Madrasas In Chennai?
Arun and Harikumar alerted me to a Times Now news item about engineering colleges in and around Chennai passing off their bullshit rules as Tamil culture.
Regressive separation of the sexes?
In 21st century India, if you thought we had done away with archaic ideas about men and women, thing again. TIMES NOW has found that certain colleges in Chennai have forced male and female students to keep out of each other’s way, so much so that students cannot even walk on the same roads. This is all ostensibly in the name of Tamil culture.The outskirts of Chennai are home to scores of engineering colleges where discipline it appears is an obsession – sometimes even bordering on the ridiculous. Some rules even bar students from talking to the opposite sex.
Read the entire article here and click ‘Play Video’ at the bottom of the page to see the news item.
This is what we have to put up with. The colleges mentioned in the video are the extreme cases of course but this is the management’s approach in most engineering colleges. Now who’s at fault? It’s the bloody parents who support their ridiculous rules. Now how can students revolt when their own parents won’t support them?
Also, why does the news article claim that this happens only in deemed universities. What about the hundreds of colleges under Anna University that have banned cell phones on campus simply because of some misguided fellow?
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Jeppiar gives an interview saying that it is according to Tamil culture! What bull shit.
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:28 pm
True. A very sad state of affairs. It’s just sad because, if you are going to force people not to talk to the opposite sex, then it’s very hard to get along in the work place…etc.
Plus, I don’t see what could possibly go wrong in the college campus. I remember this guy from IBM who had come had also been stunned that guys were seated separately and gals separately.
I think, if a person cannot take/watch two people from the opposite sex talking or sharing a joke, ( as long as things stay decent
) then it speaks lowly about that person.
Only low life people who cannot deal with real life issues do stuff like this. Or people who have marital issues I guess
February 23rd, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Forget parents. (I know few of the parents do have issues and especially more so if its a female child)
How can someone (sometimes people like the watchman/principal) tell a 20 something year old Engineering student*, who is going to earn double the salary these clowns are making, in say a few months, what they can and cannot do ?
Think about it. It’s like we are school students. AU is just made up of a bunch retarded people who are mighty pissed in life either because
(a) they can’t get it up
(b) they have marital issues
(c) they have no one to sleep with
(d) all of the above
So they come up with ridiculous rules so that they don’t feel lonely.
*-Technically you join Engg when you are about 18. Even so you are considered old enough to vote. So that means you can take decisions at the national level, but can’t take decisions regarding your own life.
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Nice title. Put your hands in your pockets, look up at the ceiling, and walk along whistling. Thats what I do. Retreat into your own world. Pretend you fly fighter jets.
Earlier I used to read a book, but then they once confiscated a book from me and made me run around a bit, so now its left to imagination.
Actually, things are not that bad in my college, not because we dont have those rules, but no ones interested in actually implementing these rules.
February 23rd, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Guys guys, please, calm down. You are our future, you know, you do all the work that the rest of us profit from. We can’t afford you being distracted, we need some single-mindedness, some focus on money. Can we have more of that please?
February 24th, 2008 at 12:02 am
[...] Actually, Mr. Jeppiar is an excellent businessman. He obviously cashed in on the fear that grips parents that their daughters are no longer safe in their own houses. This probably should be made the university’s motto. ‘A safe haven for your daughters’ and/or ‘No girl can seduce your son’. Heck, Times Now report just made the institution popular across states, especially across North India. Want to read more on this? Here. [...]
February 24th, 2008 at 12:24 am
[...] I found an interesting thing: Marc will be happy to know that there are worse places than where he goes. Well, no, he won’t be, [...]
February 24th, 2008 at 4:50 am
Right George.
February 24th, 2008 at 9:34 am
@George,
We could use help form equally focussed mathematicians.
February 24th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Of course, us Science and Humanities students are assisting as we speak. Thought and Imagination are our tools, and all of mankind’s creation is but a drop in the ocean of our inventiveness. We just need you to maintain everything we make. So hop to it.
February 24th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Adithya, that is what Jeppiar thinks Tamil culture is and I agree with him. That is how bad it is now.
Karthik, it really is pathetic. Brainwashing children into believing that their teachers automatically deserve respect without doing any work is a major factor.
Sundar, atleast you noticed the title. I think it is brilliant. Anyway, that’s what I do most of the time. Go into my own world. Computer games help me do that at home.
George, you people will have to come up with those complicated algorithms that we’ll simply use and get paid more for it.
February 24th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Blowing our own trumpet a little aren’t we here, eh Marc?
February 24th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Marc, yes, but we’ll enjoy our part.
February 25th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Sundar, I only speak the truth.
George, you’ll be happy and poor. We’ll be miserable and rich.
February 25th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Being happy and poor is far more better than being miserable and rich! Whats the use in being rich if you are not happy???
February 25th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
Precisely! Just my reaction when I saw that.
