Teaching tolerance in an IIT

Construction industry is one of the biggest industries in India as in the rest of the world. In cities large buildings are completed in systematic and fast fashion. Whether these constructions abide by the rules of the city administration and the nation is a totally different question.

Construction site in front of New Core Lab, IIT Kanpur

Here at IIT Kanpur, a building is being built right in front of my study room. The land is dug up using big machines in the months of March, April and May. Before digging up, they raised a fence around the land. It looked like a joke- it was just 7 feet tall! The pit they dug was almost three storeys deep and about 3 acres wide! The powdery sand from the pit was transported in open trucks across the campus, through a road that lies between the major boys' hostels during, before and after the examination week. This entire region was covered in dust. One could not walk through these roads at any given time of the day because of thick dust raising from the roads.

I wondered how everyone including the administration was blind to this. I know. The trucks passed through a road between students' hostels- not faculty residences. I know that trucks transporting any construction material must be covered. This is the law of the land. But laws are to be broken, aren't they? Especially on the campus of an institute of national importance like IIT, these laws must be broken blatantly so that the students must be normalized- taught a lesson. If a student's blood boils due to the fact that the trucks are not covered and campus is polluted, and they pass through hostel roads 24/7, the boiled blood has to come back to normal temperature sooner or later. This will teach the student a lesson or two about living in India. In the long run, students will learn tolerance. That's the plan. Yes, that's the plan. To raise a generation of educated youngsters who are blind to problems, or are afraid to react to problems. Long live the system!