Q. Why are you contesting for VP? Elaborate on the experiences which led you to make this decision.
Ans. In the past two and a half years of my stay here on campus, my participation in various activities has led me to believe that the student community in the institute has a very strong sense of comradery and bonding. These virtues have been inculcated inside of me as a result of being a member of this student body. I believe that it is my responsibility to give back to the student community as well; it is this sense of responsibility that motivates me to contest for this post.
Q. Any particular instances that inculcated this sense of responsibility inside of you?
Ans. Being the General Secretary of Technology of my Hall of Residence, I have worked for the betterment of the technology culture in my hall. When you receive texts from people thanking you for your job, you feel satisfied with what you’re doing. That is what led and motivated me.
Q. You must have gone through the other candidates' proposals; looking at their candidature, what do you think sets you apart from the other two candidates?
Ans. I believe that the fact that they are contesting this post and the fact that this requires a lot of effort speaks for itself and the willingness that they have come up with is something that is truly commendable. I believe that my experiences at the hall level, the hall being a subset of the entire institute, my participation in the Inter-IIT Tech meet, and my participation with AGV, along with the experiences that I’ve had being a part of all of these activities is something that sets me apart from the others.
Q. Brief us about your proposals once, and during the process, succinctly state their relevance to the student body according to you.
Ans. There are four proposals I’ve put forward.
A. First is empowering Post Graduates and Research Scholars to have a better stay in the institute. In this proposal, we are talking about two things: the first is standard operating procedures defined for research scholars, about contingency funds, and academic tenures such as how and when to give enhancement seminars along with what happens when these seminars are not given on time. The second part is about placement statistics and improvement of placements; again two parts: the first part of this placement sub-proposal is conducting a placement boot camp where people are made aware of the various placement opportunities, and they are trained for core placement opportunities inside the campus. The second part is, due to the two-year tenure of the MTech students, they are generally not very aware of the positions that one can hold at the Career Development Center. Creating awareness for these positions will help the students get a proportionate representation in bodies such as the Placement Committee or the CDC departmental representatives.
B. The second proposal is empowering women to enter entrepreneurship and leadership fields. So statistically speaking, in India particularly, the percentage of entrepreneurs who are women compared to the global standard for the same, is something that is very different. I do not want that in our institute, given that our institute is an institution of national importance. What I am proposing is the conduction of a seven-day workshop so that women entrepreneurs are given a stage to bring their ideas, and get pitching, networking, and investment opportunities for their startups. This would lead them to develop their business and lead an entrepreneurial activity.
C. The third proposal is called URAP — Undergraduate Research Advancement Program. There are these programs called SPARK at IIT Roorkee and SURGE at IIT Kanpur which are either centrally government funded or funded by the alumni of the institute. I am proposing creating such a research program for the students at IIT Kharagpur. Currently what happens is, for example, if or if you are trying to get a project under a professor of this institute, what you generally do is scavenge for their email IDs and mass mail them. It is inefficient at both our end and the professor’s end. So why not directly form a student body that can approach these professors, and set down a list of available projects?
D. The fourth proposal is ensuring better community well-being at the institute. There are two parts to this: mandating POSH (Prevention Of Sexual Harassment) training at the institute so that people are more sensitized and aware of what constitutes sexual harassment. The second part is enhancing the counseling center by bringing in certification courses so that the campus is more inclusive, particularly for the LGBTQ+ community.
These were my four proposals.
Q. There are a lot of issues on campus like untidiness and lack of co-ed spaces, among other things. How did you decide on the issues that require working on and the ones to cut?
Ans. Deciding whether or not to tend to any problem is slightly tricky. The metrics I used to determine were the level of impact and the intensity of the pain, and with that, I’ve decided that there are four major problems. For all the other problems, as you said, cleanliness, lack of co-ed spaces, etc, I was thinking of how we can have more co-ed spaces in the institute. I’ll let you know about that in a moment. These two metrics were the most important ones: the intensity of the problem and its impact of it in terms of the percentage of the population affected.
Q. Shouldn’t feasibility be a metric you should consider?
Ans. That is right.
Q. Are there any issues on campus that your proposals don’t cater to?
Ans. There are indeed multiple problems. For example, the ones that other candidates have put forward, candidates for General Secretaries have put forward. But personally for me, on these grounds, I have decided that I should go forward with these with respect to my candidature.
Q. Your first proposal concerns the well-being of research scholars and postgraduate students, but we see similar kinds of proposals every year, so what do you think sets your proposal apart from the ones we have seen in the past?
Ans. There are two aspects that I have mentioned, and I have talked to multiple people. One of the major problems that they face is there is no standard set of rules and regulations governing how to give seminars, what is the standard timeline, and what happens if a timeline is breached. Research is something that is uncertain. At the end of the second year, if you are unable to get certain results, that doesn’t mean that you aren’t a good researcher, there are people who are married and have families to feed, and their stipend gets blocked for a certain period of time in certain cases. That is one problem that came to my knowledge. Then there are contingency funds that are allotted to these students. So how does one use a contingency fund? There is a lack of awareness about that. Then comes a feedback system for research scholars. Then for the placement part, as I have stated that there is a two-year tenure for M-Tech students and other postgraduate students. So due to their two-year tenure, they are not able to get hold of these various opportunities, they are not aware of them, so the creation of awareness is rather more important than just getting them into these opportunities.
