GSes’ responses in GBMs

General Secretary Hostel Affairs(GSHA)

On the 31st of March, the General Body Meet of the  GSHA was held. As residential and mess issues are of primary concern to inmates, and so lot of queries and complaints regarding the same were posted before the incumbent GSHA (2018-19), Abhilash Karri. The candidate diligently answered myriad questions based on  eateries ranging from the status of long-awaited new eateries to Food Safety and Hygiene and Government Mess. His actions on the grim issue of the uncongenial living conditions in hostels, the sensitive matter of water-scarcity and Campus accessibility for specially abled students  were questioned. He responded to the degree of promises completed of his manifesto and gave his perspective on the matter affecting students.

Here is the detailed Q&A for the same.

Q: What is the current status of the Food court near SAC, Food truck, Food outlet in place of campus hub and McDonalds and what actions have been taken for the same.

A: My promise of the high-end outlet is going to be materialized. Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) is going to be started around December this year. There will also be a coffee shack in SJMSOM, for which a tender had already been issued, and further clarified that there was already a tender issued but due to some technical issue faced it had to be done again. The SAC food court and the Campus hub food court will take another  year tentatively. There will be an alumni operated outlet that will also be coming up in the academic area, which will take another 3-4 months to be completely established. Setting up these kinds of facilities and outlets and going forward with tenders and other official documentation is what takes the maximum amount of time.

Q: What is being done to tackle pollution outside Hostel 9? Is there any fine that is being imposed on the company?

A: The immediate thing that was implemented was to water the roads for making the dust settle which was not really that successful in tackling the issue. The plan to screen the hostels affected was scrapped because it was found to be against the law for residential hostels. So now the contractor has been given the mandate that all the work that would be going on in Hostel 17 would be covered up to the maximum extent.The pollution is primarily due to two reasons: 1. Sand, which has the way in being covered up and two is the speed of the trucks which they have now limited to maximum of 20 km/hr in that area. While the PHO and water sprinkling is already active, the screening and speed limit has been communicated and are in the process of being implemented.The machine cleaning will now go on during the night to reduce the increased pollution in the day.

Q: Why is the entry gate near the SOM building partially closed (sometimes fully closed, leaving only the side gate open) during the academic hours causing trouble to the student on cycle or on foot?

A:The partial closure or complete has the reason in the fact that auto rickshaws often avoid signs and get into these areas creating more problems. I was unaware of the problem of full closure and will inform the security to keep the gate open to at least let two cycles pass through. The restructuring of the gate don’t seem to be a viable option as large trucks sometimes need to enter from this gate.

Q: What are the specific measures taken by GSHA to make campus accessible for students with a disability? What are the improvements with regard to the proposal on the office for disability affairs?

A:This issue is more clearly mentioned in end term work report. The director has agreed to the setup of the Differently abled cell and has also given a go-ahead regarding any policies that need to be put in according to the latest guidelines that have been put forward by the Gov (something like for eye you should be getting 30%, for ear 20% extra time). The audit of the whole campus is required in this matter and they are in the process of this which will point out the different needs of the differently abled people. This, however, can be done once the audit report is out, and the immediate improvements will be focussed in the academic area and the new hostels as in the old hostels there is little room for such modifications. The tentative timeline  is that of 6 months once the report is out.

Q: What all things are planned after FSSAI survey of all mess and eateries since there were so many shortcomings at all hostels. Eg: Covering of tube lights in kitchen and dining area. Water testing, all many others.

A: All the reports have been forwarded to the respective wardens and also other relevant authorities. The Hygiene committee will work on the common remarks that would be made, for example about the storage mechanisms of food and vegetables, procedures of cooking. He also pointed out particularly about the use of plastic utensils in canteens and other places that need to be stopped. They plan of conducting training for cooks if indeed the need comes out after analysis of the report which will take about a month or so as it is a very extensive one. The ideation has to be done by the institute formed committee itself. All the canteens and messes will be given out common guidelines along with and also other eateries. They want to try out all of this before the start of the next session and what they plan is another audit once the implementation is done in the next semester. It is a lengthy process and will take some time.

Q: Regarding the water scarcity problem that we are facing very recently, what are the steps that have been taken? Have bringing in water tankers been considered a genuine option?

A: The announcement was very sudden by the BMC explaining the drought situation arising which left little room for planning beforehand leading to the escalated problem. The authorities in discussion with the GSHA have come up with maximised utilisation of the borewells present in nearly every hostel to meet the demand-supply gap. Bringing in water tankers has not been thought of, as they think it is difficult to gauge the demand on a daily basis.

