how the student populace is fractured in their opinions about how to deal with our furry friends/adversaries. Some call for complete ousting of all dogs while some classify them as being ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and want the naughty ones to face the thunder. Another segment believes that a possible truce between the two species can be reached if the students are more cautious and compassionate in how they deal with these animals. Since dogs don’t have access to Eduroam’s password, their needs are posited by sympathizers who are soon labelled as ‘dog-lovers’. However, a pervading commonality across all such segments is an uproar that the administration is not taking sufficient measures to address the problem at hand.
+
+### Initial Measures and Their Ineffectiveness
+
+> “Every dog menace incident is dealt with”
+
+Earlier, dogs that were identified as hell-raisers were thrown out of the campus, but it was soon found that displacing an animal from its place of birth was illegal; hence this measure had to be put on hold indefinitely.
+
+According to AWBI (Animal Welfare Board of India) and WHO recommendations, sterilization is the most effective way of controlling the stray dog population. Adhering to the same, the administration invited “Human Society International” to start a sterilization drive across the campus which aimed to inhibit 125 dogs from breeding. The outcome of the drive was favourable in the short run - the number of dogs didn’t increase in the following mating season. However, in the next mating season, there was an unforeseen increment in their population. It was found out that only about 50% of the aimed dogs were actually sterilized in the drive earlier, leaving the rest to mate to their heart’s content.
+
+### Recent Measures
+
+> “We fear what we don't understand, and we destroy what we fear”
+
+**Animal Birth Control Programme:** The second phase of sterilization has been initiated. Now, the dogs will be sterilised and vaccinated. A hard timeline has been set and is expected to be followed through (May 2019). The recently hired security agency has been instructed to carry out the sterilization drive in collaboration with RAAHAT NGO as their first job. Also, the dogs from outside the campus will be captured and pushed out of the campus boundaries. Any of the injured dogs will be taken to  Dehradun for their proper treatment and possibly, adoption.
+
+**Identification of the dogs:**  According to a <span style="text-decoration:underline">[circular](http://www.awbi.org/awbi-pdf/circular_abc_cantonmentboards.pdf)</span>  issued by the Animal Welfare Board of India, stray dogs cannot be beaten or driven away from their localities. They can however, be sterilised, immunized, and released back into the same area in accordance with the Animal Birth Control programme. The Dog Menace Committee, in their meeting on 15th April 2019, decided to use collar belts to distinguish between campus dogs and dogs that didn’t belong. On further deliberation, it was concluded that the campus dogs were smart enough to remove these collar belts. Instead, the identification of campus dogs is being done by cutting a 'V' shape on the ear lobe of the dogs. The stated procedure is internationally recognised. The dogs that will henceforward be identified as “new” can then be shown the door since their birthplace would not be within the walls of the campus.
+
+**Door to door garbage collection:** The administration has taken measures to ensure door to door garbage collection from all the faculty families residing inside the campus. The waste food (especially non-vegetarian food) attracted dogs and nourished them. Dog menace has gone down in the areas where efficient garbage disposal systems are in place.
+
+**Securing the gates:** Gates that are permanently shut see no influx of external dogs, it is the functional ones that let the dogs in. Keeping the same in mind, the Chief Security Officer has increased the security near the functional gates of the campus. The Institute Engineer has been actively working to resolve this problem and a change is expected to be visible soon.
+
+**Dog Shelters:** The Nagar Nigam, upon the request of the administration, has planned to make a dog shelter around 5-8 km outside the campus. This shelter will harbour the castaway canines and will cater to all their needs.
+
+**In-Hostel Measures:**
+
+- Ban on Feeding of Stray dogs inside the Hostel: This decision was taken keeping the students who fear dogs in mind. According to the administration, "If the dogs don’t get food in the hostel, they will go someplace else in search of food".
+
+- Water coolers in Bhawans have been enclosed/raised to prevent dogs/monkeys drinking from them. Ceramic water bowls of Roorkee Cares will be placed around the campus. This measure is expected to safeguard the water coolers. Students and guards fill up these bowls every day.
+
+**The counsel of the Experts:** Prof. Anindita Bindra (ISR Kolkata), a canine expert and researcher, is being called to the campus to present a neutral perspective. She will be talking to the Dean Administration, the Dog Menace Committee and will give a detailed analysis of what else needs to be done. A canine behaviourist from Norway is also being invited to do the same. Two canine trainers had been invited in the past as well. During their stay here, they conducted personality tests for dogs and identified them as 'Skittish', not 'Aggressive'. Residents of IITR have been known to thrash dogs and this forms a big part of the reason why campus dogs are skittish.
+
+### Roorkee Cares and the Biodiversity Problem
+
+Professor Gargi Singh started Roorkee Cares with the aim of caring for various animals in R-Land. They have rescued and helped dogs, squirrels, endangered birds etc. Campus junta is known to be engaged in the activities of Roorkee Cares. In Surat, the population of hell-raising dogs was culled by massive, large-scale poisoning. The city was soon tormented with the plague. Dogs keep the rodent population in check who in turn keep the snake population in check. Large scale killing of any species is harmful in the long run - we would do well to not mess with the ecosystem of any locality.
+
+### Our Two-Cents
+
+> “Our dogs are Skittish, not Aggressive”
+
+A Dog becomes <span style="text-decoration:underline">[skittish](https://wagwalking.com/behavior/why-some-dogs-are-skittish)</span> and <span style="text-decoration:underline">[aggressive](https://indianexpress.com/article/lifestyle/life-style/why-do-dogs-bite-and-how-to-prevent-it/)</span> for a host of reasons. It might be protecting its family and territory from trespassers, it might be scared, lonely, angry or it might just be having a bad day. However, it is also true that students do at times provoke and ill-treat them as well over prolonged periods of time. These dogs are usually very afraid of humans and tend to sprint, bite and run away when they happen to spot someone moving alone in their area.
+
+This issue can be dealt with if the dogs are treated properly. The campus has a lot of therapeutic dogs -- Mr. Chattu, Ms. (Mrs.?) Rampyari etc. that live harmoniously alongside the more evolved homo sapiens of the campus. They are properly taken care of and usually enjoy human company. It is possible to make the skittish stray dogs therapeutic as well by feeding and caring for them regularly, if their translocation encounters impenetrable hurdles.
+
+The Dog Menace Committee meets every month, so any rule/initiatives which may have loopholes are expected to be revamped. Roorkee’s pup fiction will need an active contribution from the campus junta to have a happy and warm ending.
+
+<span style="text-decoration:underline">[Minutes of Meeting of the Dog Menace Committee Meeting, 15 th April 2019 (PDF)]({{ site.url }}/{{ "notice240420192.pdf" }})</span>
+
+![pic](/images/posts/doggoz2.png){: style="width:70%;height:auto"}

_posts/2019-05-29-memoir-debjit.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Memoir: We are The Ghosts of Your Future, and Bearers of Your Memories"
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: debjit.jpg
+category: memoirs
+author: "Debjit Tripathy"
+excerpt: "I have never been much for vocal expression of my emotions, but I guess that is one of a million things that Roorkee changed about me."
+---
+
+I have never been much for vocal expression of my emotions, but I guess that is one of a million things that Roorkee changed about me. And I don't know if I'll ever stay in a single town for 4 years with the same people again, so here goes.
+
+To be completely honest, I wasn't too excited about coming to this place. And the queues on the first day didn't exactly change the moods. Everything stayed pretty mundane for a better half of the first year. But a lot changed when a squad slowly started gathering. It started with small dine outs and extended to all night Mafia parties. I always kept a lot of space vacant in my room, so that I could seat everyone who said 'Hi'. And as they took their seats, we turned breakfasts into last meals of our days, after exhausting debates and contemplations on a wide range of subjects. The assortment of conversations I have had, as I vacate this room today, I hope I never have to forget those.
+
+What I came to absolutely love about the place is the people I got to know here. I go even as far as to say that knowing these people is my biggest achievement in college. As a curious little kid who wanted to know everything about everywhere, I sure had a great time with friends, juniors and seniors from all around. And the best part? They all accepted me like I never expected.
+
+The late night projects and squeezing in a couple of quizzes right before the endsems were the kind of adventures I enjoyed embarking on. And none of these memories would be there if every one of us knew all the same things. This pool of knowledge that you surround yourself with, this will be the very best source of learning you'll get in college.
+
+As I said, I'm not a man of emotions, but I do love metaphors. A lot of us don't know where we're heading, snow filled treks with nothing in sight and no clues about the destination. But the walk's worth it as long as you have familiar places or familiar faces.
+
+To everyone who's reading this, we'll be the ghosts of your future, and bearers of your memories. So remember, remember.

_posts/2019-06-01-memoir-siddharth.md

@@ -0,0 +1,25 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Memoir: Jigsaw Falling into Place"
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: siddharth-memoir.jpg
+category: memoirs
+author: "Siddharth Saravanakumar"
+excerpt: "I loved painting with my fingers as a 7 year old, playing guitar till I bruised my fingers as a 12 year old, and deveining prawns with my granny for her curry as a 15 year old."
+---
+
+*I loved painting with my fingers as a 7 year old, playing guitar till I bruised my fingers as a 12 year old, and deveining prawns with my granny for her curry as a 15 year old. The best memories from my childhood? Getting my hands messy.*
+
+Most people think of me as this happy-happy dude who knows what he wants to do with his life, started a student-run cafe, and who cooks all the time and experiments with food. It’s partially true, I do know what I want to do with my life, but it comes at a price. There’s a feeling of devastation when I come home- no parent would want to accept that their kid who’s in India’s most prestigious institute wants to throw it all away and cook full-time. The relationship with my parents has become sour and knowing that it will not be the same, at least for a few years, is a hard pill to swallow. But that’s the choice I have made for pursuing my dreams of becoming a chef.
+
+I joined IITR in 2014 as a half-hearted physics undergrad, skeptical if I had taken the right decision. The thought of joining hotel management was still lingering in my mind- cooking was the only thing I ever liked- while physics at IITR seemed the easier route and a reason to smile for my mother. My father, on the other hand, was skeptical regarding Integrated M.Sc. Physics, as a non-B.Tech course at an IIT was an ordeal for him. The ‘ideal’ son that I was at the time, I promised dad that I’d work hard and branch change to a course that was better on paper. I write these lines laughing at my plight, wishing I could tell my younger self that cooking is what I'd continue to pursue in the final years of my college life.
+
+There will come a time of confusion, anger, a constant feeling of being lost, and maybe depression in your tenure at Roorkee. Most of the times that phase will be in your second or third year, the years you have to make the important decisions of your life. It's tough, it really is. What’s important is to make conscious choices that are unaffected by the path often taken and never look back. That's the hard part-not looking back-because it’s so easy to point at the mistakes we made in hindsight and feel frustrated about it. Start making peace with your past, it’ll help in the long run.
+
+The first few years of university have been harsh,but the final year of my Insti life has been rewarding. I stopped comparing myself to others, realized that cooking is my path in life, and did nothing but experiment in my cafe throughout my final semester. I loved every single moment of cooking in college, and it made all the previous bitter years of college worth it. No one came and handed me this happiness, no one gave it on a silver platter. I worked hard for it, visited the main building every other day, made the administration believe in my vision and as to why they must invest in this idea, and made sure they act on my idea. Trust me, it’s tough to justify spending the Institute’s money on a hobby like cooking. They did not understand it at the time, some of them still don’t, but those who do are happy when they visit my cafe for trying out the food. It feels great, it truly does.
+
+The choice of becoming a chef, I must admit, was a product of the frustration I felt as a physics undergrad at IITR. I always thought I'd work a normal job till I'm 40 and then start a cafe of my own in Pondicherry. But college academics, particularly physics, frustrated me so much that all I could think about was doing something I love in the remaining years I had left in college, something that made me feel free and creative. I perceived cooking as an escape, but now I knew it had to be pursued more seriously. I'm really happy that I did.
+
+I sometimes wonder if I were in a less intensive branch, would I have followed the herd and gotten a job like everybody else. If I would have ever come up with an idea of a student-run cafe in India and started Culinary Club, IIT Roorkee. I really don’t know, but in retrospect, I’m happy I chose Physics. It made me do the things I love, it made me cook. Culinary Club has been my surviving grace- the reason I was sane in the final year of  my Insti life- and something that makes me really happy. That, and food shows on Netflix- Chef’s Table, Mind of a chef, Shokugeki no Soma, Eat street, The final table, Raja Rasoi aur anya kahaniya. Yes, you read the last one right.
+
+Brilliant show.

