Bad News Again- Death of Another Worker at IITK

From people on the IITK Campus-

Another death in the campus – the FIFTH such occurrence (not including
20-year old Tinku who fell down from the under – construction Core Lab
building, broke his back, and the last we know he had become a
quadriplegic) in the last two years. The Institute authorities have not
issued a formal communiqué yet. But the sketchy details which we have got
from two official sources, the IWD and the Security Office, are as
follows:

The death occurred on 26th July, 2009 (Sunday) between 9-10 pm in the
night. The person, one Mr. Shafiq Ahmad, fell down from the
under-construction IME (inside academic area, in front of Aero) building.
Apparently he was not working on the site and had come prospecting for
work on that day itself and was told to start work from the next day. He
was asked to stay on the site itself and while he was going to sleep on
the roof he fell down. He was found by the SIS guard on duty and was taken
to the health centre (HC). He was declared dead and yet was referred to
Hallett hospital, where he was declared brought dead. The body was then
handed over for post mortem and a police FIR was also lodged. And on
Monday it was arranged for the body to be sent back to his native place.
He hailed from a village in Bihar.

Several issues of concern emerge from this official version. They are:

• What was a person not employed in the Institute in any capacity
doing in
the campus on a site under construction?
According to point 12 of the Office Order issued by the Director on the
16th September, 2007: No worker, or the family members, shall be allowed
to stay on the campus without proper authorization. Contractors shall
declare the names of such workers (and their family members, if any) who
wishes to stay back at the work site on the request, and personal risk and
liability of the contractor(s) shall have to obtain prior permission from
the Institute through the administrative in-charge of the
project/contract.

• The second issue which emerges immediately from this official
version is
the completely arbitrary hiring (and firing) policy followed in the
Institute by the contractors. There seems to be no procedure in place in
spite of the detailed office order (referred above) on this issue. Any
person, even a migrant labour, can walk into a site and seek employment
and may be allowed to stay overnight on the site. It follows that the
person can be fired too without any procedure, completely compromising all
norms of the legal hiring and firing procedures.

• The third issue which emerges from the account is that of safety.
There
have been several deaths in the campus at work site due to lack of basic
safety procedures and equipments and still work continues in all spheres
without any concern for safety. We have seen that on all the construction
sites in the campus at present (the IME building, Hall X, the construction
in front of the swimming pool), work going on till late in the night, at
least till 8 pm. The workers including women and underage children work
without any helmets, gloves, or any other equipment, often at dangerous
heights. This death may have occurred after work hours, but the practices
indicate that accidents, including fatal accidents, are merely waiting to
happen. After 16 Sep. office order, safety committee gave a detailed 50
page report in December 2007, but the administration seems to have not
even read it, let alone implementing it.

We have some information from various unofficial, unconfirmed sources -
SIS guards, workers at the site and health centre, other individuals who
knew the worker personally, – the key thing which seems to be emerging is
that most likely Shafiq has been working in the Institute for some time
and had only taken a break for a few days for some reason, and had again
joined (or was going to join the next day) back work. There seem to have
been serious lapses elsewhere too, including at the health centre. But the
primary issue is how many more deaths will it take for the community to
take notice? Or would another well worded office order on paper suffice on
the eve of the grand Golden Jubilee celebrations?

What should we do?

A lot needs to be done, but to start with, shall we send a signed letter
to the community condemning this incident, and seek for a response to the
issues raised from the Institute?

TOI and Indian Express the Snake Bite Case

Once again I came to know via Abi's blog that TOI and Indian Express have covered the snakebite case at IITK. Many had asked me the name of the doctor, according to TOI it was Meera Kumar. From the TOI article-

Rahul was son of Sudhir from Malda in West Bengal who was working as labourer under a contractor at Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur (IIT-K). At about 4.45 am on Sunday, Rahul had suffered the snakebite at his hutment near construction site of the environment engineering building.
His relatives rushed him to the IIT-K health centre. But the doctor-on-duty Meera Batra (as per the official duty register) allegedly refused to attend him, as he was an outsider and not entitled to medical facilities. The boy was finally rushed to the LLR Hospital only to be declared brought-dead.

A group of students is so incensed at the incident that they first held a condolence meeting and later took out a march to the health centre seeking an explanation from chief medical Officer (CMO) Dr Nirmal Kumar.

The students circulated a mail among the IIT-K fraternity highlighting the gross negligence on the part of the doctor and subsequent death of the boy.

I liked to that email here in an earlier post.

