Media makes a meal out of IIT food poisoning case

BY Jyoti| IN Opinion | 08/10/2011

When food poisoning hit IIT Mumbai, city newspapers turned the glare of their spotlight on the incident for a whole week. The coverage of this incident best illustrates the relationship between most of the media and the IITs.

Why have we made these institutes into holy cows, wonders JYOTI PUNWANI

here’s looking at us

Jyoti Punwani

The IIT-Bombay food poisoning story that made front page news last week, turned into a saga that ran for an entire week in all Mumbai newspapers, and was even reported in the Wall Street Journal. The first report did deserve the front page – 500 students down with food poisoning in one institute was indeed shocking. Of these 13 had to be hospitalised. However, once it was clear that the students were out of danger, did the incident need daily coverage for the next six days?

A follow up was certainly necessary, considering that one of the top institutions in the country was involved. Alas, despite such continuous reporting, readers were left with little more information than that given on Day One – that a Chinese meal served over the weekend had been the culprit. The official note issued by the IIT six days later maintained that the food was the cause as the water had been found to be 100 % potable. It also said that the contractor had been blacklisted and fresh tenders sent out.

All newspapers dutifully carried the note, but none went beyond it to find out why this incident had taken place. It was reported that the general secretary of one of the hostels had resigned, claiming he couldn’t get action taken against the caterer. He had demanded stern action and a heavy fine, and compensation to affected students – decisions reportedly endorsed by the students and the hostel wardens.

Another report said that most students had stopped eating at the mess, though they continued to pay the mess fees of Rs 70 a day. Having got so much information, would it have been too difficult to talk to students in the concerned hostels and find out their experience of the mess? And to do an in-depth story on the way the messes in all the remaining 11 hostels in IIT Bombay are run?

The coverage of this incident best illustrates the relationship between most of the media and the IITs. The press, with a few exceptions, cannot conceal its awe of these ``premier institutes’’. They get continuous coverage. This year, the IITs featured in the press at least thrice every month, sometimes six times a month, while in January, they made news 15 times! None of these were negative reports.

Some were downright trivial such as the double column report on the way alumni of IIT Bombay were donating funds to improve hostel life. So, readers were told how Hostel 8 needed a Laundromat and how the proposal for a treadmill by Hostel 4 had been turned down.

Another report told us that rules for change of branch had beenrelaxed, while yet another informed us of the dismay with which students in IIT Bombay reacted when their 24-hour internet access was suddenly cut off. As a rule, students cannot surf the net after midnight, but this rule is relaxed during the vacations. This year the authorities had forgotten to revert to the normal timings after the new academic year had started.

Do we really need to know all this, given that newspaper space is so scarce? The IITs together cater to 10,000 students. Of course, these are supposed to be the best and the brightest. Assuming that they are, do we need to know such details about their lives?

A far stronger argument for such coverage is that we subsidize 80 % of these students’ expensive education. But then, the focus of the coverage needs to be on how these funds are used. Are labs really state of the art? Do students get the best atmosphere to develop a scientific temper? Narayan Murthy's sweeeping condemnation of 80 % of IIT students deservedly made news.

In 2009, eight students across the iITs committed suicide, and one attempted to kill himself. Six of the suicides were at just one institute, IIT Kharagpur. In 2010, the number of suicides were five, divided between Madras and Kanpur. This year, three students have already committed suicide, two of them at Madras. Last month, IIT Kanpur registered its ninth suicide in the last six years. Three of these were Dalits. The suicide of Dalit student Manish Kumar this February in IIT Roorkee has already become the subject of a documentary.

The press carries the news of these suicides – obviously, these can’t be hushed up. But no in-depth investigation on why these institutes contribute to the untimely deaths of so many bright youngsters has emerged in the last few years. Academic pressure? Regional/caste prejudice? Parental expectations? Every suicide gives some clue, but it’s never followed up. Madhuri Saale was a rural girl from AP. Her mother said she’d been miserable and had wanted to come back, but the former had persuaded her to finish her B Tech. The suicide of Manish Kumar had been preceded by casteist jibes by a few of his classmates, the documentary revealed. The institute authorities had expressed helplessness and advised his father to get him accommodation outside the campus. After his death, they had tried to get the father to accept the suicide quietly.

The documentary makers had got the boy’s family to speak on camera. Why couldn’t the press have done that?. Today, it is mandatory to have counselors even in schools. Don’t the IITs have such counselors? These are questions to which readers would like to have answers.

Questioned about the suicide of M Tech student Nitin Kumar Reddy in May this year, Dean of student Affairs Govardhan M asked the press why they kept reporting negative news about the institute. ``We also have the maximum number of patents but you did not report that. But you would want to report the death of three out of 5,000 students, which is statistically not important. Why don't you go to other engineering institutes and find out how many died there. Why only IIT?" he asked.

How did the press allow such remarks to be forgotten? The HT recently carried a shocking story on how IIT Kharagpur faculty had allowed their children to get admission into the institute's integrated MSc courses even without passing the entrance exam. In fact, between 2003 and 2005, these VIP kids did not even have to sit for the exam! An RTI application had revealed that a 25 % discretionary quota had existed at Kharagpur for years, even before the entrance exam was started. It had been abandoned only in 2006.

(incidentally, the man in charge of JEE 2006 had also used this quota- obviously, he had thought the exam too tough for his own child.) It was evident from the report that not only had no action been taken against these faculty members, but they had even been promoted. One of them is now director of IIT Bhubaneshwar. That itself should have caused a nationwide furore, given the enormous pressure and expense JEE aspirants go through. But no other paper thought of doing a follow-up. Even HT didn’t bother to get a response from the government on this. Contrast this with the media hangama when the `quota’ for OBCs was announced; and the insinuations made about quota’ students while analyzing JEE results every year.

An article early this week by educationist Krishna Kumar, on the pathetic state of government schools in Delhi, made one realize how little coverage such schools get in the mainstream press. But then it’s now a cliché to say that the press has more or less stopped focusing on the problems of the poor, unless someone in power makes some outrageous claim about them, as the Planning Commission recently did when it claimed before the Supreme Court that anyone who spent Rs 32-a-day could not be classified as poor.

So when IIT sneezes, it makes news, for IItians are People Like US. But there are PLU even outside IIT. Mumbai University, once considered among the best in India, is now ranked among the worst. Be it delayed exam results, goof-ups in exam papers, shortage of staff, teachers on contract, Marathi becoming the official language in a University which has a large number of colleges run by linguistic minorities, the lenient marking system in which the maximum number pass even while filling their answer sheets with gibberish, the new credit system – all these deserve separate stories. Hardly any get done, despite all newspapers having full-fledged education correspondents.

Even within the parameters of reporting on PLU, shouldn’t we focus on issues that show up the rot in the system? After all, it’s not just public money at stake, but our country’s future.