The Venue: The main gate of the IIT-B. Is it the Open House meet? No! Is it the Admin Building? Nope! It IS the "dharana" literally by thousands of students.
Time: late night. Duration: hours long. Cause behind the sit-in: Sahil's sad demise as a suicide. The participants: literally thousands of students and the IIT Bombay Director, Professor Shireesh Kedare, ready to meet them at the campus main gate.
The students are discussing a serious issue. How is their stance? They are wagging their fingers at him, screaming at him, cheekily smirking "record it" when he offers to sign their demands as well as to step down.
Is this how serious negotiations go on? All these students are going to join big tech companies, may run their own start-up's. would face all sorts of international interactions! Sure, they are agitated. Practically, the whole nation is, incidentally.
Why the uncouth arrogant dismissive gestures though? This IS NOT a new 'politics of language' as certain youtubers may maintain. This is sheer vulgarity of response, getting normalised since the 'Jantar Mantar' days. Well, actually, good leadership rests on good communication!
The fun of it is that they want the authorities to 'listen' to them. They are, however, not ready even to 'hear'! Yet another interesting contradiction is that they can scream, shout, sneer, what have you. But the authorities, the institute, the educational establishment must take care of their psychological tensions!
Come again, please! At about twenty (the general mean age of those militant students, right?), one should have the EQ and the SQ to manage one's own mind, one's emotions, one's tensions, right? How can, and why must, the educational institution provide very many psychiatrists on campus?
Are we letting loose on the world degree holders who know only their 'rights', who have an 'i alone am right' attitude, who think that rude, conceited, self-important, opinionated aggression, nay, tantrums, full of oneself is their birthright? Sorry, Dear World! Yes, if such are our products, we have indeed failed you!
Pratima@ Do you know why I am aghast at such goings-on? Well, I teach languages, literature, communication, body language, et al. I used to always think that the IIT's would excel at all the communication strategies, given the high IQ of the students! Unfortunately, however, the entire fracas has proved that the whole world now questions the relevance of Humanities, accused of 'drum'ming up (literally, too!) suspect sit-in's! And here I was, glorifying communication and humanities as necessary inputs for a rounded personality of students of all disciplines, but especially of technocrats!
Quote of the day: "The art of communication is the language of leadership," asserts James Humes.
Word of the day: "Humanities". Much doubted due to the IIT-B interpolations! The Humanities are academic disciplines that study human society, culture, history, and the human experience using critical, interpretive, and analytical methods rather than empirical scientific experiments.
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