_posts/2019-06-05-memoir-ankit.md

@@ -0,0 +1,27 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Memoir: There is a romance in knowing these people before they're famous."
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: ankitvyas.png
+category: memoirs
+author: "Ankit Vyas"
+excerpt: "We left home for Roorkee at around 4:30 AM on 23rd July 2015 as I secretly made an entry in my diary, ‘Time to live the dream’."
+---
+
+
+We left home for Roorkee at around 4:30 AM on 23rd July 2015 as I secretly made an entry in my diary, ‘Time to live the dream’. A confident, outspoken, middle-class first-generation IITian was about to land in Roorkee with a vision no humbler than casting this place in his own image. The first semester went by more or less unceremoniously with a few seniors vying to recruit me for their political purposes while others admonishing me and amusing themselves on hearing anything related to academia. In hindsight, I feel that spending the first year in Azad Bhawan (yep!) in ignorance of the good, bad and the ugly of this place afforded me time to enjoy cricket in the evenings and take leisurely walks in the campus at nights.
+ 
+I stayed on campus during the first-year summer vacations to work on a project in the Math Department. One day, a friend invited me to accompany him to a nearby village to teach small children. We enjoyed the exercise each evening but could not continue it after the vacations due to our heavy schedule (or so we believed). On his suggestion, I started reading novels and have built myself a small library now. By the end of summers, I had already rejected a relationship proposal from a long-time friend and been rejected by two others.
+ 
+In the beginning of the second year, I joined the Student Mentorship Program(SMP) and the Institute Alumni Relations Cell(IARC) while both these programs were being introduced to Roorkee for the first time. While SMP offered me an amateur perspective of many ambitious, energetic and inspirational college seniors, the IARC introduced me to gray-haired CEOs, entrepreneurs, civil servants, social activists, etc. from across the globe. These alumni made me realize that the most important asset to hold dear are the friendships that we develop during our time here. One of the alumni remarked on his Silver Jubilee Alumni Meet ‘There is a romance in knowing these people before they are famous’. To this day, I am surprised as to why they almost always spoke of Roorkee in good terms and never spoke a harsh word against it. Maybe the passing years teach you to feel gratitude towards the positives while comfortably letting the negatives pass into oblivion!
+ 
+Meanwhile, the allure of ‘#machau’, a glorious social media presence, the pretense of ‘coolness’ and the toxic idea of busyness equals productivity had already started to sting me. With each day, I grew restless to do more, to be more and to have more. The peer-pressure was intense and giving in was easy. These insecurities, combined with some past incidents of my life and my habit of living inside my head turned out to a perfect recipe for long-term depression. I too considered myself ‘too smart for therapy’ as mentioned in one of the previous memoirs. However, I did undergo counseling later on during the final year.
+ 
+The beginning of the third year opened up new cracks in our insecurities regarding internships and an urgency to decide our careers. We were given the impression that this internship would define, for the most part, which field we were to pursue during our initial careers; an impression which like most of my senior’s opinions and my beliefs is subjective and hence only partly true. With some hard-work and stroke of luck, I was selected to NTHU, Taiwan and KAIST, South Korea. I got selected to KAIST owing to the project I did during the first-year summer vacations (which I abandoned midway). The dots had begun to be connected looking backward. I decided to avail both these offers and divided 3 months evenly between the two places. These 3 months were undoubtedly the most productive time of my college years. I had traveled to a foreign country for the first time and used this opportunity to interact with the locals and know an alien culture. Taiwan is a peaceful country with the most gentle and helpful people you’d find anywhere whereas Korea is a workaholic country with extreme competition owing to widespread capitalism and consumerism. It came as a sweet surprise, and learning to see how people in a different world can live and thrive with a completely different set of principles and value system and be at peace with their lives.
+ 
+On my return, I had exhausted my mind and spent my health and needed refreshment. A couple of my friends invited me to join them on a trip to Dharamshala where we were to stay in silence (yeah literally silent except for 1 hour each day) at the Tushita Meditation Centre for a week, without any electronics. I readily agreed. I had always been repulsed by the dogmas and rituals of religion and maintained a safe distance from them. However, I did believe that spirituality could be a way to find the satisfaction and peace that many authors preach in their books with much gusto. The experience at Tushita was enriching and refreshing. This was followed by a tense couple of months of the placement season. Amidst much confusion amongst a job, a Ph.D. and a Master degree, I decided to take a job. During the final semester, we converted a friend’s room into a kitchen and cooked our own food.
+ 
+The IIT tag gave me the opportunity to speak to professors from the HBS, MIT and Stanford and a former student of Stephen Hawking. My desire for new experiences led me to interact with soldiers from the Indian army who served in the Siachen Glacier at -50 degrees, a retired Navy officer who fought pirates in the Atlantic Ocean near South Africa, an Irish girl who has been taking care of injured stray dogs in Sri Lanka, Israeli people who had served in their army and US troops (I actually spent a day with them in South Korea), Europeans and Americans who make a trip to the Himalayas in search of peace and travellers who have been on the road for many years. I have cooked my food with Pakistani students, explained the Indian electoral system to my communist Chinese professor and dated a Taiwanese girl. Many of them did not know what the IITs are which was humbling. Within the confines of this campus, I made hundreds of acquaintances and a handful of friends. All my experiences – good or bad – have convinced me that the confines of this 365 acres campus are too narrow a boundary to procure the necessities of a ‘good life’.
+ 
+I realize that we all have come here from vastly different (un-)privileged social, cultural and economic backgrounds. Our little head wraps around events and automatically builds meaning from experience utilizing our biases and preconceived notions. Hence, I would like to invite you on a journey to the R-land, to question your biases and do the hard work of altering your self-centered default setting. To see the world through the lens of others within this campus and beyond. And to be a little less sure of yourselves when you leave this campus.
+

_posts/2019-06-07-memoir-aditya-rathi.md

@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Memoir: With love, Rathi."
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: rathi.png
+category: memoirs
+author: "Aditya Rathi"
+excerpt: "Dear Roorkee, I never really wanted you to be a part of my life. Four years ago, I remember feeling like I had no other option except you - like I had to settle for you."
+---
+
+Dear Roorkee,
+
+I never really wanted you to be a part of my life. Four years ago, I remember feeling like I had no other option except you - like I had to settle for you. You were never my first choice. You just didn’t feel like home. However, out of sheer helplessness, I gave you a chance.
+
+Ever since, we’ve had a love-hate relationship, you and I. Time and again, you kept giving me numerous reasons to dislike you, and yet, moving on from you seems emptying. Over time, I am sure you’ve heard me (through muffled cries and unrestrained rants) swear at you and curse you. So instead of just reminding you (and in the process, myself) about it all, I’ll try to tell you why, with all your vices, you’ll still be a story I’ll recall with happiness.
+
+I’d like to thank you..
+
+..for throwing untimely challenges at me and messing my sleep-cycle up. I learned to love both the tranquility of the night and the chaos of the day. I saw sunsets half-asleep and sunrises wide-awake.
+
+..for making me miserably lonely with seemingly no place to go. I ended up in conversations with Bittu-bhaiya while I waited for my cup of tea.
+
+..for reminding me how rare second chances are. It made me opportunistic on my good days and hopeful on my bad ones. I started being grateful for when fresh starts were given to me, even though I learned to never seek them actively.
+
+..for letting me be stupid enough to rest my fate at the outcomes of coin-tosses.
+
+..for embarrassingly short and unsuccessful interviews. It humbled me. It made me want to work harder.
+
+..for panic-induced blackouts, ill-tempered anxiety attacks, and unwelcome bouts of depression. It made me compassionate enough to try and help people who needed me when I was doing well. It made me humane.
+
+..for uncertain situations and confusing choices which demanded prompt action. On one hand, it coaxed me into being civil to the ones that came to me for advice and mentorship, and on the other, made me accept the consequences of and live with my decisions.
+
+..for a fair share of both heartbreaks and joy. It made me resilient and faithful, and gave me regular reminders of and (necessary) testaments to the tenacity of the human heart.
+
+..for the monotony disguised as the food in the mess. It made me miss home-cooked meals.
+
+..for putting me in uncomfortably painful situations. It trained my brain to resort to my defence mechanisms more smoothly. I started finding jokes swiftly enough to normalise a lot of problems I’d otherwise be miserable about.
+
+..for making me acutely dependent. It helped me gain modesty and learn to ask for help.
+
+..for making me insecure, vulnerable, volatile and fearful. It made me look deeper into myself. It made me realise how beautiful (but fleeting) moments free of these emotions were, and led me to appreciate them to the fullest.
+
+..for keeping me away from my family for months at a stretch. I ended up finding a family for myself right here.
+
+~
+
+Four years ago, I gave you a chance. Thank you for not letting me down.
+
+With love,
+Rathi.

_posts/2019-06-13-memoir-anchit.md

@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Memoir: May Hogwarts never change!"
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: anchit1.jpg
+category: memoirs
+author: "Anchit Shukla"
+excerpt: "Writing this memoir takes me back to the first day at R-land standing in a long queue waiting for my turn to officially start living my dream."
+---
+
+Writing this memoir takes me back to the first day at R-land standing in a long queue waiting for my turn to officially start living my dream. Being a socially introvert person that I had been till my Kota days, I just wanted to break that when I came here. I think I succeeded, though some people don’t think the same.
+
+
+![fb_post](/images/posts/anchit2.png){: style="width:70%;height:auto"}
+
+
+The day I posted this on facebook :D, to the day we parted ways, the world changed, people around me changed and I changed with them learning a life lesson almost every time I was shot with a challenge. But, with all the highs and the lows, these four years made me a person that I never thought I would be able to become. 
+Thanks, Roorkee!
+
+Thank you for providing me an opportunity to meet great, great people. For letting me learn from the experiences of my seniors, They are the ones who I credit for helping me enter the design world (they even placed bets on whether I would be coming back to work during my initial Cogni design days and told me this an eternity later). The journey that followed is what I would cherish throughout my life.
+
+Thank you for imparting in me a selfless attitude which always helped me in helping people around. Sadly, the culture at IITR has now transitioned from a phase where people cared about other people but still, it exists in bits (I have had hours of long talks on the group culture that R-land has and how it has always brought people together). I hope that this selflessness would not cease to exist.
+
+Thank you for the lifetime friendships. For the perfect locations that you provided to have conversations, some wise and some wicked. Earlier the main building area used to be the quietest place at night and I have had the most gyaan-ful discussions there watching the beautiful night sky.
+
+Thank you for the most nalaayak juniors that I have had from Design Studio and Kshitij and thanks for making me learn to handle them. I must say that they will surely take the legacy forward and would achieve greater heights.
+
+Thank you for helping me find occasions to explore myself. I never thought I would write a whole long poem and perform in a slam poetry event until you made me do it.
+
+Thank you for making me immune to embarrassments and failures. Believe me, I have had many and I would suggest everyone in college to have one. It would help you find your best self. 
+
+Thanks to your geography Roorkee, I was able to measure distances in the north. Special mention to a pahadi person, who planned the most fun trips to the most peaceful places of Uttarakhand and thanks to Maggi for making the best noodles that always came to rescue. The North will be remembered.
+
+A senior of mine in my freshman year told me that being in a college, you get to know people from 8 different batches and if you talk to even 10 percent of them(that’s almost 700 odd UG folks), you become an experienced individual right away. This, I tried to practice and I believe that a lot has been earned.
+
+Thank you, Roorkee for being the amazing host that you were and I hope that you would always be the way you have been!

