The Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (IIT-Kgp), West Bengal, designated an Institution of National Importance (INI) by Parliament, is crawling back to normalcy after the tragedy of March 22, when third year student Rohit Kumar (24) died on campus or en route to a hospital in Kolkata, allegedly due to negligence of doctors at the campus hospital. Following Kumar’s death after a neglected headache and fall, after which he lay unattended in the institute’s B.C. Roy Technology Hospital for three hours, there was unprecedented violence on the normally peaceful precincts of the IIT-Kgp campus. Now classes are being held according to schedule, hostels and dining halls are open, and even the much-maligned B.C. Roy Technology Hospital is back in business. Yet there is discernible tension in the offices of IIT-Kgp’s top management.
That’s because the official status of director Prof. Damodar Acharya, who was forced to resign on March 22 when a horde of angry students barged into his residential bungalow and ransacked it, is still uncertain. Although his resignation has reportedly been converted to “long leave” until May 31, it’s uncertain whether he will be welcomed back by IIT-Kgp’s 7,000 strong student community to resume charge of the institute. More so because the retired Supreme Court judge who will probe the alleged negligence of March 21-22 which resulted in Kumar’s death and Acharya’s forced resignation, has not yet been named.
Consequently there’s a leadership crisis at IIT-Kgp. Formally, the institute’s deputy director Prof. Madhusudhan Chakraborty, is officiating as director, but his hands are full as he is the director designate of the soon-to-be-inaugurated IIT-Bhubaneswar (Orissa). Fortuit-ously the inauguration has been postponed because Election Commission rules prohibit such ceremonies during the run-up to a general election. But even so, Chakraborty is mostly away on work at Bhubaneswar, leaving a leadership vacuum at IIT-Kgp. Moreover Chakraborty is pre-scheduled to go overseas on an academic fellowship from May 1.
Meanwhile the institute’s manage-ment is desperate to improve the medical infrastructure to prevent repetition of the March 22 tragedy and has sounded the Indian Air Force (IAF), which has a base at Kalaikunda, a 30-minute drive from Kharagpur. An airlift proposal apart, the IIT-Kgp management has initiated discussions with AMRI, a well-known medical services company based in Kolkata, which owns and runs two premier hospitals in the city, to persuade it to establish a modern hospital at Kharagpur. But that’s a long-term project.
Fortunately for students and faculty of the beleaguered institute, B. Muthuraman, managing director of Tata Steel — India’s largest private sector steel manufacturing company which is consistently ranked among the country’s most respected corporates — and incumbent chairman of the IIT-Kgp senate, has stepped up to the plate. First, he has started looking for a retired Supreme Court judge for inquiry into Kumar’s death. Second, he has started to drastically overhaul and reform the B.C. Roy Technology Hospital — currently equipped with only seven beds for the township’s 9,200 residents — at a cost of Rs.4 crore. Third, he is reportedly looking for a replacement for Acharya, just in case.
Therefore while ex facie IIT-Kgp seems on the mend, its reputation has suffered a severe blow, particularly since Rohit Kumar was not the first victim of alleged institutional negligence. Accor-ding to a students’ spokesperson, two other students died on campus in the past 12 months in suspicious circum-stances (see EW April 2009 p. 16).
Quite clearly Muthuraman and the institute’s senate will have to solve a bundle of problems to save this vintage (estb. 1951) institute’s once pristine reputation.
Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)