Q. I presume that you have interacted with Brahmjot during your preparation. What are some of the ongoing initiatives that you feel will be unfinished and that you are looking forward to working on?
Ans. So there is one particular interesting initiative that I came across. It was there is a food court established near Mother Teresa's hall of residence; proposals are there to bring the company’s eateries inside the campus and serve as an eatery inside the campus. That is something that I find interesting.
Q. This is in general, what do you think constitutes a good VP candidate and in that description, where do you feel you fit the best, and what do you feel you might have lacked?
Ans. The VP is, first of all a student representative and hence a leader. So there are multiple virtues that a leader must possess, and particularly for this case, I believe that being bold, being able to empathize with people, being devoted towards your work, and being accountable for your work are some of the major virtues that a VP must have. Particularly me, I have demonstrated these virtues time and time again, but again there is always a learning curve, and there is always a scope for improvement, that is certainly there.
Q. The life of a VP is very hectic and leaves very little time for acads, let alone co-curricular. So how do you plan on balancing these things if you win?
Ans. So, in past years, being from the department of Electrical Engineering, I have been able to manage my workload significantly well with respect to my non-academic activities and engagements. I believe that if elected as the VP, I will continue to do so. Now academics is one of the primary reasons a student gets admitted into this institute, so it is not right to sideline academics, but also holding the position of the VP is important for me to ensure the wellness and well-being of the entire student community. Both of these go hand in hand, but again, I will have to manage my time to not only do good in academics but also to not let students face difficulties inside the institute, being the VP.
Q11. This year quite a few students have been caught with alcohol and other intoxicants inside the campus, so what are your views on that?
Ans. Firstly, it is unfortunate to see students of this institute getting indulged in these activities, if at all. I believe that action must be taken where it is due. They are things that negatively impact a student’s physical and mental health, and people must be made aware of them. Now there are indeed practices going on currently where people get awareness about this, but improving them, scaling it to a slightly larger audience, but these are something that we should move forward and work towards.
Q12. This past year we have seen a lot of issues relating to basic amenities, like water, electricity, and among other things, especially in major halls of residence like Azad and MMM. Why do you think these issues are still persistent, and do you have a plan for combating them?
Ans. So to my knowledge, most of these issues are one-time issues and not something that goes on and on and on. But particularly for my hall of residence or Azad hall of residence, there have been accommodation issues that are true for the entirety of the campus. Having talked to members of the construction authority, I have been assured that by the end of July, there will be new halls of residence constructed. I hope that will solve the accommodation issues. At the same time, for these waterworks or electrical works-related issues, I believe that these sections are truly working hard, and that is commendable, but at the same time, it is not right to blame them, for example, in this issue, like water works case, there was a leakage in the main pipe near the Mechanical Engineering department. That was an accident that could happen at any time. That is an engineering failure, and being engineers, we know that is a possibility always. So that is something we should work in the direction of; we should all find ourselves willing to listen to the problems of others and, at the same time improve the institute.
Q13. We will wrap up with the last two questions. The last year has seen that the student community's mental health has come to the forefront. Do you have any initiatives that can improve that, secondly, you mentioned a while back that you have some plans to increase co-ed spaces on campus; could you elaborate on both of these points?
Ans. So the first question dealt with mental health. Now the aspect of student welfare and mental health is aspect of immense importance for the students and the institute. I believe that there are measures by the student-run groups inside the institute, but they have a scope for improvement. A few initiatives can be taken up in the 3 major domains of mental health — prevention, identification, and community bonding. Now in each of these segments, there are things that can be done. For community bonding events, what we can do is we can conduct more events; again, we have general championships, Inter IIT, Intra hal activities that are prevalent. For prevention and identification, there are various stakeholders that are involved in the case. People ranged from the hall of residence, being representatives as the general secretary of student welfare, hall president, wing representative, wingmates of the individual, the warden, and the assistant wardens. From the faculty side, we have the faculty advisors, professors, department mates, and the head of departments again. All of these should be pressed together to make a body where identification becomes really easy. At the same time, there is something called the gatekeepers training session that can also be extended so that more people are aware of how to identify these cases, what the hints are, and the basic criteria for identification. At the same time, awareness would be created toward not stigmatizing mental health cases because this is very normal and can happen to anyone. So not stigmatizing is something that we should be working towards. These are the few steps in the direction of mental health.
To answer the second question, I was thinking of how we can increase the number of co-ed spaces, but there are multiple layers to this. Now the current standing reality of this is 0, and we have to go to a 100; 100 would be, in my opinion, a complete mixing allowed in the halls of residence. Various steps can be taken; for example, the first step allows visitors into the male residence halls. This is, again, difficult to implement practically. We need to have security officials as well because if people are coming in we need security. The second would be, for example, access to important amenities for people in other residence halls. For example, in one hall of residence, there is a technology room, welfare room, and music room; all of these can be extended and given access to other boarders as well. And the third step would be complete intermixing. So looking in the direction of this, let’s see what we can do if I get elected.