_posts/2019-06-14-guide-to-branches.md

@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Watch Out's Guide to the Branches at IIT Roorkee"
+tags: [wona]
+category: academics
+image: branch-guide.jpg
+---
+
+It is pretty difficult to choose a field of study that you might have to stick with for four (or five) years. We know because we've all been there. Hence, to make the process a little bit easier, we came up with this rather elaborate and painstakingly devised guide to the various branches at IIT Roorkee. With an analysis of the various specialisations available, including an overview of the syllabus, future prospects, and some inside information from IIT Roorkee, we hope to give you a perspective of what you might be getting into!
+
+![pic](/images/posts/branch-guide-19.png){: style="width:100%;height:auto"}
+
+<a href="/WatchOutsGuidetoBranches2019.pdf" style="text-align: center"><button type="button" class="btn btn-primary btn-block btn-lg">Download the Guide Here!</button></a>

_posts/2019-06-15-memoir-yash-trivedi.md

@@ -0,0 +1,56 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Memoir: Excelsior!"
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: yash_trivedi.jpg
+category: memoirs
+author: "Yash Trivedi"
+excerpt: "Let me begin by saying - Thank you IITR, for giving me the best four years of my life. From first year to now, Roorkee has shaped my personality in unimaginable ways - and I doubt I would have got the same exposure anywhere else."
+---
+
+Let me begin by saying - Thank you IITR, for giving me the best four years of my life. From first year to now, Roorkee has shaped my personality in unimaginable ways - and I doubt I would have got the same exposure anywhere else. Roorkee has taught me things I never knew I needed to learn.
+
+
+With no engineers in my immediate family, preparing for JEE was never an “obvious” choice. So, when I came to Roorkee, I did not have any sort of expectations whatsoever. I was simply excited to know what lies in store. Our hostels, mess food, the people, the oppressing heat - I had never been exposed to this kind of atmosphere before and instead of being put off by it, I was actually looking forward to the next four years. In the first month itself, Roorkee surprised me in many ways. I had never imagined there could exist a dedicated group for film making on campus or, a group that makes ATVs, or a club that goes on regular Himalayan expeditions.
+
+
+My first year in campus was all about exploring what our campus had to offer - I sat for almost every campus group recruitment and tried everything - from sports to coding to electronics to film making to automobiles and even took a project in the Physics department after the end of my first year. Of course, I didn't continue most of these activities but this phase of "exploration" served two important purposes -
+
+1. It helped me figure out things I didn't want to do again. At least, I can say I tried but didn't enjoy it.  
+2. I got acquainted with some exceptionally talented people in each of these fields whom I can ask for help anytime i.e. networking.
+
+Such has been most of my life at IITR - I always had my plate full, which I believe is what everyone should be doing. You will never have so much freedom and independence to try out things and not worry about the consequences. And Roorkee has more than enough things to keep you busy. Believe me, you will get a platform to try anything you want to.
+
+
+Your "IIT" tag matters more than what most of you might think - it helped me get a research intern in Paris - and it has many other less noticeable, but more potent advantages as well. So, just make the most of it! Also, academics is definitely not the way to judge a person here - I went from being a regular tutorial solver to studying a night before the exams, and still managed to get a decent grade everytime. But how you spend your time otherwise is important. While in college, there is never a time when you can't do something productive. Another thing I realized was - there is sooo much to learn from people around you - in the form of inspirational seniors, loving juniors and an extremely talented peer group. Almost always, you will find someone more "machau" than you at what you are doing. But then this is what makes you want to work harder, and this is how it should be.
+
+
+Film making, building ATVs and tennis - these are the three things that have been constant across my four years. Cinesec has influenced me so much that I can not thank it enough. I met such amazingly talented, creative and like-minded people that were almost like a family on campus. Staying awake for 50 hours at a stretch, brainstorming over a script, the 12 hour long editing sessions just two days before end terms, refreshing our YouTube page every 30 seconds to see the increase in views - it really pains me to think that I will never be able to do these things again. My balcony friends - a group of misfits glued together in the most perfect combination ever - almost goes synonymous with a B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering.  
+
+
+Those who know me, would know how bad I am with decisions. I tend to over think even the most simplest and inconsequential of decisions. There was a time when I was studying for JEE as well as NEET and even gave both entrance exams. At times, I think - should I have followed my father's footsteps and become a doctor? But almost instantly, my mind answers - I would not have met the exact same people had I chosen to pursue medicine instead. I would not have been the same person that I am today. I would reiterate what others before me have mentioned - the friends you make here and the experiences you share with them is the best gift you can take away with you. I like to believe that which ever activities I have been involved in - including campus politics and countless evenings in divine - will come of use some day, in some way or the other. Like me, most of you will find yourselves in this situation regularly: (Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken)
+
+<center><br>
+And both (ref. roads) that morning equally lay
+<br>
+In leaves no step had trodden black.
+<br>
+Oh, I kept the first for another day!
+<br>
+Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
+<br>
+I doubted if I should ever come back.
+</center><br>
+
+In retrospect, could I have done something differently? - Yes.
+
+But do I want to go back in time and do it differently? - No
+
+
+Hope you get the point. I am fortunate to have met some brilliant people in this journey whom I respect a lot. I still don't know what I really want to do, where will I end up and which decisions would take me there - but let's keep something for destiny as well, no? Until then, I'll just go with the flow. But Roorkee, thank you, for being jussst perfect!
+
+
+
+
+
+

_posts/2019-06-16-publishing-paper.md

@@ -0,0 +1,41 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Guest Editorial: All About Paper Publication"
+tags: [wona, column]
+author: "Ekdeep Singh Lubana"
+image: lubana.jpg 
+category: career
+excerpt: "I am writing this article to address certain myths that I have every so often been presented with while being consulted by peers who were interested in publishing their research work."
+---
+I am writing this article to address certain myths that I have every so often been presented with while being consulted by peers who were interested in publishing their research work. I have had the opportunity to present my own work at three top conferences now, within the field of embedded systems, data compression, and sensors, while having published a journal paper too. Please note that this article is bound to be heavily biased by my own personal experiences, for academic communities have highly variable publication routines. For ex., while conferences garner a lot of reputation in circuit branches (possibly more so than journals), this may not be the case in natural sciences, which highly regard journal publications.
+
+So, to begin with, there are several cycles involved in publishing one’s work.
+
+1. **Building a manuscript**–Your article/research paper is supposed to be a well-drafted manuscript that, succinctly but descriptively, demonstrates the problem statement studied, the solution proposed, and the contributions made. This manuscript is to be submitted for review, thereafter.
+
+2. **Choosing a platform to publish**–Broadly, one can publish via three platforms: (a) preprints; (b) conferences; (c) journals. I give brief descriptions about the three in this paragraph, but elucidate further details on choosing the exact venue in a later part of the article. Preprints are not technically publications, but an early body of work that you find promising. The idea here is to either mark your problem territory or unveil solutions/problems that require attention from the community. ArXiV is the most popular preprint platform and most certainly an academic’s newsboard. Conferences are generally the platform of choice if your work has gained a certain level of maturity, such as if you define a problem and in part solve it. Finally, the old school, high-prestige publications are journal papers, which usually carry a lot of lustre with them. These papers are heavily scrutinized by several reviewers before publication.
+
+3. **Peer review**–In most conferences/journals, one’s submission is assigned 3-4 reviewers who assess the novelty, plausibility, and clarity of your work, thereby scoring it on a predefined scale. These reviewers strive to find achievements and loopholes within your research, which you may be given a chance to address. I say “may”, for reviews can lead to either direct publications or rebuttals. In the former situation, reviewer comments are unveiled to you and, if the review score is high, your paper is accepted for publication directly. It is now at your discretion to modify your paper as per reviewer comments. For ex., say a reviewer said the caption of figure 2 is unclear and is vital to understanding the paper. In this case, it would be a good idea to change the caption. However, note that one is not allowed to perform significant changes to the paper. For ex., if you have found an optimization technique to improve your algorithm’s speedup from 2x to 3x, you are not allowed to modify your paper towards the same. The idea here is that your proposition may be fallacious, which needs to be reviewed, but since the paper has already been accepted, it cannot be reviewed again. In case significant changes are found, the paper is rejected.
+
+
+4. **Rebuttals (the latter situation)**: The pipeline towards acceptance decision varies from venue to venue. In most top conferences and journals, however, one is given a chance to address the limitations found by reviewers. Certain venues allow for one to update the paper to address the reviewer comments, while others ask for limited text (<500 words, typically) responses. The idea here is to convince why the reviewer why your assumptions are correct or why the supposed limitation may not actually cover your target domain. Also, if you do think that the reviewer is right with his analysis, save some electrons and just thank the reviewers. :3
+
+Finally, the review/rebuttal process culminates in the publication of your work. Now, having described the general idea, let me talk about certain specifics that I find important for people to know.
+
+1. **Faculty involvement**–Something that simply confounds me is the opinion that one needs a professor to be affiliated with one’s paper in order to publish his/her work. This is an absurd notion. You can publish alone, with your friends, with your grandparents, with your friend’s grandparents–whosoever you want, truly. In general, however, the authors of a piece of work will be the people who have contributed to it in some way. If the contribution is not significant, then such people are conventionally mentioned in the acknowledgement.
+
+2. **The lust of journal publications**–the publication cycle for journals is excruciatingly long, to the point where certain journals even take a year or two to go from review to publication stage. I am personally a heretic when it comes to journal publications, for these long winded time windows can actually become the bottleneck of scientific progress.
+
+3. **Publishing half-cooked ideas to conferences**–The following especially applies to circuit branches. This maligned notion for conferences has become a rather old-school opinion. In actuality, the competitiveness of conferences has risen to such high degrees that unless you have significant contributions to unveil, publishing in conferences is really hard. Further, the amount of content expected to be published in a top international conference paper in certain fields is several folds more exhaustive than that of a journal. Such communities have essentially accepted the limitations of journal publications and are progressing towards more dynamic and fast-paced publication cycles. One could argue that this adulterates the content quality, but there’s enough empirical proof that indicates otherwise.
+
+4. **Do not publish for the sake of it:** This point cannot be stressed enough. Students interested in pursuing academic careers are usually hounding towards getting themselves published; however, a publication at an unrecognized platform can be worse than no publication. Strive for top venues and settle for suboptimal ones if you have to, but do not publish for the sake of it.
+
+All this said and done, an important point that I haven’t yet addressed is how to choose a platform to publish. Say you want to publish your work at a conference, then a good idea would be to find high H5-index conferences within your field at Google Scholar Metrics. For ex., a search for top conferences in computer vision at Scholar Metrics results in the following link: 
+
+<a href="https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=eng_computervisionpatternrecognition">https://scholar.google.co.in/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=en&vq=eng_computervisionpatternrecognition</a>.
+
+ You can find a relevant category on the website to find a suitable venue for your work. H5-index describes how many papers have had at least as many citations, in the last 5 years, at that venue. This isn’t an ideal metric to test a conference’s competitiveness, but certainly a metric that correlates well. Journals are usually evaluated by impact factors, than H5-index. I wouldn’t think too much about the metrics, frankly. The idea is simply to find a list of top venues. Thereafter, you go through some publications from previous years at that venue and try to determine if your work fits in well. Remember, **the idea of publication is not just to unveil your contributions, but also to take feedback to improve your work.**
+Lastly, some pointers specifically on conferences. While journal publications are carried out through the comfort of one’s home/workplace, conferences demand traveling to a venue and presenting your work. Presentations can either be oral or poster. Oral presentations are usually much fewer than poster presentations and typically involve a 15-20 minute talk by one of the authors, followed by a 2-5 minute questioning round. Don’t worry if you feel too shy to ask questions to the presenter amongst a hall filled with several luminaires from your field (evil wink), for presentation sessions are usually followed by coffee breaks and allow enough time for one to interact with authors of the papers that one finds interesting. But, there’s also a lot of really good free food available during these breaks, so do make sure you really have something worthwhile to give up all of that for. That said, your presentation really, really needs to be remarkable. Your presentation is you getting a chance to pitch your work to investors, who may choose to read your paper, take up your work, build upon/around it, cite you, make you popular, and get you a Nobel/Turing/Abel/other field-specific counterparts of the darn medal.
+
+Now, due to societal obligations, I am expected to conclude this article, but, frankly, I do not have a conclusion. Therefore, peace out. :)
+

_posts/2019-06-17-losing-my-pride-virginity.md

@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Guest Editorial: Losing My Pride Virginity"
+tags: [wona, column]
+author: "Anonymous"
+image: losingpride.jpg
+category: editorial
+excerpt: "Your first Pride walk can be nerve-wracking, especially if you are new to the city and know absolutely no one. This was the situation with me, but I was equally determined to attend it, not knowing when my next opportunity would come."
+---
+
+Your first Pride walk can be nerve-wracking, especially if you are new to the city and know absolutely no one. This was the situation with me, but I was equally determined to attend it, not knowing when my next opportunity would come. Well, thank god for Pravritti that I had some people to walk with, or else I probably wouldn’t have gone for Pride. For those of you who don’t know what Pravritti is, it is a group, more like a safe space, for the queer people across all the IITs of the country. I spoke to these people for the first time that day but we bonded so naturally, it really did not feel like we had just met. That is one of the things Pride is about, go around and meet new people(probably your exes too) without any fear of judgement whatsoever. Honestly, that part terrified me the most because I can’t help but think of what others will think about me. What if they judge me? What if they don’t like me? People were so easily approachable that I could not help but let my guard down. The overthinking, the fear of judgement, these negative thoughts just faded away into the background. It was just a bunch of beautiful people walking together to celebrate love in all its forms, what was there to fear?
+
+
+Also, Pride fashion is at a completely different level. People were pulling off saris with such aplomb in the sweltering heat, it was commendable. I could see blue and pink(colours of the bisexual flag) jumpsuits, bright tight-fitting floral shirts, rainbow raincoats and much more, all under the radius of 2km. The beauty of all of this was that they were carrying themselves with such confidence, it was hard not to get mesmerized, or rather, inspired by it. I learnt that one of the ways to strike up a conversation with the people in Pride is to compliment them. I just wanted to compliment every person in that Pride march because every single one of them was beautiful in their own way, but I obviously stopped myself from doing that, thinking that it would come across as creepy. I was wrong, as usual. I got the cutest reactions and in return, I received some compliments too. What warmed my heart was how genuine everything was. People were not faking it, they actually did mean everything they were saying. It’s because each and every member of the community knows what one goes through as a queer person in a country like India, and sometimes this is the least you can do to show your immense love and support for them, to show them that they are not alone in this struggle and to make them feel proud of who they are.
+
+
+It was truly amazing to meet and walk alongside such kind-hearted, brave and beautiful human-beings. I could literally feel myself surrounded by this intense positive energy for the entire duration of the walk. I felt empowered, and yet vulnerable, excited yet terrified. But all in all, it was an overwhelming experience. Overwhelming is the right word to describe my first pride experience. And I know that not everyone supports the LGBTQ+ community, but I really do wish that everyone, or at least the people that are part of the community as well as it’s straight allies, get to experience the magic of just being their true selves at least once in their lifetime.
+