February 25th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Vinodm you are the guy that’s going to do an MBA
February 25th, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Vinod and George, I didn’t say being miserable and rich was good.
Vinod, you are a panakkaran. Why are you talking about this?
February 28th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
As i said earlier screw the culture. I’ll blame only the parents ( some ) who think it will make things better by implementing rules like this but the fact is that it’s going to make things much more worse.
February 29th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Indeed.
February 29th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Hello
A college student who had helped me finish the story had sent me some links where the story was being discussed.. i read thru some of them but decided to reply to a query someone has made here.. (not to me though!!!) as to why the story mentioned only deemed universities.. first- i did not want to generalise… that wud makes things worse… second- deemed universities are like mafia run sicily! they need to be targeted!
March 1st, 2008 at 11:04 am
@Dhanya,
A friend of mine was suspended from college for having commented on one of the blogs and its not a deemed university either. I cannot divulge the details of the college, but it’s owned by the same people who run two other colleges on the same road. (maybe one more)
March 1st, 2008 at 3:15 pm
dhanya, you think other colleges are run any better? There are cases of people being beaten up, expelled, suspended, forced to do manual labour, humiliated and mentally abused. Do you know that the U.S. is planning to close down Guantanamo Bay and send suspected terrorists here to engineering colleges?
March 1st, 2008 at 11:34 pm
hmmm… well, i agree with you. But then if there is so much problem, how come students are not rebelling? I studied in Kerala, where politics is an integral part of our campus… now when i look back, i feel that it was good to have politics ingrained… it gave us a better sense of freedom and the spirit to fight.. and these are not just nice phrases… but reality.. sometimes the strikes and boycotts would get out if hand, but at least we had an organised system by which we could retaliate… sometimes i wonder why students even put up with this. As far as doing the story about deemed universities was concerned, it was also intentional… as i thought it was necessary to break a myth… that people who run deemed universities are like GOds… they can make or break… even the media is discouraged from doing stories about them as they are “dangerous”… and these guys have no rules binding them.. no accountability..
March 2nd, 2008 at 3:54 pm
dhanya, if there is any sign of rebellion students are expelled or suspended. Otherwise they will reduce internal marks or sabotage our answer sheets in the exams. Since our parents think whatever the college does is right they will not stand by us. They expect us to take any sort of abuse just to finish the course.
There are no unions in engineering colleges. Even student groups of any kind are rare. There is an unnatural emphasis on ’studying’. There are no strikes, no boycotts… nothing.
I would like to emphasise that affiliated colleges are also run in similar ways. They are out of control and do what they please, placating Anna University with hefty fines. Don’t even get me started on capitation fees.
March 2nd, 2008 at 5:42 pm
@Marc,
Manual Labour ? In our college ?
@Dhanya,
Oh, so you are the reporter from Times Now.
Pleased that you did the story. We guys actually think of the media as our last chance when we are in a spot. Something as small as commenting on an issue on an Orkut community leads to Expulsions and threats in colleges. It’s a sad state of affairs. We have everything to lose. I am in my final year and I have landed a job. Now why would I want to go on strike, knowing perfectly well that they might disallow me from writing the exams and thereby jeopardising my Career ? (They have this pretext of lack of attendance going for them.)
We had liberal rules till I was in the 3rd year. (Not all that liberal, but atleast no threats and all that nonsense.) Then we had a strike for some reason. People who participated in the strike were expelled from college. Thier parents were called to college and treated like shit and abused.
You have just touched the tip of the iceberg. And if you notice, most of the Engg colleges down south are owned and/or backed by politicians. Whoa, last thing you want to do is take on them. My advice to people in such colleges – Boycott the college once you pass out. Don’t ever join the Alumni or come back to college.
March 2nd, 2008 at 10:00 pm
@Marc, please dude don’t remind of strikes in our college once our dept had. Remember i was the only one left out with nobody to support me. I can never forget that, thankfully i escaped coz my parents weren’t called & treated like shit as Karthik had said.
@Karthik, who the hell are going to join the Alumin? If they, then they must be Insane man.
March 3rd, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Dhanya is that reporter? (Right, it’s in the article.) Nice. Thanks for calling attention to ‘education’ in Tamil Nadu. How did you find my blog, by the way?
Alumni. Ha! Ridiculous. I don’t want to have anything to do with my ‘college’ after I’m done. I even try to avoid travelling past it, preferring to take the ECR instead.
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Ha ha, Marc, nice try, but in context the alternative was being miserable and rich. In any case, if you were happy, that’s enough. I wouldn’t mind being happy. I’d like it very much.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Well, this article has helped me understand and prove one thing.
Getting into any of the colleges which that Jeppiar guy owns will only get me into Jail.
Its about time they re-named these so-called engineering kalajes to “schools”..
May 14th, 2008 at 7:46 pm
That would be an insult to schools everywhere.