Q: Why there are still network issues, especially in Hostel 4? Why are boosters not being installed till now which you conveyed that they will be installed 3 months ago?

A: Boosters are not very efficient as they have observed it in places where they have been installed like Hostel 12, 13, 14. So, they decided on increasing towers of mobile networks inside the campus, but these ran into rough waters initially as the proposed places of Tansa backed out explaining old and not a very strong base of buildings.

The place is now being determined to be gymkhana building. All the document has been laid out and given to the authorities around 10 days ago and Vodafone and Jio are going to set up towers in these places. They have been said that no stalls for new connections of the companies, as seen during admissions, will be allowed unless they do that.

Q: Can we remove the government mess from the hostels and replace with the private ones?

A: The number of government mess on our campus are fixed and nothing can be done to change the government mess in our institute because we can’t fire the government employees. We are left with just two options, first is to have the government mess in the hostels with relatively a smaller number of residents and the hostel council works effectively, secondly, we can rotate the government mess on yearly basis among the hostels.

Q: What percentage of your manifesto has been completed?

A: Every GS candidate mentions various things in his or her manifesto and honestly speaking, I never knew the percentage and focused on what part of manifesto I am working. Once you get into the responsible position of GSHA you focus that you addressing all the points in the manifesto and achieve 100% completion at the end.  One will also have to see that many manifesto points were changed to various things: I never thought of food court in SAC parking lot during the time of making manifesto we might have lack of knowledge too and the perception changes before and after you get into the job.

Q: Why the issues related to elections and voting awareness in the institute were not handled seriously?

A: We have the gymkhana election page where we post almost everything and also on the student notice board. I don’t think we can do anything apart from this, maybe you can come up with something and inform the EC and they can do something under gymkhana norms.

Q: What has been done to address the guest room booking facility? Students struggle to get even a single room but it ends up in nothing but disappointment.

A: I never got to know about the tedious process which the students have to go through in order to get a room booked, but we are trying to solve this problem with a broader perspective. I reckon that we apparently don’t have enough rooms for the guests during the freshman admission period but for the rest of the time they can book the rooms by either giving a letter to Associate Dean of Student Affairs or the hostel coordinating unit. We have put up the notice on the hostel affairs page and also have mailed the students regarding the same.

We are, at the same time trying to come up with a better portal with dynamic room booking system, students would be able to book rooms for 6-8 guests which would include 2 parents and rest other guests. at least during the trial period the students would be able to book only for 6 people which would consist of 2 parents and 4 other guests. The payment can be done online and gate pass for the guests would also be issued on the same portal. But this would be operational once we get about 36 to 50 rooms from hostel 12,13,14 and 18, until we have these rooms we cannot start the portal because we have to figure out the genuine reasons for room booking and prioritize them as well.

Q: Why Kresit does not operate during night hours? In previous GBM, GSHA assured that it has been made permanent then why is it closed?

A: First of all, answering the permanent thing, initially temporary permission to operate during nights for 4 months was given then it was extended for another 4 months until the paper works were ready, then it was given an extension for one full year which probably ended in April 2018 after which they had to renew their extension through regular procedure and paperwork. Once they started with the permanent thing for one-year an institute wide check pointed out said that majority of the canteens including Kresit were flouting important standards and need to be shut down. Somehow, it was sorted for rest of the canteen, but for Kresit canteen we couldn’t do anything to operate it  does not fulfil the norms to be a canteen, so I regret to say that we will have to shut down Kresit canteen.

General Secretary Sports Affairs (GSSA)

On the 28th of March, the General Body Meet (GBM) of the incumbent General Secretary of Sports Affairs (2018-19), Ritik Madan, was held. Insight received questions for the sports council through a google form, which were posed to him. Questions regarding Aavhan and the New Gym facility were asked. Serious allegations on the misbehaviour of swimming pool caretaker towards females were raised.

Q: In Aavhan a lot of teams come and play on our grounds and courts which are meant for the residents of the institute, courts get damaged. How do you ensure they get repaired in time and what about the students who are deprived of the facilities due to full time booking of courts?

