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layout: post
title: "The Lost Paper Trail"
date: 2012-08-26 21:07
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“An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong. “
Russel

B.Tech in Pulp and Paper Engineering, the brochure reads. Placements have been good in this field in the recent years. And as a small aside- the course is run in Saharanpur Campus, 50 km from Roorkee. The descriptions of  Polymer Science and Technology and Process Engineering with MBA, run along the same lines.
Every year, groups of students who clear the JEE, but only just,grab this course along their only path to become an IITian. Sacrificing the chance to learn their favorite courses at rather less reputed institutions, they put all their faith in the hallowed name of IIT, sometimes leaving their homes thousands of kilometers behind. Alas! Fate is cruel to them- they get a rude shock soon after arriving to take their place in the halls of their dreams. Nothing in their worst nightmares could have prepared them for the mental distress which plagues everyone in this institute. Isolated from their classmates, unrecognized as IITians even by the shopkeepers nearby, they are soon struck by the realization that this was certainly not what they signed up for, and definitely not what they deserved.

Soon plagued by the contagious depression that infects this campus,they start feeling imprisoned.
IIT should be a place that gives wings to our dreams, where we can take flight and discover newer realms of success. This naive description of an IIT might be for several other students who cleared the prestigious JEE, but the 500 unfortunate students who set their feet in IIT Roorkee's Saharanpur campus can never truly agree with it. This  continued crushing of dreams has an adverse effect on almost every student. Those who are unable to survive this find their escape in intoxicating substances while others just resign themselves to their fate.

But a few optimistic ones decided to put up a fight. Over the years there have been several organised protests and petitions to improve or shift this departmentto Roorkee. Each time, the students were placated by promises and proposals, which we do not deny did improve the campus in general- however it never did manage to address the basic feeling- that we are not a part of IIT Roorkee. Last year, the director, in a meeting,said that it would be a good proposal to shift the undergradaute courses to Roorkee, turning the saharanpur campus into a research institute. As the students got to know of this, they launched an organised and constitutional movement to get what is increasingly being dubbed as “the campus shift”. However the director, at a meeting with student representatives later, insisted that his comment had been off- the-cuff and not serious. After a mass student sit-in at roorkee was fenced off with diplomatic statements and sweet words, the movement petered off.
This year, a new batch of students arrived, which within one month became deeply dissatisfied.The hunger strike was begun by them to demand a campus shift and was joined by several seniors whose spirits had not been crushed by their repeated failures. 
                                        

