The Vice Chancellor of Anna University-Academician or Dictator

I study at Anna University.It is considered to be a prestigious Engineering Institution in our country.Infact according to the India Today Colleges Survey this year it was the 8th best college in India only next to the IIT's.

Well it's a fact to be proud about and the varsity is indeed a remarkable and humungous institution that has 250 private colleges under it's purview.But the Varsity had been rated based on it's four constitutent colleges.

These four are
1.College of Engineering,Guindy
2.Madras Institute of Technology(MIT)
3.School of Architecture & Planning
4.A & C College of Technology

The above mentioned institutions are considered among the best in Chennai and every aspiring engineer would love to study in one of these institutions.

I am not aware about the other three institutions but as far as College of Engineering,Guindy(that's where I study)is concerned there are several chinks in its armour.Poor Infrastructure,dilapidated laboratories & classrooms,a largely lackadaisical and irresponsible faculty are just some of the problems.

Hence when there was a change in the Vice Chancellor this year many expected some changes.There was surprise and expectation.People were surpriseas he was the youngest person to be ever chosen as a VC.He was just 50,an alumuns of this College and had worked as a professor for several years at this very institution.What made it even more pleasing for me was the fact that he was from our Department,Mechanical Engineering.He had worked with our President A.P.J.Abdul Kalam and had given up a lucrative job in US to come back serve his country,atleast that's what he claimed.And well many expected him to revamp this institution partially if not completely.

Just after his swearing in,as with all elected representatives,he made tall claims,claims thated included a promise to "revolutionise education in Tamil Nadu" .Few weeks after his appointment he came over to our department and promised state of the art equipment,electronically equipped classrooms and blah blah.

Well it's been 6 months since his appointment and forget "state of the art equipment" he hasn't even replaced the malfunctioning fan in our classroom.

But what he has become notorious for are his decisions that are nothing short of authoritarianism.Sample these

Decision 1:-Students are required to wear only formal clothing.T-Shirts and Jeans are prohibited.

Explanation:-For boys it ws to make them accustomed to the demands of the industry.You can't wear jeans to your work place?Can you.I read in a magazine that some IT companies allow you to come in casuals on fridays.Ram this is for you.Please answer

For girls it was to prevent "distraction among boys".Hmmm what's that all about??

Decision 2:-Movies and other entertainment activites like singing and dancing are banned at cultural events

Explanation:-Movies corrupt one's mind.Dancing and Singing are waste of times.Children should concentrate on their studies.

Decision 3:-Students should not walk or sit in groups inside the campus.

Explanation:-Waste of time.Go read you fools!!!

Decision 4:-This is the most important of them all and the main purpose I am making this post.Cellphones are prohibited in classrooms and other academic areas.They had initially banned Camera Cellphones due to the DPS MMS scandal .But now the ban was on all cellphones.

Explanation:-Students waster their time sending SMS and don't pay attention to classes.

But the ban wasn't monitored and students hadn't stopped bringing cellphones.But all that changed on 14th december when classes resumed after semester holidays.Students were randomly picked up and had their pockets checked.Cellphones were seized and warnings were issued.

But weren't cellphones only banned inside classrooms.What about canteen and playground?Well it seems cellphones are banned everywhere.Well students realised that it was time to stop bringing their cellphones to classes and some even started realising the intention of this decision.

But things only seem to be getting worse.In an inexplicable move the varsity officials decided to raid hostels yesterday night and seized all cellphones.For god sakes what's the fault in having cell phones in your room.

You can justify the prohibition of cell phones inside classes but hostels???Are we supposed to be studying 24 hrs a day??What about students wanting to talk to their parents?Well everyone is supposed to use the booths inside the campus.The booths are few and far apart.What this has resulted in long queues outside the booths.May be this doesn't have anything to do with the cellphones at all.It could be our VC has been given a kickback by the telecom companies operating inside our Campus.

Now sample some of the explainations given by the Dean and VC.They claim that 4 years isn't sufficicent for B.E and that you need to keep studying all the time and that Cellphones serve as a distraction.For god sakes which age are you people living in??Merely prohibiting cellphones is not going to enthuse everybody to study hard.Studying and learning are intuitive and can't be enforced.Even before cellphones were banned substantial number of students used to go the library.I am pretty sure that the number even after this action would remain the same and won't change dramatically.Why don't you accept cellphone as a technology we have to live with.

What I do feel is that these are nothing more that politically intentioned activities.Our VC is believed to be a sychophant of PMK.PMK is a political party that is quite vociferous in it's opposition against anything modern.It has protested against the use of english,pre marital sex, and god knows what else.It's believed that our VC was appointed because of his links to the PMK leader and he may just be paying his debt back to the party by enforcing their orders.

Vice Chancellor is a post of great reputation and responsibilty.A person appointed to this office is expected to perform his duties with impeccably with great diligence and sincerity.Our VC seems to be doing that but he is focussing on the wrong front.It would be much more advisable if he diverted his attention to more pressing issues on the educational front and desisted himself from further tinkering with student freedom.