In the last 2 to 3 years we have seen constant practice by the Institute teams because of Aavhan. We have been extending the vision of Aavhan as a platform with an overall and complete sporting experience. We had collaborations with the various sports organisations like Sportz Consult, India Olympics 2020 which helped in providing exposure to not only the playing aspect of sports but aspects like sports management, physiotherapy, etc.It is of the view that these three days for which we book the courts are for greater vision. The question of damages is nowhere in the picture as we get the courts repaired before and after the Aavhan. Actually, it does more good than bad. Aavhan does not do anything explicitly which might damage the courts, even if it gets damaged then it is merely by playing and it gets repaired eventually following the set of procedures which is followed in our institute. Rather the process speeds up in the wake of Aavhan.

Q:What changes were made in events to involve more students in the fest?

One of the immediate aim of Aavhan is to improve the competition, the vision for the competitions in Aavhan is to be as an invitational tournament to improve the quality of sports in the tournament. Currently in Aavhan teams and players from colleges as well as clubs participate to maintain a balance between the quality of competition our teams get and Aavhan’s reputation itself. We aim that our teams are competitive enough to reach the semi finals or final stage but not good enough to dictate the tournament completely, The point is, Aavhan should also provide exposure to the teams and players rather than just competition. Our vision is if our team reaches semifinals or final or even quarterfinals should ensure that these teams are good enough to bag gold in Inter IIT.

From this year we are going to have Chess in Inter IIT, before this it was held separately as a different tournament and points were not included in the general championship. Most of the players across the IITs are FIDE rated but they don’t get enough competition in the institute. Having a FIDE rated tournament provides exposure to them as well as they don’t have to go outside to play a tournament. There were multiple workshops including Zumba, Boxing, Slacklining, etc. which are not so popular otherwise. Also we had an association with India Olympics 2020 which trains Olympians. Kabaddi was also introduced this year in association with U-Mumba, these competitions not only have prize incentives but it also gives a platform to athletes to sharpen themselves as many times Inter IIT is unable to provide them intense competition and exposure. We also have a Kabaddi team due to Aavhan and for the very first time we had regular practice sessions with people showing up.

Q: Regarding the new gym, the gym is getting quite uncomfortable and hot, gym windows are open most of the time, the door is broken, glasses facing east adding to the cause. What measures are being taken regarding this?

Windows are open to provide ventilation and I acknowledge that ACs do not work for the whole time but I will take this as a suggestion and would see what I can do and regarding the direct sunlight I have not heard anything like this before but sure I  take note of this.

Q:There were a few complaints against the gym trainers that they are not doing their job properly, what actions were taken regarding this?

This problem also came upon the Insight Discussion Forum, There are two gym instructors at a time in the gym and this problem had come up last semester. We do have gym review meetings and the members of the committee are Dean SA, Gymkhana incharge, Chairman of Sports and GSec Sports. We had a meeting last time and this issue was brought up and gym management gave some suggestions to improve. There were complaints made against all four trainers 2 in the evening and 2 in the morning, the problems with the morning instructor have been solved and we have fired one of the evening instructors after several complaints, the other one has been warned as well and if the problems persist we might fire him as well.

Q:There are complaints against the swimming pool caretaker/instructor of misbehaving by some female students, any measures regarding that?

We had taken up this issue with the Gymkhana incharge and we have officially lodged a complaint against him. Recently about a month ago he was warned again, but we have received these complaints through unofficial sources like confessions page and we can’t go after the offenders on this basis. They are government employees and without official complaints suing them would not be justified also he can file an RTI. We are not denying but we would like the people to directly reach out to us. Reddy Sir, who is officially the in charge of the swimming pool, is also aware of the issue and as of now  the situation is under strict supervision.

General Secretary Cultural Affairs (GSCA)

On 30/03/19 General Body Meet (GBM) of the outgoing GSCA (2018-19) Rupesh Raj took place.Insight received fewer question from Cult-senti Insti for him.Questions ranged from irregularity in conducting of events to demand for new room for LIT/Debate club and some personal pains of reimbursement. Questions common to all GS’s like Failure in completion of Manifesto points were put mixed with allegation of false advertisement during campaign. Find out what he has to say.

Q: Why was the cult calendar so messed up this year? There were weekends where everything was happening and then periods where nothing substantial was happening. For example, a major GC and flagship events of 3 clubs within 4 days – Goonj, Lit Weekend, Kaladarshan, Virasat.

A: The events were as evenly spaced out as possible, as this year had a large number of events. As it was the Diamond Jubilee year, there were constraints with some days in the calendar – eg. Surbahar had to be conducted in the first semester. Additionally, two flagship events were added this year. This issue was discussed in a very detailed manner in the Cult Comm.