_posts/2019-06-18-free-will.md

@@ -0,0 +1,133 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Of Mop Haired Scientists and Demonic Puppetry"
+tags: [wona, column]
+author: "Surya Raman, Sudhang Varshney"
+image: free-will-1.jpg
+category: editorial
+excerpt: "A word of warning from the authors : this article is long and extensive. We would be remiss to not let you know that this is a laborious read."
+---
+
+*A word of warning from the authors : this article is long and extensive. We would be remiss to not let you know that this is a laborious read. However, we are certain, that the brave ones, who will journey through this merciless sea of words, shall surely find it to be an exhilarating and fruitful exercise. This warning also acts as a perfect segue to the article.*
+
+*Because.*
+
+### What Does It Mean To Be Certain?
+
+An omniscient being is defined as an entity that knows everything there is to know. For the theists among us, this could be God. For the purposes of argumentation, it is assumed that such a being exists. The being knows everything there is to be known about the present, and all the laws governing all possible interactions between and within systems in the universe. These interactions are the pathway through which we sense the flow of time and the universe moves from one state to another. Say for example, this being knew the position of every particle and every way they influence each other. It could, then, prophesize the exact state of the world a second later. Applying this iteratively, it follows that the exact description of the universe was set in a cosmic stone since time took birth. This essentially leads us to a deterministic world and a predetermined future we have no control over. This being is Laplace’s Demon -  named after Laplace, who came up with this line of reasoning to prove determinism.
+
+> “We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.”
+>
+> —  Pierre Simon Laplace, [A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities](https://bayes.wustl.edu/Manual/laplace_A_philosophical_essay_on_probabilities.pdf){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+A seemingly obvious fallacy here is the assumption of such an omniscient being, but closer inspection proves otherwise. The information necessary to determine the future would still exist- irrespective of the existence of this being- and hence the world would remain deterministic, the only difference being the absence of an entity that can access this information.
+
+However, there is the possibility of another tenuous flaw in the above line of reasoning. Another underlying assumption here is the existence of a complete description of how the universe functions. That is, the assumption that the continuum of states of the universe follows a certain set of laws which we call scientific principles, the search for which is the motivation of scientism and scientific research. However it is imperative to keep in mind that at the end of the day, every model we construct to explain the world around us will always be false. It is debatable to claim that we can know everything about a particular system when we ourselves are parts of it ( to develop an intuition, ponder on this - **can an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent entity create a stone it cannot lift itself?** That is, if we are the part of a physical system, governed by the laws that constitute its preamble, can we actually unravel every piece of information within that system?) . But some models are useful. Newtonian mechanics permit acceleration of systems to superluminal speeds, which is known to be impossible, but it does serve to predict cosmic motion to a beautiful extent.
+
+One such model is the non-intuitive behemoth called quantum mechanics.
+
+> “If the present is known exactly, the future can be determined.”
+
+According to a philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics (called the *[Copenhagen Interpretation](https://www.benbest.com/science/quantum.html){: style="text-decoration:underline"}*)<sup>[1]</sup>, it is the premise and not the conclusion of the above statement which is false. This interpretation posits the existence of an [inherent indeterminacy](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j4q93/could_you_explain_schr%C3%B6dingers_cat_to_me_li5/){: style="text-decoration:underline"}<sup>[2]</sup> in physics, and by extension, reality- a direct result of the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics (the Uncertainty Principle).
+
+### "God Does Not Play Dice."
+
+The aforementioned philosophical stance on reality never fell into good favour with our favorite mop haired scientist - Albert Einstein.
+
+> “In living through this ‘great epoch’, it is difficult to reconcile oneself to the fact that one belongs to that mad, degenerate species that boasts of its free will. How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will! In such a place even I should be an ardent patriot!”
+>
+> — Albert Einstein (1914), [“Letter to Paul Ehrenfest”](https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1955505){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+His vexation is decidedly not subtle. He agreed that we could not know the present in its entirety. However, he emphasised on the we. He believed that the extrapolation of the fact that we encounter indeterminacy everywhere in physics, to the generalisation that reality is inherently indeterministic, was too much of a stretch. The [hidden variable theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_hidden-variable_theory){: style="text-decoration:underline"}<sup>[3]</sup>, as it was called, took shape along this view - the claim that fundamentally everything ran smoothly along the tramlines set by deterministic one-to-one models that were tragically out of the reach of human comprehension (he went so far as to call some quantum phenomena ‘spooky’) at the moment. Essentially, there might be some fixed variables which lead to the probabilities of a system as claimed by quantum mechanics, which are hidden from us and what we only observe is the resulting probabilistic and unpredictable observations. His friends, Podolsky, and Rosen  smiled in agreement. It was difficult to stand up to the goliath of the scientific world, and the philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics remained nebulous for an excruciatingly long time.
+
+Three tumultuous decades of passionate debates, discussions, fistfights and armchair rants passed before a resolution started to emerge and culminated in groundbreaking experiments and inequalities (beginning with John Stewart Bell’s famous theorem) that have  [settled](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/bells_inequality.html){: style="text-decoration:underline"}<sup>[4]</sup> the matter to a certain extent (though critics of these proofs still persist). **Any physical system is indeed *determined* by a probabilistic wave function.** Einstein’s qualms with the quantum theory seemed to have been satiated.
+
+But this still doesn’t mean that we have figured out the true nature of the world.
+
+Even if for a moment we assume that reality is, in fact, probabilistic, and not exact, this still does not entirely guarantee the existence of free will. At this point, we define free will as absolute freedom to choose what to feel, what to do, and how to do it. If we assume that the universe is probabilistic, then we must also accept another fact that comes along with it (through quantum mechanics): a variety of factors contribute to the disparate probabilities of the occurence of different events and we essentially have no control over choosing the probabilities of these events. This therefore does not guarantee the existence of absolute free will, since we do not control just how probabilistic the things we do on a daily basis are. It can however be accepted that the future is probabilistic, and that these probabilities depend on a multitude of factors and hence the universe is not entirely deterministic - at least not in the way we think of determinism, where the universe follows one set path, and everything that happens, happens with infallible certainty.
+
+![pic](/images/posts/free-will-2.png){: style="width:80%;height:auto"}
+
+### Compatibility Theories
+
+The existence of an omniscient entity like a God clearly does not allow for the existence of free will. However, compatibilists have a convenient workaround. Compatibility theorists believe that determinism and free will can co-exist. Their workaround to the problem of Laplace’s Demon, is to change the definition of free will. Compatibilists define free will as having the freedom to act on one’s motivations without external coercion, while accepting that one does not have the freedom to choose one’s motivations. Arthur Schopenhauer summed it up neatly :
+
+> [“Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.”](https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/32731/what-does-schopenhauer-mean-by-a-man-can-do-what-he-wants-but-not-want-what-he){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+The problem with these theories is quite obvious - the definition of free will has been contorted according to convenience and the new free will barely resembles what we initially started with.
+
+The common consensus on deciding if someone is accountable for their actions is to determine if the person could have done otherwise. With this as our context, we come across Frankfurt’s Counterexamples. Frankfurt’s argument tried to disprove the **[principle of alternate possibilities](https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil201/compatibilism.pdf){: style="text-decoration:underline"}**, which states that a person is morally responsible for his/her actions, only if they could have done otherwise.
+
+Here is a typical example of Frankfurt’s assertions:
+
+*In an election, a person X must choose between, A or B, and it is given that she is likely to go with B. She will decide against B only if she considers the failures of B in the past. Unbeknownst to her, B plants a chip in her head that will make her choose B if she ever happens to considers the past. B decides to use the chip only if she considers the past. As things happen, she doesn’t consider the past, and decides to go with B.*
+
+Frankfurt, here, was trying to prove the co-existence of free will and determinism by showing that an individual could be held morally responsible for his/her actions, even if they lacked the freedom to do otherwise. It becomes paramount, here, to analyse the relationship between X’s inclination to go with B, and X’s subsequent decision to go with B.
+
+If X’s inclination to go with B and the subsequent decision to go with B are related deterministically, then the argument collapses under its own weight. In trying to prove that people are morally responsible for what they do even if they do not have the freedom to do otherwise, Frankfurt was essentially trying to prove the existence of free will in the presence of a God, or essentially, the co-existence of free will and determinism. However, in his reasoning, if he assumes a deterministic framework, then he is begging the question, that is, assuming the very thing being debated.
+
+On the other hand, if the relation between X’s inclination and decision is indeterministic, then the chip in her head can not predetermine what her decision would be, it is only after her choice, that the chip will be activated, which would then be external coercion, and X would have encountered different options before being forced to go with one. Thus, X is morally responsible for what she chose, but encountered multiple options in the process of doing so.This again defeats Frankfurt’s argument.He had to prove moral culpability in absence of other options.
+
+**[Frankfurt’s Cases are not easy to comprehend in one read.](http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/frankfurt_cases.html){: style="text-decoration:underline"}<sup>[5]</sup>**
+
+### The Significance Of This Debate
+
+It is fair, at this point, to ask the need for this unnecessary hurling of ponderous words and facts, when Average Joe blissfully smokes away his days, living under the illusion of free will.
+
+The implications of the existence of free will or determinism are far-reaching and have been discussed for centuries. Free will is closely related with the concepts of moral culpability, responsibility, sin, praise, punishment etcetera. The problem is simple enough : **if the world is deterministic, then nobody is responsible for anything they do - whatever happened could not have been changed, and the universe is merely following its predestined and immutable path.** How then can we praise someone who does good for society, or equivalently punish someone who harms it? If someone microwaves their pet squirrel in a drunken haze, is he culpable for the painful squeals of the innocent rodent? He couldn’t have done otherwise in his stupor, but then he could’ve chosen not to drink to begin with. But isn’t his decision to inebriate himself determined by a complex rigamarole of social factors beyond his control that shaped his personality and hence his choices?. It is here that we encounter the principle of alternate possibilities again.  A deterministic world would then render the concepts of praise and sin utterly meaningless.
+
+### Why Though, Do Notions Of Praise And Sin Exist?
+
+A common answer to this question is the idea of positive and negative reinforcement -- the same principles employed while teaching your little sibling to call you the greatest brother in Uttarakhand in exchange for an extra french fry and while educating your pet about the ethics of  not urinating on your favorite Chikorita plush by not acknowledging his goodness as a boy respectively. This is the consequentialist view, the objectively intended consequence being a more ‘moral’ society.
+
+However, we do not ordinarily praise or blame other people because - as a result of engaging in careful deliberation - we have reached the conclusion that it would be in our best interests to do so. Rather, we praise or blame persons as natural and reactive expressions of visceral responses to what we see people do. It is, hence, safe to assert that we do not ordinarily pre-decide on the usefulness of a compliment or a word expressed out of chagrin.
+
+A critique of a world of objectivity sheds more light on the consequences of accepting a deterministic universe .We would still incarcerate murderers and thieves, and we would still sing praises for acts of bravery and philanthropy. But these actions and words would have a different, hollower meaning than they have for us now. Our praises would not be expressions of admiration or esteem; our criticisms would not be expressions of indignation or resentment. Rather, they would be morsels of positive and negative reinforcement meted out in the hopes of altering the character of others in ways best suited to our needs. An act of heroism or of virtue would not inspire us to aim for higher and nobler ideals, nor would it evoke in us a reverence or admiration for its agent. At best we would think it is fortunate that people occasionally do perform acts like these. We would consider how nice it must be for the beneficiaries and decide to encourage similar behaviour. We would not revulse from acts of injustice or cruelty as insults to the human spirit, nor be moved by such acts to reflect with sorrow or bewilderment on the tide of events that can bring persons to stoop so low. Driven by objectivity, we would recognize that the human tendency to perform such heinous acts is undesirable, a problem to be dealt with, like any other, as rationally and efficiently as possible. **It seems then, that in order to embrace determinism, we would not have to do away with the concepts of praise and blame themselves - we would have to alter the attitudes and judgments these practices typically express.** It doesn’t take a lot of effort to realise how this transcends into transforming every human relation into a form that seems far removed from the instinctive arena that makes us feel ‘human’ and which pervades in status quo.
+
+Whether that’s a world we want to live in or not is debatable. This notion becomes concrete when we begin to search for answers to the following question.
+
+### Do Our Affiliations With Either Side Of The Debate Impact How We Behave?
+
+A [fascinating social experiment](https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/91974.pdf){: style="text-decoration:underline"}<sup>[6]</sup> was conducted within this paradigm by Kathleen D. Vohs and Jonathan W. Schooler. A group of people (Group A) were made to read anti-free will texts and another Group B were handed pro-free will texts. After this conditioning, the two groups were asked to give a test with the possibility of cheating to score higher and the amount of pilfering was quantified. As observed in the outcome, participants cheated more frequently on a simple arithmetic task after reading an essay that refuted the notion of free will than after reading a neutral one. This correlation persisted in another experiment, in which cheating involved active efforts from the participant. These findings suggested that the loss of accountability by believing in determinism had a marked impact on the actions of these individuals. Determinists were also observed to be [less punitive](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14765562){: style="text-decoration:underline"}<sup>[7]</sup> to deviant conduct than staunch proponents of free-will, though some studies claim otherwise.
+
+In another study, Vohs and colleagues measured the extent to which a group of day laborers believed in free will, then examined their performance on the job by looking at their supervisor’s ratings.Those who believed more strongly that they were in control of their own actions showed up on time for work more frequently and were rated by supervisors as more capable. **In fact, belief in free will turned out to be a better predictor of job performance than established measures such as self-professed work ethic.**
+
+Determining culpability for crimes is yet another major arena where the extent of free will involved is brought into the picture. The number of court cases, for example, that use evidence from neuroscience has more than [doubled](http://clbb.mgh.harvard.edu/tag/nita-farahany/){: style="text-decoration:underline"}<sup>[8]</sup> in the past decade—mostly in the context of defendants arguing that their brain made them do it. And many people are absorbing this message in other contexts, too - at least judging by the number of books and articles purporting to explain “your brain on” everything from music to magic. Determinism, to one degree or another, is gaining popular currency. The skeptics are in ascendance.
+
+### C'est Tou Pareil
+
+Perhaps the truth of it will never be known to us. It is possible that quantum mechanics is the truth and that the universe is neither random, nor deterministic, but probabilistic. Or perhaps reality is exact, and human beings might never access that precious nugget of information.
+
+Knowing that everything one does has already been determined can be scary and reassuring at the same time. Having complete free will is no less terrifying - one is then responsible for all of one’s failures and dysfunctions. In this madness however, a silent observer lurks just out of sight. And there is peace to be found in that stranger.
+
+And that silent stranger, **[is the absence of any meaning,to anything.](http://watchout.iitr.ac.in/2018/04/whither-do-we-go){: style="text-decoration:underline"}**
+
+#### References:
+
+1. [https://www.benbest.com/science/quantum.html](https://www.benbest.com/science/quantum.html){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+1. [https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j4q93/could_you_explain_schr%C3%B6dingers_cat_to_me_li5/](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/j4q93/could_you_explain_schr%C3%B6dingers_cat_to_me_li5/){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+1. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_hidden-variable_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_hidden-variable_theory){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+1. [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/bells_inequality.html](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Quantum/bells_inequality.html){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+1. [http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/frankfurt_cases.html](http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/frankfurt_cases.html){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+1. [https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/91974.pdf](https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/91974.pdf){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+1. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14765562](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14765562){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+1. [http://clbb.mgh.harvard.edu/tag/nita-farahany/](http://clbb.mgh.harvard.edu/tag/nita-farahany/){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+#### Further Reading:
+
+- On the implications of Free Will:
+  [https://www.jstor.org/stable/27759547?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents](https://www.jstor.org/stable/27759547?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+- On how the Bell Inequality doesn’t resolve the EPR Paradox:
+  [https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0703192](https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0703192){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+- A fairly simple proof of Bell’s inequality:
+  [https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5214](https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.5214){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+- Dostoevsky’s brilliant insight into the human condition, and his interpretation of freedom:
+  [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8578/8578-h/8578-h.htm](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8578/8578-h/8578-h.htm){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+- Everyone’s favourite philosopher Neitzsche on the philosophy of free will:
+  [https://philarchive.org/archive/RICNOF](https://philarchive.org/archive/RICNOF){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+**Illustration credits:** Shivam Maan, Prakhar Kothari

