A miscalculated risk!!!. Review on Anna University

Anna University, one of the oldest technical universities in India and certainly not the worst has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons. The governing body of the University has successfully gained the wrath of the students of all affiliated engineering colleges for its tyrannical enforcement of a new dress code (to girl students!) preceded by another regressive move banning mobile phones in college campuses. Vice-Chancellor D. Viswanathan's September 1 edict “No wearing jeans or T-shirts/sleeveless/tight-fitting/revealing outfits and only salwar kameezes for women — in 231 engineering colleges across the State” has yet again underscored the need for a revolt against educational authorities regulating student life inside campus. The reasons given by these conservative bodies are as illogical as “ensuring that students dress decently and modestly, in a way that befits our culture”. This “moral policing” can be termed as nothing but a step backward to unrealistic vision of a society, which is invariably dependent on factors that are nowhere near the imaginative control of these VCs and Chairmen. At the end of the day, they will never achieve what they intend to achieve. They would rather end up attaining the ire of the students or even backtracking these measures like some of its North Indian counterparts.

Having been studied in one of “these kind” of colleges in Chennai, I have understood how unrealistic and nitwitted are these so-called “visionaries” in their perspective of the youth and their significance to nation’s future. With the limited power they have, they try to do whatever they can to ultimately gain the tag of the “discipline” which sells like anything among the conservative parents of this part of the country. One of the commonest of these unjust regulations is enforced gender diversification. In simple terms, female students are not allowed to interact with male students boys and are supposed to maintain a strict distance. Lets look at the basic premise on which such an argument is built. According to these authorities, it is to sustain our society’s moral values and discipline. But if one were to look at the degree of change such an assertion brought in, one would discover that it has reached nowhere near, and has instead gone to a different region. These self projected “guardians of the society” never realizes that they will get conked out one day with none of their “proclaimed” objectives being achieved.

I am not at all manifesting a doctrine for embracing the western invasions in our culture here. For us to understand the logic of not accepting such draconian rules lets get real. Our society is definitely not in the hands of these men who run colleges and universities. Their role may be a little more than that of a street hawker or a janitor.

Many of us disregard the fact that the world inhibited by humans has suffered the death of permanence. Change is not only have become uncontrollable but its marginal propensity to affect all our lives have touched an all time high. Our societies are becoming more transient imputable to a force that none of us can control. What does this mean to us? This means that we cannot control most of the developments in our social fabric. The reason behind a nineteen year old girl in uptown Madras is more assertive, freedom-seeking, self reliant, extrovert, party-going and incredibly matured in her mindset towards her career is not because she or her parents has ascribed a wrong set of values to her but because of the change her physical environment is undergoing. And to think that by slapping rules and regulations, one can make her “culturally disciplined” is absolutely absurd. A typical human inclination to such stimuli is to find other ways to do things or break away. If we connect this analogy to our topic, one would find the discord in the fundamental thinking of these engineering college founders and university authorities. A typical engineering student might keep quite and still break such rules silently or sentence her/himself till their course duration is over. And it is now obvious that we are getting to a region where we never wanted to be. Lets face it. These bloopers of the authorities are nothing but the outcomes of the conservative thinking and old-fashioned conceptions about the society. For someone who understands the realities, these devil’s advocates will look like clowns trying hard to draw rein a society that is long dead and gone.

I would fantasise of recommending Alvin Toffler’s Power Shift and Future Shock to these authorities. People who are supposedly more equipped and formally empowered to do good to the society should not do blunders like this. Banning mobile phone or gender-based restrictions or unreasonable dress code are not going to bring the change they intend or proclaim to intend. Anna University would make more sense reviewing the dress code simply because it doesn’t reflect our vision of freedom. If they approve the right of an eighteen year to elect a leader for this country, they might as well validate her / her right to wear their attire. Rather than attracting cheers, already the reputed University has invited enough qualms from its students. One cannot help advising the university to be more sensible and careful from now on to not repeat such blunders.