Q: Cult Schools were held in the first semester and I enrolled for the cult school in Filmmaking.

It was said that my fees will be refunded if I attend 80% of the classes. However , even after a 100% attendance , I haven’t got my money back.

Could you please care to explain as to when will we get our refund.

There are many others with the same issue.

A: This might be an error from our side. In case they haven’t gotten the refund yet, they can directly contact me.

Q:What is going on with the Lit/Debate room?

A: The room cannot be renamed as it is being used for NSO Guitar. The NSO Guitar room was specifically removed from the SAC room booking portal. Any request for booking the room has to go through me. So essentially debate practices and literary arts events happen here,

Q: Why 100% manifesto completion was not achieved, as many points were chosen to can never be completed in a year and still where mentioned in your manifesto. According to me this is false advertisement in your campaign, What we students believed that initiative will be completed in a year were not fulfilled.

A: I am human.

  General Secretary Academic Affairs (PG)

On the 31st of March, the General Body Meet of the GSAA (PG) Deekshith K Shetty took place.He responded diligently to question of his failure in submission of his manifesto and accusation of not setting goal for the tenure.He stated his contribution in raising issue of fellowship hike as something he did outside his manifesto point.He further replied to questions regarding ISCP & IRSCP OCs                                                                                                Find out the detailed report below.

Q:Why is the entry gate near the SOM building partially closed (sometimes fully closed, leaving only the side gate open) during the academic hours? It causes so much of problem for the students on cycles and on foot.

A:This was brought to my attention in the beginning of my tenure. This, technically, comes under HA Council. So, I forwarded it to HA and they forwarded it to Security immediately. Security section assured us that the gates would be open during rush hours. For a while they did keep the gates open, I think; because, I walked through those gates but never during morning rush hours. Since then we did not get any complaints after that, so we thought the issue was resolved. However, today it came up during GSHA’s GBM as well. I am sure something will be done soon.

Q:You had promised in the last GBM that the nominated GSAA(PG) will share his SOP (not manifesto) within a week. This would help students in checking the progress of your council. You have not yet given any such document?

A:I shared a mid-term report in the mail before the last GBM. Admittedly, that lengthy report was not an easy read, and the students present said that I wanted to show a list of agendas which would be easier to follow up on. I said I would share such a list. From what I recall, I did not mention within a week. I had said, “in some time”. Even by that measure, I am late. I got busy after that GBM. But, I have shared the list of agendas and status on pg-student-notices today [on the day of GBM]. This is the complete list with all the agendas and workshops.

[you can find the document here: https://bit.ly/2D4G7Ca]

Q:It says that you didn’t set any goals for your tenure?

Goals were there. I just did not have a manifesto. [I was not elected this year. I was asked to continue.] We presented our goals, along with the report, in the mid-term GBM. Some were discussed in Insights mid-term review as well. Some of these were my agendas, but the team suggested most. We also worked on issues as they came along. For example, the fellowship hike was not in my last manifesto, but it was one of the goals discussed in the previous GBM.  So, we did have a checklist. As you can see in the document [given above] a few things are yet to be completed.

Q:ISCP and IRSCP OCs were added in senate as invitees from September, 2018. What were the issues they brought up in senate or they brought to GSAA(PG) to present at relevant forum/senate?

A:Most issues that they brought to me did not need to go to the Senate They brought some issues to me and I brought it to the senate. Some proposals (two to be specific), which will eventually be discussed in Senate, are being worked on jointly. Also, only two meetings were held since OCs started being invited to the Senate. They have been providing opinions on issues that come up in the meetings. For example, in one of the meetings, opinion provided by one of the I.S.C.P. OCs was much appreciated by the Senate and helped in approval of the proposal for conversion M.Mgmt degree to M.B.A.

General Secretary Technical Affairs (GSTA)

On 31/03/19 GBM of GSTA (2018-19) Athul Nambolan was held.He answered explicitly to questions pertinent to XLR8,Budget allocation and its utilization.He replied to the questions involving PG participation in AUV to degree of involvement of tech council in conducting of TED talks to which he gave further insights.He answered these set of questions in detailed manner

Find below the exact QnA.

Q: It has been accused that the XLR8 event has been wrongly conducted. It does introduces freshmen with the tech. But rather than gaining interest, students have started losing their interest after this event.