_posts/2019-06-20-placements-at-iitr.md

@@ -0,0 +1,153 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Bang for the Buck: 2018-19"
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: placement_office.jpg
+category: career 
+excerpt: "A batch of around a thousand students enter the quaint premises of IIT Roorkee every year with gleaming eyes, ready to live the IIT dream they toiled for 2-3 years."
+---
+
+A batch of around a thousand students enter the quaint premises of IIT Roorkee every year with gleaming eyes, ready to live the IIT dream they toiled for 2-3 years. Though a melange of different ideas, cultures and personalities; each one of them slogged through the same system and remained confined to the monotony of JEE preparations. But this place opens multiple doors of opportunities that help them discover their unique skills while persevering to find a stable footing in a whirlwind of freedom. 
+
+After completing their degrees at IIT Roorkee, some students choose to go for higher studies, B-schools, civil services, startups, while others (83.55% this year) opt to sit for the placements. The placement season is often considered as the final assessment card of the 4-5 years spent at IIT Roorkee, appropriating ‘machauness’ to the ones with a big fat juicy paycheque. A secure first step towards professional lives, lucrative pay packages and a rigorous preparation process that brings out the best (or worst) of oneself are usually the reasons why students glorify placements throughout their stay at the campus. 
+
+The placement season is spread over two phases and in this analysis Watch Out has included the combined data till May 28, 2019. 
+
+
+## Number Crunching
+
+
+The **first phase** of placements starts from **1st Dec** to **15th Dec** wherein companies come to hire prospective employees in a continuous streak while the second phase starts in **mid-Jan** and continues till **May** with recruiters visiting the campus from time to time. The **second phase** is mainly for universities and coaching institutes and focuses on M.Tech and PhD students seeking for a place in academia.
+
+The placement process for the first phase starts way back around September when companies fly down to give presentations, followed by resume shortlisting, written or online tests and finally the interviews, which commence from December 1. The anxiety is palpable, and one can almost feel it pulling at them in a giddy maelstrom of raging emotions. It is a harrowing time for the final year students at the campus. The TPO organises preparation tests and workshops in partnership with Career Launcher & pariksha.com. These workshops are week-long classes that give a general course on quantitative aptitude and provide tutorial sheets for practice. These are useful for students who are not very inclined towards specialised profiles and are also helpful is ascertaining their relative standing amongst their peers.
+
+We dug into this year’s placement data* and curated the following statistics. Useful trends highlighting aspects of the placement process and patterns regarding the offers made in the **Placement Season 2018-19** also form a part of this Placement Report. 
+
+**Number of Eligible Students ( UG+PG+PhD)** = 1788<br>
+**Number of Students Registered** = 1494<br>
+**Number of PPOs** = 120<br>
+**Number of Offers made (Including PPOs)** = 1090<br>
+**Number of students accepting the offers (including PPOs)** = 1005<br>
+**Number of Companies that recruited** = 318<br>
+
+This year, in total **1021** offers were made on campus across **UG and PG** including **120 PPOs** secured by the students after their pre-final year internships. Like every year, the graphs are high peaking for **circuital branches (EE, CSE, ECE)** in terms of percentage placed as well as the pay packages. **93.52%** of students were placed in the **CSE Department** and **88.85%** in the **ECE Department** while the **Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department (72.58%)** and **Metallurgical and Materials Engineering Department (78.53)** also show impressive figures.
+
+*The graphs are interactive. Kindly hover on the graph and click to see the tooltip and labels. 
+
+ <iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/jwH2-yZon/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 750px" scrolling="no" ></iframe>
+
+<iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/MW_9XXgp2/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 500px" scrolling="no"></iframe>
+
+A total of **380** companies visited the campus for recruitments , of which **318** recruited.<sup>[1]</sup>
+
+[1] The data on Channel I also contains duplicates which makes the count 304 instead of 279.
+If we consider different profiles or a PPO offered by the same company as an individual count (For Eg: A single company , say Goldman Sachs, offering jobs as Data Analyst, Software Developer and a PPO is counted as 3) this figure then equals to **279**. An additional **39** companies came for the Departmental Placements of the Department of Management Studies. The total number of **unique** companies (some of which give offers in multiple profiles) that recruited from the campus is **262**. 
+
+<iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/gCPnXW5Lr/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 600px" scrolling="no"></iframe>
+
+<style>
+* {
+  box-sizing: border-box;
+}
+
+/* Create two equal columns that floats next to each other */
+.column {
+  float: left;
+  width: 50%;
+  padding: 10px;
+}
+
+/* Clear floats after the columns */
+.row:after {
+  content: "";
+  display: table;
+  clear: both;
+}
+</style>
+We have tried to simplify the job profiles and roles as follows:
+<div class="row">
+<div class="column">
+1. Business Developer and Analyst<br>
+2. Consultant<br>
+3. Data Analyst<br>
+4. Data Scientist<br>
+5. Design UX/UI<br>
+6. Engineering Analyst<br>
+7. Engineering Core<br>
+8. Finance Analyst<br>
+9. Management Trainee<br>
+10. Operations Manager<br>
+11. Product Manager<br>
+12. Supply Chain Manager<br>
+</div>
+<div class="column">
+13. Quantitative Analyst and Researcher<br>
+14. Software Developer<br>
+15. Technologist<br>
+<ul>
+    <li>Hardware Engineer</li>
+    <li>Technical Staff/Technology Cadre</li>
+    <li>Engineering Trainee</li>
+    <li>Server Engineer</li>
+</ul>
+16. Web Developer<br>
+<ul>
+    <li>Frontend Developers</li>
+    <li>Backend Developers</li>
+    <li>Full Stack Developers</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+This year, IIT Roorkee witnessed **67** companies recruit in **Software Development** whereas for the students interested in **Data Science** (**7** Companies) and **Product Design and Management** (**8** Companies) were hiring. **68** companies recruited the **Core** enthusiasts this season while **47** companies offered **Pre-Placement Offers**. (Refer the pie chart for profile wise company distribution).
+
+The next infographic gives an insight into the kinds of profile offered by the companies and indicates the popularity of Technical and Core profiles with less space for Data Sciences, Consult and Finance.
+
+<iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/-Mkh3RARy/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 500px" scrolling="no"></iframe>
+
+ <iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/k5Wt2afLF/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 850px" scrolling="no"></iframe>
+
+ <iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/6C0-mJs9u/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 500px"></iframe>
+ 
+ <iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/n6GkGWQfF/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 500px"></iframe>
+
+Students grind day and night throughout their college lives to get that coveted  Day 1/2/3 jobs that usually guarantees fat pay cheques and fancy profiles. A high paying job is something that everyone fancies even before coming to the campus. This year the overall average CTC turned out to be **14.727 Lakh INR. Microsoft Redmond** and **Uber International** offered the highest paying packages of **INR 1.5 crores** and **INR 1.20 Crores** respectively. App Dynamics, Squarepoint Capital, Uber India, Microsoft, JP Morgan, Mercari were among the other high payers with packages **above 30 Lakh INR**. 
+
+Companies that come to hire for software profiles pay a very substantial remuneration (average of **INR 23.15 Lakhs**) and are awarded an earlier recruitment day whereas core engineering profiles offering an average CTC of **INR 10.19 Lakhs**, have to settle for a later date. Conversely, providing a later slots/date to finance or consult profiles leads to companies reducing their pay figures. This potentially creates a bias which makes students gravitate towards software roles, as seen in the heavy coding culture on campus. The following graphs give detailed information about the CTCs:
+
+<iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/g5qOETUzj/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 500px; " scrolling="no" ></iframe>
+
+<iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/k-Pi4NM5Y/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 800px" scrolling="no"></iframe>
+
+<iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/62cp8DUI0/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 350px" scrolling="no"></iframe>
+
+<iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/EjTFdL_Mz/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 500px"></iframe>
+
+There seems to be almost negligible difference between the average CTC of Male and Female of the campus. Profile wise, maximum females took jobs in the Core Engineering (31) followed by Software Development (**21**).
+
+<iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/uycTqHq49/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 500px" scrolling="no"></iframe>
+
+<iframe class="highcharts-iframe" src="https://cloud.highcharts.com/embed/L-FpRhjZK/" style="border: 0; width: 800px; height: 650px" scrolling="no"></iframe>
+
+<i> **\*Note**: We have analysed the data on the basis of students placed not the number of offers made by the companies. In case you want to go through the data we used, you can visit **Placement Online** on **Channeli** wherein under the **Extra** Section you will find Branch-wise, Company-Wise and Department-Wise offers made. The data we present here excludes all the duplicate and rejected offers mentioned on the portal. The CTCs used for the analysis along with the profiles were obtained from **Channeli Notice Board**. Due to the unavailability of data of PPOs, we weren’t able to analyse the same in detail. There have been major issues in availing proper data due to lack of provisions and measures in the system to keep a detailed record. We have tried our best to provide as authentic trends as possible. In case you find any discrepancy, feel free to write to us.</i>
+
+
+## Bridging The Gap
+The Placements 2018-19 fared well for the students with a total of **1005** students **accepting** the offers. The lack of diversity and variety of job profiles during placement season has been pointed out since long, TPO claims that as compared to last year, this time many new companies visited for Finance (**8 companies**), Quantitative Research and Analyst roles (**3 companies**), but still, the number of students placed in these profiles are very low (**33 and 8 respectively**). Google, JP Morgan, AQR Capital, Appdynamics, Sprinklr, Squarepoint Capital, Udaan and Fractal Analytics were a few top names that recruited for the first time from our campus.
+
+
+The campus culture lets the students explore a wide range of career options and provide space to every individual to evolve in his own way. Apart from coding and software development, the enthusiasm for Finance, Consultancy, Operations, Data Science, Marketing, UX/UI Design, Product Management and Design profiles has increased significantly. But at the approach of the placement season, the lack of companies in the desired sector and proper profiles lead to a major disappointment (See the Profile-Wise Companies Distribution Graph and Profile-Wise Students Placed Graph). 
+
+On-campus placements definitely have an edge in comparison to off-campus placements due to a straightforward, transparent and simplified process. The tasks of emailing and approaching the company are done by the TPO and most of the major firms recruit through campus placements. But students interested in other profiles, due to lack of offers, choose to dive into the chaotic rigamarole of off-campus placements by a variety of methods, approaching their alumni networks or crawling through LinkedIn, to give an example. In these matters, the TPO needs to take concrete steps to accommodate the needs of the students. The TPO has the sole power and authority to approach the companies, talk to the HRs and negotiate the hiring date and offers. Big firms and reputed brands fight over earlier slots and provide fairly high enumeration only when given the slot of higher priority. This year, certain firms like Bain, Rivigo, Schlumberger, I3C, to name a few did not come for hiring even after taking the test and shortlisting the candidates. When given a lower priority, reputed firms either refuse from recruiting or reduce their pay packages. In the end, it is the student community that suffers.
+
+With the establishment of specialised campus groups like Design Studio, Finance Club and Data Science Group, it is quite clear that the student community is striving to build a decadent culture in various fields. The TPO will have the full support of the student community in approaching reputed names in these fields and hence it's prudent to make attempts at fostering better and healthier relations with companies that still give Roorkee a cold shoulder.
+
+Indubitably, the placements are an important stepping stone for the next phase of a student’s life. Despite all the factors, one must also understand that the entire process is also has a degree of subjectivity. On D-Day, you could lose your nerve in front of the recruiter, or something on your resume might interest someone from the panel, or, you might have to miss out on an interview because your slots clash, or you might even get a chance to give a walk-in interview. If you look at the bigger picture, even though a job offer might seem like a metric to measure how successful your college life has been, it isn’t the only mark of your skills and abilities.
+
+There are many things the junta needs to know about the workings of the TPO, like the workings of the current system and the problems students face during the raucous of placements and internships. Watch Out will address this need for information dissemination through an article on the TPO soon and we’ll also try to find possible resolutions to the issues that we faced due to lack of data for the coming years.
+
+Until then, we hope this serves as a helpful reference for the next batch of students heading towards the placement season. 
+  
+