 

Anyone wanna lose their virginity?

This is an issue that has subsided of late but I felt I had to express my opinion on it.It is regarding actress Kushboo and her comments in India Today about the changing trends in sexual behaviour.

For the uninitiated this is what Khushboo said "No educated man can expect his wife to be a virgin".This comment lead great hue and cry among the so called "tamil protectionist forces".It was quite some time before the beleaguered found any help and this time it was from an ardent feminist Mrs Suhasini Mani Ratnam.But this too didnt serve to help the actress as Sushasini too became a target of these bigots.The situation worsened for the two actresses as a host of defamation cases were filed against them in the Tamil Nadu courts.And far from quashing these cases the judges were quite happy to evaluated these cases and one judge went as far as issuing orders to arrest Khusnoo.Thankfully better sense prevailed and the actress was let out on conditional bail.Things started improving as celebrities and politicians from the north started issuing comment in favour of the two actress.As of now the situation seems to have mellowed down.

No sane human being would subscribe to the tactics adopted by the obstreperous "Tamil Protectionist Forces" mainly comprising of PMK and DPI cadres.These political parties tried to gain as much political mileage out of it as possible.The vernacular press too sided with these parties and this issue increasingly came to be seen as a conflict between the conservative tamil society and the liberals comprising of english speaking media and the people from the north.

Now on to the actress herself.Though I pity the actress for the situation she finds herself in,I feel she was partially responsible for her predicament.To say the least her comments were controversial and I certainly don't subscribe to her views.

Irrespective whatever the so called sex surveys may indicate India is still largely an extremely conservative society with limited freedom for women.Though we gradually liberalizing it is gradual and will take time.The common fallacy among all these so called "national surveys" conducted by english weeklies is that based on the response of a select few (2000 in this case) they tend to generalise things.Forget India these responses are not sufficient to gauge the pattern of a single city and this is where Khusboo made a huge mistake.The India Today survey was conducted among app 2100 women from 11 cities including Chennai.So on an average that 190 women from Chennai and the "englightened actress" made her comments for the entire city based on the response of these 190 women.

I will highlight a few of the comments made by the actress

"Women in Chennai were lagging behind Bangalore in expressing sexual desires. But Chennai women are now coming out of hibernation"

Now this clearly indicates that she was referring to the women of Chennai and this negates her claim that she wasn't referring to tamil women.Now if I am not mistaken most women in Chennai are tamilians.

She goes on to say

" I see a lot of women going out, in pubs and discos here. Women are able to talk about sex without inhibition. Given our conservative Indian backdrop, women are slowly coming out."

The above excerpts are certainly true but limited to a particular section of the socitey.The trend indicated above is prevalent among the upper middle class & the affluent sections of the society certainly not among the middle class.They have their life and careers to take care of and certainly don't find the time to indulge in such activites.

Now on to her most controversial remarks in the column
"Our society should liberate itself from such ideas that the brides should all be virgins at the time of marriage. No educated man will expect his bride to be virgin at the time of marriage."

Now why in the world should one liberate oneself from this idea.Forget brides I feel even bridegrooms should be virgin till marriage.Though it may sound impossible now-a-days it certainly was the case till few years ago.

Now why shouldn't an educated man expect his bride to be a virgin.Does she mean that all young educated girls lose their virginity before their marriage.Give me a break.For all the talk about being liberal this just crosses the limit.Does she consider India to be the US where being pervert is a way of life.I don't think so.Even there this may not be completely true and yet the actress takes all the liberty to make this claim and for this comment alone I feel the she deserves what she has got.

People living in Tamil Nadu are quite aware of Khusboo's personal life.Before she married C.Sundar she was the mistress of Actor Prabhu and after their relation broke down she had a live in relationship with her husband(as pointed out in her column).But what many don't know was that she forcibly went into a live-in relationship with her husband fearing that he may dump her.Now we all know the kind of reputation actresse have in India and the prevalence of the Casting Couch syndrome.I guess her experiences as an actress were responsible for the comments made in her column.

She claimed that she made these statements apropos to the increasing cases of AIDS in our society.

For that the above sentence would have been more appropriate had she said

"Our women should liberate themselves from such ideas that the bridegrooms should all be virgins at the time of marriage. No woman should expect her bridegroom to be virgin at the time of marriage.When indulging in sex, the girl should guard herself against sexually transmitted disease"

If she was really sincere about preventing AIDS among women she must have asked them to be cautious against all men irrespective of whether it is her husband or boyfriend.One of the banes of being a conservative society is that women unwittingly become victims of HIV due their men's sexual behaviour.It is men who predominantly indulge in adulterous relationships.It's men who go to prostitutes not women.A married women is in as much danger as an unmarried one.So pre marital sex is not an issue here.Safe sex is.

To conclude whatever may have been the intentions of the corpulent actress she certainly didn't put it forward in the best possible manner.From now on it would be much better if she stuck to what she was good at dissuades herself from making such dubious comments