Are you aware that tech council is killing the tech interests of freshmen every year by almost a quarter?

A:The thing is, yeah we have overall feedback mechanism, our people go and talk to different kinds of freshmen. Sometimes, who are not directly involved with the events, informs us, mentors and others about how they felt, how many are going. Specially after XLR8 event a good number of freshmen who participated goes for AUV & other tech team recruitment. From there as well we get a feedback about the event.From the limited feedback I have, we always had mixed reviews. Someone would find that there was less learning aspect involved and its more of a fun event. Some people said this was the first time they did something like this. They would like to do it next time when something more interesting comes up. Someone said the AUV challenge was pretty interesting and they got a lot of insight and,sometimes yeah if the mentors allocated are not really the best ones, yes it turns out that their experience is bad.

This time we had a special emphasis on feedback. We actually had a feedback where we get that there’s a group of people who really want to step up right away from the beginning but we can’t go full fledged on them. For some of them we started with stuffs like PCB soldering, which was moderate level and people enjoyed that because it was a fun event.  I firmly believe that tech requires a lot of effort from your aspect, these are events where everything is not hunky-dory.There could be a lot of debugging, you have to engineer and re-engineer. For those people the interest might get killed. For those we tried to follow through with other technical activities. In these cases we might have received such negative feedbacks.

Yeah in some cases if the bot has not been built so well, if there’s  a lot of debugging that isn’t get done in time, if the design becomes poor, they might miss the fun part of it. The event is about learning to engineer, design and debugging problem handling and if your expectations are very high like you would prepare the best bot, you will get the best runtime, your interest would  get killed if you don’t get that. Putting in short many people participate & enjoy in the event and good number of people also end tech team ( I feel no need to mention AUV again).There are some cornerstone issues like mentor allocation and others but overall we have a good feedback.

There’s nothing like a club membership, club doesn’t have a membership. Club is open for all. Google groups are there, where the students take in healthy discussions in topics in which they are interested.

Participation has always been similar. For aeromodelling club we have found  consistent number for last three years i.e. 90 to 100 teams participating every year. No of teams which fly RC planes are 50 to 60 teams every year. Participation in RC plane in itself is a feedback since it’s done after XLR8. If the enthusiasm has been getting killed the no of people in aeromodelling club would have been less, which was not the case with us.

Q:Can you give an account of how much budget were u allocated, and how much have you used. Why is the budget heavily underutilized?

A:Major chunk of the budget as been allocated in flagship events of clubs like ERC, WnCC and ITSP, ERC, WNCC. This time our budget was way more than previous one because of Techmeet. Big chunk of it was fully utilized in Techmeet. Other particular events like buying equipment for arduino makerthon, events where we have to provide foods took some amount of budget. Exact numbers can’t be mentioned but roughly 10% to 20% was spent on food, 40% to 50% on technical equipment. Students can directly get this information by contacting the dean. Exact amount will be discussed after getting permission from dean. Underutilized is a wrong statement. There are several  heads like consumable, equipments, other charges etc . 80 to 90% of it has been utilized every year for past two years. Some of the heads has been overspent i.e.some of the bill have not been cleared because the budget was exhausted. One of the heads had some amount left which was 10 % or so, which is still stuck because of financial year ending troubles. Net worth matches with what we had utilized. We had easily crossed more than 80% not like 60% or 70%.

Q:Why weren’t anything done about your initiative of conducting TED talk? Why was it taken up by the cult council? How involved were you in the process?

A:Yes this was one of my initiative which I had planned. Unfortunately, it was already being undertaken by Dean R&D office under Diamond Jubilee Celebrations. Initially both cultural council & technical council had approached Dean R&D. However only the cultural council was given the publicity & some organisational aspects to prevent a mess. Since a TED event was already organised, we couldn’t have another TED event organised back to back without sufficient time gap.

Q:Why PG participation hadn’t been introduced till now in AUV?

A:PGs were never recruited in AUVs core team, their recruitment has been done for specific projects from this year. Regarding the recruitment process, a google form has been sent and recruitment is done based on those responses and few PGs have been recruited. They were recruited for some generic projects which would not affect the performance of whole team since the time commitment to the project is quite large and they have their projects which does not allow them to commit so much amount of time to us. If it gets completed it would be beneficial but if not completed, it would not affect the whole project.

Insight didn’t received any question for GSAA(UG) from the students and hence does not feature here.

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