_posts/2019-06-21-memoir-rainbow.md

@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Memoir: Roorkee and Rainbows"
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: rainbow_rk.jpg
+category: memoirs
+author: "Anonymous"
+excerpt: "A small acceptance could make someone’s life. For not every closet is Narnia. "
+---
+
+For the few thousands from a set of 12 lakh that do end up getting into an IIT, it seems like a dream come true. A culmination of hard work, efforts, time and money, with the hopes of a bright settled future. But if you’re like me and belong to the small non-heterosexual male minority, things may get bleak for you, soon and fast.
+
+If the rampant “kya gay hai ” and other homophobic remarks don’t push you deep inside your closet, the casual bigotry prevalent across sure will. The truth is, with all the conversation flowing around the scrapping of Article 377, the people on campus are kind of accepting(?) the fact that LGBTQ+ people (might actually) exist and so now, most guys think they have to prove their own and question others’ “straightness” all the time, lest they turn out to be one. Cultivating a despicable atmosphere of hyper-heterosexuality and toxic masculinity. 
+
+(Not that I’m complaining. After all, watching guys flex their muscles trying to prove their manliness is supposed to be my labour of love, right?)
+
+8th September 2017. The day I finally came out to myself. A day people usually associate with feelings of liberation, glee or being epiphanous. Not me though, for it was a day when everything I believed in was shattered. A day that plummeted me into a cyclone of self-doubt and denial.
+
+The days leading up to it were some of the most trying days of my life, I suffered from major bouts of anxiety, depression and self-identity crisis. I felt like I was trapped in a YouTube video running at 2x when all I could manage was 0.75. Everything was changing so fast and rushing past me in an indecipherable blur. So I ended up doing what I always was good at, shutting myself out. I started ignoring plans, stopped meeting friends, missed lectures and fucked up my academics and submissions until one day I couldn’t take it any longer. I locked myself in my room and finally screamed out loud- “I AM NOT STRAIGHT”, a small voice at the back of my mind was ready to taunt me with “Took you long enough”.  
+
+It was stupid of me to believe the churning thoughts would suddenly stop, though. Because the aftermath wasn’t pretty either. Still having no idea what to do apart from probably loathe myself more for existing, I did the bravest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I came out to my straight best friend, who also happened to be my first guy crush (and accidentally also to my mom, who read said message and freaked out, but that’s a story for another day). Surprisingly he took it well and although I was still as clueless as before, this acceptance was the tipping point for me.
+
+What ensued was a series of coming-out messages to close friends where the OCD me crafted each one uniquely and made a list of people I came out to (or LOPICOT as I call it), followed various subreddits, devoured articles, forums and tried a few dating apps( wouldn’t recommend unless you want PTSD in your initial acceptance path). 
+Every positive and encouraging response pouring in emboldened me to be more sure about who I was and I realised that a strong support system in the form of close friends, is what actually channels this entire process of self-discovery and acceptance. 
+
+
+And I’m not saying every person in your life will embrace you with open arms and warm hugs, I’ve had my share of stone cold silences and metaphoric shut doors. But branding every person who doesn’t accept you immediately as homophobic makes you no different from them. Give them time, if they come around, well and good, if they still don’t, move on. You’re probably better of without them.And once you have reached that magical number of acceptances, you’ll get comfortable and confident enough to notice that you’ve run out of fucks to give to the fear of exposure. 
+
+Because in my time at Roorkee, I’ve realised that homophobes are as much a minority as those of us belonging to the community. A large chunk of the predominant straight junta remains clueless, unaware, or believe it to be of no concern of theirs, till this day. These are the people who get carried away by the wave of casual homophobia and sexism in the name of fitting in and this is the perfect demographic that any campus group willing should target for sensitization.
+
+So, if you’re still reading and are a fellow member of the community: Hang on, things do get better. You’ll find who you truly are eventually and be able to proclaim it proudly to the world. Just take the first step and come out to someone you’re close to. 
+If you’re a nonchalant and unaware person: Look out, someone might be reaching out to you and not always through words. We sure don’t bite if a helping hand is given.
+If you’re a homophobe: The times are a changing and we’re coming for you, riding our unicorns, rainbow swords blazing. 
+
+A small acceptance could make someone’s life. 
+
+For not every closet is Narnia. 
+
+
+PS: You can call me a hypocrite for being anonymous here, although I wouldn’t mind screaming it from the top of the Main Building for all I care. It’s just me taking care of the small minority of homophobes. I know we must be damn scary for you to have a phobia of us. 
+
+TL;DR: I, a non-heterosexual male from IIT Roorkee eventually turned out to be just fine. 

_posts/2019-06-22-young-india-fellowship.md

@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "The Young India Fellowship (YIF)"
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: yjf.jpg
+author: Rochisha Agarwal
+category: career 
+excerpt: "The Young India Fellowship (YIF), is one of the most sought-after programmes in India, conducted over a year,  at Ashoka University.   It is a one year multi-disciplinary post graduate in Liberal Arts (courses from humanities, commerce as well as science)."
+---
+
+The Young India Fellowship (YIF), is one of the most sought-after programmes in India, conducted over a year,  at Ashoka University.   It is a one year multi-disciplinary post graduate in Liberal Arts (courses from humanities, commerce as well as science). This seven year old program aims to arm and furnish well-rounded individuals with critical thinking, leadership abilities and an inclination to serve the public.
+
+
+**Ashoka University**
+
+Ashoka University is a private university, focussing primarily on research, located in Sonipat, Haryana. Ashoka University emphasises more on liberal learning, as opposed to conventional rote memorization prevalent across the rest of the country. It's recognised by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and is listed amongst the top ten universities in India.
+
+
+**About YIF**
+<br>
+*“The biggest takeaway from being part of the Ashoka community is the network. The professors here are the best in the whole country.”*
+
+
+<div align="right">-Rounak Banik, IITR alumni and a YIF fellow.</div>
+<br>
+
+YIF’s eminent and enviable faculty exposes the fellows to a plethora of concepts and cultures, and opens many metaphorical doors in their lives.  Guest lectures and workshops happen frequently and witness global achievers like Shashi Tharoor, Raghuram Rajan and Nandan Nilekani. The fellows get to engage with these esteemed individuals, who can then provide assistance in the future.
+
+The courses offered here range from Foundation of Leadership, and Philosophy and Cognitive Science, to Mathematical Thinking, Shakespeare and the World and a humongous array of other diverse courses . The course structure comprises of 8 semesters in a year, with each semester consisting of 2-3 courses. Due to this heavy curriculum, YIF can be very hectic for many, but for engineers a hectic schedule is an everyday story. Courses are evenly divided, in that roughly half of them are core or compulsory, and the rest are elective courses. As we’ve mentioned already, the range of topics covered is ginormous, and hence the existence of a large number of diverse electives helps students specialise/get acquainted with fields previously unknown to them.
+
+There are two compulsory programs at YIF which run almost the whole year:
+
+
+**Experiential Learning Module, ELM,** is a core component of the fellowship which runs for eight months. It complements academics with real work experience. Fellows work on live projects for different organisations and individuals representing multiple sectors. It consists more of NGO work, with less stress on the corporate side.
+
+[https://www.ashoka.edu.in/page/yif-profdev-133](https://www.ashoka.edu.in/page/yif-profdev-133){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+
+**The YIF Critical Writing Programme** aims to help the fellows develop a ‘critical thinking’ approach towards most problems they face personally and professionally, which enables the fellows to write and express their views in an elegant and captivating manner. To ensure that the students receive the best guidance, the fellows are segregated into groups of about 15 students each. Each group is assigned its own ‘Writing Perceptor’, who not only educates children about the root values of critical thinking, reading and writing, but also imparts a personal touch to each and every group.
+
+[https://www.ashoka.edu.in/page/yif-writing-134](https://www.ashoka.edu.in/page/yif-writing-134){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+<br>
+
+*“Here at YIF I learn more from peers than anything, the diversity we are exposed to at times pushes us towards unexplored imaginations”*
+
+<div align="right">– Nikhil Tripathi YIF fellow.</div> 
+<br>
+
+The fellows at YIF are from varied disciplines and backgrounds, including design, business, engineering, literature, law and much more. Engineers make up roughly 30% of the student body.
+Such a diverse environment pushes the fellows to acquire essential skills needed for research, problem-solving and effective communication - all essentials for a successful professional life.
+
+
+**Application Process**
+
+Your application at the YIF is the most crucial part, which includes your profile, your necessary academic records ( 10th and 12th plus graduation), employment/ internship details, extracurriculars, essays which are related to your field (of graduation or postgrad), and referee details (LORs etc). If you’re selected, this is followed by a telephonic interview.
+
+Upon clearing that, you have an in-person interview at the end, which is held at Ashoka University itself. The interviews are based on your application and your discipline, and hence are different for everyone. It's easy to crack this strenuous application process, if you remain genuine and lucid in the essays and interviews. The IIT tag is also a very big boost to your application.
+
+[https://www.ashoka.edu.in/page/yif-admissions-41](https://www.ashoka.edu.in/page/yif-admissions-41){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+[https://www.ashoka.edu.in/page/yif-selection-138](https://www.ashoka.edu.in/page/yif-selection-138){: style="text-decoration:underline"}
+
+
+**After YIF**
+
+YIF opens up great sets of opportunities and helps the fellows get into the best universities across the world like University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Harvard University, Princeton University, Stanford University and Yale University. The fellows usually do their masters from such top-notch institutions. YIF was not set up with the objective of creating insane placement opportunities - their vision is to enhance your social skills. Readers are advised to keep in mind that the program cannot possibly serve as an alternative to MBA. The in-campus placements are pretty poor when compared to IITs, but most people are able to secure a good off-campus placement owing to the skills and network that YIF gifted them with. YIF has helped alumnis become successful entrepreneurs, social workers, leaders : people who leave an impact on society.  
+
+It is a great program if you’re inclined towards Humanities and Social Sciences. You can use your year at YIF to significantly expand your skill-set and also reflect on what you’d eventually want to do with your life.

_posts/2019-06-27-online-food.md

@@ -0,0 +1,64 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Food, Blackmail and Uneasy Body Cavities: An unexpected movement on the rise in R"
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: phekingnews
+image: delivery_boi.png
+author:  Mohit Sharma, Murtaza Bookwaala, Divyam Goel
+excerpt: "The first few weeks in R-land often tend to be overwhelming. In these days of ecstasy, the “quality” of mess food is quite easy to overlook."
+---
+
+The first few weeks in R-land often tend to be overwhelming. In these days of ecstasy, the “quality” of mess food is quite easy to overlook. But after the three days it takes for the euphoria to wear out, it becomes increasingly clear with each passing day that sustaining oneself exclusively off the mess food is a daunting task, to say the least. Rumour has it that the delicacies served in RJB tend to depreciate further in flavour as time passes but the credibility of such statements remains dubious.  While the canteens and eateries around the campus provide viable alternatives, most of them either lack the satisfaction of a full meal or aren’t cheap enough to not offset your budget.
+
+Given these circumstances, food delivery services like Zomato and Swiggy, in addition to being a suspiciously convenient way to smuggle *stuff* into the campus, are also an imperative facility for blokes that want a cheap satisfying meal from time to time but feel like a 10 minute walk to the campus gate is too much work.
+
+However, all such wet dreams were shattered when the administration issued an ordinance restricting the entry of delivery *bois* into the campus. With this tyrannical precept in place, Bhawan residents now have to travel all the way to a campus gate(which may or may not be the one closest to their humble abode) to collect their order on a scorching sunday afternoon.
+
+A GB dweller was quoted saying
+
+**“This is the worst thing to happen to the Campus since the Lipstick brouhaha of 2010”**
+
+But underneath all the dissent and general dysphoria surrounding this decision, lie the makings of a what can only be described as a nefarious smuggling syndicate of sorts constituted by food delivery services as a means of retaliation. As Watch Out decided to probe further into this, we discovered something much more sinister than what we initially expected.
+
+It seems that in order to meet the expectations of IITR students - their primary source of revenue in Roorkee -The food delivery consortium has decided to collude with insiders, i.e, fellow students of yours, to establish what is now being called Guide to Groceries, or GTG for Short.
+
+GTG is an underground network of campus mules that have been coaxed,bribed,blackmailed or voodooed by these capitalistic food transporting conglomerates into doing their dirty work, i.e, peddling the deliverables from campus gates to bhawans for the convenience of  previously dissatisfied folks.
+
+Though they tend to be extremely secretive and suspiciously loyal towards the syndicate, WatchOut managed to get in contact with one of these “victims” and arrange a brief interview under the stipulation that their name be kept a secret.
+
+**Enthusiastic WONA reporter** : So How exactly were you strategmed into becoming a nutrition mule for the armada of vespas with swollen behinds?
+
+**Trapped kid**: It all started with a seemingly innocuous text that I got, offering an internship with one of the aforementioned firms. My chances of landing an intern had been extremely slim at that point and it seemed like something I couldn’t afford to miss. So I put aside my bong and texted back with a ‘Y’. It was a downward spiral from that point on, and I can’t really pinpoint what my breaking point was. Maybe it was when I realized that the employee-special app they had me install on my devices was actually a keylogger…or maybe it was the first time they asked me to shove a packet up a place that’s only meant to be treated nicely, but at this point, it doesn’t really matter. The workload’s light enough and the money’s decent.
+
+![First Contact](/images/posts/food_chat.png){: style="width: 80%;"}
+<div align="center"><b>The First Contact<br>
+ (as described by our anonymous source) </b></div>
+
+<br><br>
+
+**Slightly worried WONA reporter** : Does that mean you’re content with what you’re doing? Do you not feel duped by these evil malefactors?
+
+**Trapped(?) kid**: Not really, and I wouldn’t really call them evil. My boss is an ass, yes, but is that really such a shocker? I also have to tolerate a mild lingering discomfort in the region where my legs meet, but it’s something I can live with.
+
+*The interview then came to an ill-timed end as the kid had to leave for picking up another order. “Got to Go. Duty Calls” were his final words as he walked away.*
+
+*Watch Out therefore concluded that the administrators of GTG have managed to condition their victims beyond recognition, making them believe they actually liked doing their dirty work. We therefore decided to dig deeper into  what tactics had been deployed to achieve this level of behavioral conditioning. Research however, came to a standstill after our theories about mind control started to seem unreasonable, leaving us with only one option, contacting an insider to get a look at this situation from the other side.*
+
+**WONA:** Tell us something about your job
+
+**Delivery Boi**: Well, delivering food is our main job. Though we provide service to all of Roorkee, IITR is the prime hotspot. We get a lot of delivery requests throughout the day. and the thing is, to get a bonus, we need to minimize the number of rejects. And honestly speaking, considering all the hype around IIT, people here are not very bright. Once a girl from KB asked me on the spot, to alter her order. Part of my daily routine is dealing with these whippersnappers who apparently don’t understand the concept of “no cancellations” trying to cancel or worse, alter their order after I’ve been waiting a good ten minutes for them to collect it. It can sometimes be quite hard to contain myself and stop the altercation from turning into a fistfight. On top of that, these blokes aren’t generous,either. They just keep asking for “IIT Discount”. And that is after the 50% discount they already have. Sometimes they order food from the same restaurant they are sitting in. And don’t even get me started on how lazy they are. It was not enough to get food up to their bhawan gates. Now they want it up to their rooms, shoved up their….
+
+**WONA:** Alright, alright. We get that you are fed up with your job. And now there are more reasons for that. You aren't allowed to enter the campus now. What's all that about?
+
+**Delivery Boi**: Ah well, I don't know. Maybe peeps at the admin wing thought that students were skipping mess too often or something like that. So they invalidated our ID cards which are necessary to get entry into campus. Now those brats need to come up to the college gates to get food, which leads to more rejected orders. And that’s taken its toll on the job ie. delivering food and you know, stuff. (He said this followed by a series of eerie and visibly awkward winks)
+
+**What stuff?**
+Well, you can say it is food too. Sustenance of the soul, and if I may, it's better than the normal food and it takes us to places. It's like...
+
+**Lubricous WONA reporter**  : And where do you get this sustenance of soul?
+
+*This question was asked solely for research purposes and the answer is to remain undisclosed until the interviewer’s wake from a deep slumber they fell into shortly after the interview concluded.
+
+A Vice-style dive into this rabbit hole, among other worrying revelations, shows how alarmingly easy it is to influence students of R into doing stuff that’s less than virtuous. Estimates suggest as many as 70 students - give or take one - are currently trapped in this vortex. It could be your classmates, your roommate or even you. If you happen to know/suspect anyone stuck in this nefarious business, feel free to reach out at [iamamulepleasehelpme@gmail.com](mailto:iamamulepleasehelpme@gmail.com){: style="text-decoration:underline"}. Your speaking up could save someone’s career or more. Just know that sometimes it takes more courage to ask for help than to act alone but it’s always worth it. The only mistake you can make is to not reach out.
+
+**Illustration credits:** Sudhang Varshney and Ritik Mathur

_posts/2019-07-01-national-abu-robocon.md

@@ -0,0 +1,129 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "National ABU Robocon’19"
+tags: [wona, column]
+category: verbatim
+image: robocon_final.jpg
+author:
+excerpt: "The ABU Robocon is an annual Asian-Oceanian college competition, where robots are pitted against each other to perform complicated tasks in limited time. The competition was started in 2002 by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union and is one of the most popular events among collegiate students interested in Robotics."
+---
+
+
+*The ABU Robocon is an annual Asian-Oceanian college competition, where robots are pitted against each other to perform complicated tasks in limited time. The competition was started in 2002 by the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union and is one of the most popular events among collegiate students interested in Robotics.* 
+
+*Each country is represented by a single team, and for this purpose, national college teams fight it out in the National ABU Robocon, India and the winning team competes in the international championship. Team Robocon IITR started off as a group of a few robot enthusiasts 10 years ago, and has now evolved into a full fledged hardworking campus group that aims to win this national competition, and represent India on the international platform.* 
+
+*WatchOut! decided to interview the Team Leader of Team Robocon, Bhavya Goswami, to find out various details of the competition, and to obtain a first-hand account of their experience on the national stage this year.*  
+
+**1. What are the different stages of the tournament? What stage did you finish at?**
+
+Till 2018, the competition used to have only a single stage which included the Prelims followed by League Matches among top 24 teams with 2 matches per team in both of them, followed by the quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals.
+
+But this year, the structuring of the tournament was revised. This time the tournament consisted of 3 stages : 1) *Design documentation* – In this we had to submit proper documentation of our robot which consisted of its mechanical design, electronics, strategies, prototypes, and alternate designs; 2) *Working Video* – In this we had to send them a proper detailed video showing them the working of the robot as mentioned in the stage-1 documents; 3) *The competition* which included prelims, quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals. 
+
+In the prelims, each team gets to play two matches. It doesn’t matter who your opponent is, since this round is not about finishing the problem statement. This round is all about collecting the maximum number of points. The top 8 teams go through to the quarterfinals. Here the matches are all knockouts and the match comes to a halt the minute one of the two teams finishes the problem statement. 
+
+We finished 6th overall, and won the <span style="text-decoration:underline">*‘Judges Special Award’*</span> and <span style="text-decoration:underline">*‘Quarter finalist award’*</span>.
+
+**2. What was the format of the matches, as in was it a multiplayer competition or did it consist of one on one matches?**
+
+The competition consisted of only one on one matches. It was just like a duel between two warriors in a grand arena, the only difference being not actually fighting with each other, but  completing the problem statement as quickly as possible.
+
+
+
+**3. What were the parameters of judging? Were there some tests or requirements to be fulfilled?**
+
+Each year, a different country in the Asia Pacific region gives a unique, completely new problem statement with new sets of rules and constraints. As per each problem statement, we have to make a specified number of robots (generally two) from scratch. These robots need to complement each other to complete certain tasks in less than 3 minutes. Also, yes there are always a lot of requirements which need to be fulfilled like weight, dimensions, pressure and stuff with lots of rules and constraints.
+
+**4. Was there any theme or template for the competition? If yes,what was it and how did you prepare for it?**
+
+Yes, each year the problem statement is based on a certain theme. This year the theme was *Great Urtuu* which means sharing of knowledge in Mongolian. According to this theme, we had to make a wheeled manual robot and a fully automatic Quadruped robot. They both needed to coordinate with each other to manipulate various objects and navigate in the game field, in the most efficient way possible. 
+
+The quadruped robot had to climb on obstacles like ropes, boxes, slopes on its own. It was really a challenging task. Even top universities and institutes haven't been able to design it yet and most of them are completely unfamiliar with the concept.
+
+**5. How did you prepare for the competition this time around? What all efforts were put in by the team members?**
+
+Generally, we start working even before the announcement of the problem statement. We familiarise ourselves with the latest advances in electronics, sensors, navigation, simulations, and we design and develop various *mecha-tronic* modules which can be used in our problem statement. After the announcement of the problem statement, we brainstorm to choose the most efficient course of action and then work accordingly. We create multiple prototypes, then select the one which is most well equipped to handle the given problem.
+
+
+After joining IITR, this was the process which redefined innovation for me. It is really fulfilling when you can create something from your imagination and it is a feeling that can’t be expressed. We first ideate the whole model, and subsequently put in a lot of effort actually building it, and it  shows in the way the robot works.
+
+
+The efforts that our team puts in the robots we create each year are incomparable. We sacrifice a lot of stuff, including our academics, sleep, friends, relationships and much more, just to make the best robot in the country. Those efforts cannot be expressed in words here.
+
+**6. What has been the history of Robocon in IITR? What have been our achievements in the past?**
+
+Robocon IITR was started by a group of 3-4 friends with great enthusiasm for robotics in 2009. They participated by chipping in their own pocket money and eventually won the Best Debut Award. Even though they lacked the resources, they completed the tasks on their own. I’ve even heard stories that our seniors were so resourceful that once they wrapped the rubber rim of pressure cookers on wooden circular slabs to make traction wheels. Then over the years as the interest in robotics increased in our campus, our team progressed. So much that we won the Best Aesthetic Award along with the 5th rank in 2014 as well as in 2016. Last year we secured the 7th rank along with Best Innovative Design Award and this year we achieved 6th rank with Judges Special Award and Quarter-Finalist Award. We are still connected with all our alumni and founding members and they keep motivating us and help us to win the competition with the same enthusiasm.
+
+
+**7. Tell us about your robot. Its architecture, the essential technology etc?**
+
+Our manual robot had a three-wheel Omni drive for holonomic movements and grippers for completing the task. These were amalgamated with various sensors like encoders, ultrasonic distance sensor, pressure sensors, gyroscope sensor, etc and various actuators like motors, pneumatics and servos. We used various equipments from Tinkering Lab like lathe, 3D printers, PCB etching machine, drills, welding machine and various assorted tools to manufacture the different parts. 
+
+We designed two automatic robots- link based and 3 axes linear movement based, both are one of a kind in our institute.
+
+**8. What challenges does a venue present? How was IIT-D, as a host for the competition?**
+
+IIT Delhi really surprised us as a host. They made a few controversial decisions like delaying the competition, reducing the number of teams in the competition and rejecting teams after they had constructed their robots. But these decisions were based on an analysis of events from previous years and so the conducting team stood by them, despite the backlash from Robocon community.
+
+As there were lesser teams this time around, it was a lot easier for them to manage everything, and also more enjoyable for us. Transportation services too, were provided round the clock, which made the commute much easier from last time around. Each member was provided a different room for their stay. Arrangement for food too, was a lot better than last time. The management was such that these trivial things did not interfere with our preparations like they usually do. Efforts were taken so that each team got proper practice slots before tournaments and knockout matches. Getting these practice slots was a huge headache last time around.
+IIT Delhi also took a bold decision of straying from tradition and not allowing any team to stay in the pit area from 11 pm to 8 am. Though many people disliked this decision and opposed it, I think it helped us to strategize and get a good night's sleep.
+
+ During the last two practice slots, our robots didn't do well which left us disheartened. Even the senior members of the team couldn't concentrate, and we couldn’t practice at night due to new regulations but we somehow gathered ourselves, motivated the team and told them to get over it and just go to sleep. And the next day our robots worked just fine. We were the first team to complete the problem statement in the tournament and finished 2nd at the points table in the prelims. I think it was due to the new rules that we could put up such a performance.
+
+There were some snags too. Due to smaller arenas, our alumni, who came from far away couldn’t see the event live. Overall, the hosts did a fine job in upgrading the quality of the event. Their efficiency in managing the event helped us to concentrate on the matters that were most important, rather than worrying about food and stuff.
+
+**9. Were there any particular challenges you faced ? How well did you tackle such situations during the competition?**
+
+Our team's timeline used to be broadly fixed each year but this year we had some problems as the competition was delayed. At the time of documentation we were writing our initial ideas whereas we should’ve completely fabricated our robots and started practising. Not surprisingly, at this stage we grabbed one of the lower ranks. Our inability to explain our project to authorities was an eye opener. For video submission we planned to take help from CineSec, but that didn’t pan out, as they were busy. So we did it ourselves and created a video. It was so good that we got 98 marks out of 100 and that brought us in the top 8 teams .
+
+The third stage was the culmination of all that we had done and hence was more difficult than the first two. It is really tricky to go past the prelims, in to the knockout. So we prepared for the final stage from the start.
+
+The final stage experience was full of highs and lows. It was a one day event with two practice
+days before it for the teams to practice. During practice we tested, improved and calibrated our robots properly. Initially, we did well in the practice slots, but in the later stages we started making mistakes, and the robots malfunctioned. The pressure of the situation was really high. There was an issue with our robot and it was a time crunch situation, but we successfully overcame it. For completing the task and reaching the quarterfinals, we had to get 100 points and cross a *Sand Dune*. Very few teams before us could manage it. But we crossed the dune and secured 100 points. Our strategy this time was to go for the completion of the problem but as a contingency plan we knew completing only one part would get us through. As it turned out, the team did amazingly well and completed each part.
+
+We were all amazed. It was our high point of the tournament and the team was really confident. We finished 2nd in the top 8 teams for the quarterfinals, and our match was against the *Government College of Engineering, Awsari*. And though we were ahead most of the time, we failed at throwing a thing called *Shegai* twice. Taking nothing away from the opposing team, we really were quite unlucky in that match. It took us some time to accept what had happened. You can watch the match on Youtube. Although we were ahead most of the time, it was just the last 10 seconds when we lost the match. It took some time to sink in. Many team members couldn't help but cry, and the whole arena watched in stunned silence. Later on the Judges Special Award was a bit of  a consolation.
+
+**10. Apart from this competition, what other events and projects do you engage in? How does that  help in preparation of the final goal and how does that help in further research?**
+
+ We don’t participate in other competitions or events because Robocon alone is one heck of a competition if you’re preparing it for seriously and with the intention of winning. But yes, we do a lot of projects and research in our workshop. We always work to improve our mistakes and learn about things which can help us with the next problem statement. These research projects help us in developing better robots.
+
+
+
+**11. How do you guys start working on a project? How do you think of the design and abilities of a robot and how do you proceed on it? After the conclusion of any year’s competition, when do you start preparing for the next one?**
+
+We have a certain idea phase in which all the team members think independently and come up with some random ideas. We discuss those ideas and then decide how to prototype them. Sometimes we do a literature review to increase our technical knowledge in certain aspects. We design various mechanisms, simulate them, then fabricate and then test them, and finally choose the best one to incorporate it in our robot. Generally we start working on the next problem statement just one month after the completion of the previous one.
+
+
+
+**12. Would you like to comment on your result this year? What were you aiming for and how much could you realize?**
+
+ We aimed at making the best robot in the tournament and winning the competition. We, as a team, have the caliber and technical knowledge to win the tournament. We are making technical advancements at a very rapid pace and this is evident from the last few performances. We have entered the knockout stages in 3 of the last four outings. It's just that we are not able to get over the ‘forsaken’ quarterfinal line somehow. We keep losing in the quarter finals and almost every time it is the small things that cost us the tournament. We as a team, have always covered all the big things properly, but we’ve failed at executing certain small things at crucial moments.
+
+In the last couple of years, our robot designs and performances have been better than various Robocon giants like MIT Pune, VIER and COEP Pune. This year too, only three teams in total were able to complete the problem statement and we were one of them.
+
+These are good results but we want to be the best team in the tournament. It’s not going to be easy, but we are confident that we will be able to achieve our dream soon.
+
+**13. What all changes and improvements do you wish to make next time around?**
+
+First of all we need to analyse the situation thoroughly. Find out exactly why we don’t qualify for the semis. I think we need to improve our practice methods.  I saw the practice slots of other good teams, and they are quite organised and everyone seems to know their business. There is no unnecessary shouting or confusion. We on the other hand plan our practice slots in the competition and it is really unfair to ask the operators to behave exactly in the way we need. This has been the main problem. We waste a lot of crucial time in practice slots and we need to make ourselves better at that. We need to simulate time crunches and pressure situations so that we can prepare for realistic competition conditions. There are certain other things as well, and the team will properly acknowledge them in the team meeting next semester.
+
+**14. This year, the events of Robocon were delayed significantly. What challenges did this predicament put before you? How much did it affect the proceedings of this year’s preparations and how will it affect your next season's schedule?**
+
+This year’s competition was delayed significantly. One of the biggest problems that we
+faced this year was that the people from third year (the year which leads the team) had to go for their internships. Though the competition is important, career decisions quite obviously matter more and hence they had to prioritise their internships. Hence our team was left with a weakened leadership. And though the sophomores are technically sound, they aren't adept at the decision making process. We did communicate with our seniors online, but the effect wasn't the same. Also, the delay in the competitions disturbed our mindset and this affected our plans. 
+But we can't use that as an excuse as it was the same for other teams too.
+
+Also, we couldn't start our summer training program on time. So now we need to be proactive and make use of the time that is left judiciously. I am sure that the next leader will definitely take that into account and act accordingly.
+
+**15. <b>Well, we’re definitely proud of your performance on the national stage! Any concluding remarks?</b>** 
+
+Thank you. 
+
+The thing is that we do not have a decent marketing team so there is no way in which we can communicate our thoughts or reach out to the people of the institute in an effective way. We have a Robocon IITR page (do follow it if you are interested) but that is not enough. I want to thank WatchOut! for giving us this opportunity to express ourselves. I would like to use this opportunity and tell the IITR junta that robocon is not just a technical project. It's competitive robotics - it’s like a sport. It develops character. You will learn a lot of engineering here but you will also learn human skills that cannot be taught in a classroom. You will learn to stay calm and make decisions in the most pressing situations. You will learn to accept defeat after putting in a year of hard work. Though it seems a bit scary at first, this is something that makes you an adept and well-rounded human being. 
+
+Technical knowledge is what we all crave to get after getting into an institute like this. I know many of the young minds dream of making something work and not just formulate a principle on paper. And this is what we do. We realize the designs of our imagination and make it work at whatever cost, and you will learn that this cost is not just technical expertise. 
+
+
+And to all the fans of Team Robocon IITR (whatever small bunch of fans we have), thank you for supporting us and don't worry, we are getting there. You will soon see Team Robocon IIT Roorkee representing India at the international platform!
+

_posts/2019-07-04-gender-and-sexuality.md

@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "Gender and Sexuality"
+tags: [wona, column]
+author: "Sudhang Varshney, Manya, Saurav Mahale"
+image: gender-sexuality-survey.jpeg
+category: editorial
+excerpt: "With the recent dissolution of Article 377, the LGBTQ movement has been gaining momentum nationally and this provided Watch Out! with an impetus to appraise the climate of the campus with respect to gender sensitisation and awareness about gender and sexuality."
+---
+
+<div class="infogram-embed gender-sexuality-infogram" data-id="f3e598bc-ec1a-48f9-a571-6af502904126" data-type="interactive" data-title="Copy: Gender and Sexuality Survey-copy"></div><script>!function(e,t,s,i){var n="InfogramEmbeds",o=e.getElementsByTagName("script")[0],d=/^http:/.test(e.location)?"http:":"https:";if(/^\/{2}/.test(i)&&(i=d+i),window[n]&&window[n].initialized)window[n].process&&window[n].process();else if(!e.getElementById(s)){var r=e.createElement("script");r.async=1,r.id=s,r.src=i,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,0,"infogram-async","https://e.infogram.com/js/dist/embed-loader-min.js");</script><div style="padding:8px 0;font-family:Arial!important;font-size:13px!important;line-height:15px!important;text-align:center;border-top:1px solid #dadada;margin:0 30px"><a href="https://infogram.com/f3e598bc-ec1a-48f9-a571-6af502904126" style="color:#989898!important;text-decoration:none!important;" target="_blank">Gender and Sexuality Survey</a><br><a href="https://infogram.com" style="color:#989898!important;text-decoration:none!important;" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Infogram</a></div>
+
+***
+
+**Illustration credits:** [http://miamioh.edu/cas/academics/programs/wgs/](http://miamioh.edu/cas/academics/programs/wgs/){: style="text-decoration:underline"}

_posts/2019-07-11-memoir-mohan.md

@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: "A Memoir"
+tags: [wona, column]
+image: mohan-memoir.jpg
+category: memoirs
+author: "Mohan Agrawal"
+excerpt: "Closure is a made up thing invented by Steven Speilberg to sell movie tickets."
+---
+
+<a href="/MohanMemoir.pdf" style="text-align: center"><button type="button" class="btn btn-primary btn-block btn-lg">Click here to read the memoir</button></a>

category/interiit/index.html

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+---
+category: interiit
+---

category/memoirs/index.html

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+---
+category: memoirs
+---

category/summer2019/index.html

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+---
+category: summer2019
+---

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css/posts.css

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+/* INFOGRAM ARTICLE (Gender and sexuality survey) */
+.gender-sexuality-infogram {
+	width: 1040px;
+}
+
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+	.gender-sexuality-infogram {
+		width: 100%;
+	}
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