Online Petition for the Deaths at IITK

Association for India's Development is running an online petition to get compensation for the family of the people who died recently at IITK. Please sign it.

We are shocked to hear about the death of a laborer's child in Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur and the apathy of the administration towards this incident. The Institute's Health Center refused to admit the child on August 25, 2007 when he was bitten by a snake/scorpion, and knocked at its door, battling for his life. Within a week there was another death on campus -- Mr Udayvir Yadav, a worker who was not provided proper electricity connection to equipment he was using, was killed by electrocution on August 30. These two incidents suggest poor and exploitative working conditions within the IIT campus at Kanpur, India.

These are avoidable deaths that have occurred on grounds of an Institute that claims excellence in technology internationally. We expect that good technical institutions would provide technically safe and efficient working conditions in their campuses, as required by human rights legislature, born out of equal respect for the lives of the elite and labouring classes. These events expose a completely opposite picture.

Update- The Recent Deaths at IITK

Another email from the campus
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Dear members of IITK community,

The Institute has formed a committee to enquire into the incident that took place at the Health Centre in the early hours of August 25, 2007 in its totality . Shameful as that incident is we think a much more basic issue relating to the rights and welfare of an estimated 2000+ contract
workers on campus has been /completely/ missed out and is the root cause for such incidents. A few weeks earlier some contract workers told us that another death had happened in the same vicinity at a construction site and the person s body had been whisked away. No information was
available on the cause of the death. One of us wrote an email to the Director requesting that this be investigated. Since no body was available and no records are maintained there was no way to establish the death and to determine whether it was due to natural causes, an accident or was work related. No response has been received to this request. In fact, the Institute has been turning a blind eye to problems faced by contract workers on campus even when an Institute appointed committee (the Minimum Wage Monitoring Committee and its volunteers) has
repeatedly brought this to its notice. The Institute, as the principal employer, is both liable and responsible for implementing the provisions of the Minimum Wage, Contract Labour and other applicable acts.

Thus the primary problem is not just negligence by one or more individuals. The core issue is the Institute s policy of all pervasive neglect of a group of people, which in turn sends signals to others who are expected to implement it. In meeting after meeting we have come across a mindset that believes that worker exploitation is an inevitable artifact of the Indian landscape and that the Institute cannot and is not meant to solve societal and livelihood problems, even those for which it has legal and moral responsibility. Service after service has been contracted out over the years and the number of contract workers and their dependants on campus have continued to swell. There is thus a large body of people on campus who are invisible and the Institute pretends that they are none of its business. Obviously, under these circumstances unfortunate incidents like the one above are bound to occur.

At present the Institute has 2000+ contract workers working in pathetic conditions. They are the backbone of support services like student messing, cleaning, horticulture, civil, electrical and other maintenance, security and several other services. A large chunk are construction workers (this boy was the son of one such worker). Many such workers are migrant workers from far off places who are brought, often with their families, for 50 day cycles and work 12 hour days in
close to bonded labour conditions. In student messes workers are abused, beaten and intimidated. Most work 12-16 hours per day and a significant fraction of the wage that is ostensibly paid is forcibly taken back later. Yet the same contractors continue to get contracts. All this has been reported to the administration countless times verbally, in writing and through formal reports.

We believe a few simple measures can make a big difference and have repeatedly suggested that there should be minimum records the list of workers, their employment cards, bank accounts, due process before firing a person. But there is enormous resistance to implementing these
minimum legal requirements.

We must acknowledge that this is a manifestation of a systemic problem and not an isolated incident. We must use this opportunity to overhaul our system and examine some of the basic premises on which this whole Institute is being run. Otherwise, we would be complicit in the colossal injustice being done to the weakest and poorest sections of the community that is the service base of the Institute. If we believe that IITK belongs to all of us then we as a community must start taking responsibility. Clearly the administration by itself is either incapable or unwilling to deal with the situation. Let us engage in a public discussion where the entire community participates and comes up with viable ways to bring sanity and humanity back to the campus.

More Deaths at IITK?

I got this mail from the campus, is there any end to this?
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Dear Friends,

Even as we are still reeling from the death of a child because of lack of a health-care policy in our Institute we are faced with the death of another contract worker in the campus. Mr Udayvir Yadav was electrocuted and died on 30th of August while working at the construction site of the
Hall IX building. Like the earlier incident, we came to know of this quite by chance, when the elder brother of the deceased, Mr Ramjit Yadav, who is an SIS guard posted in the campus, was directed to talk to the Minimun Wages Monitoring Volunteer group.

This time too the authorities have chosen not to report the incident anywhere - not to the community, not to the police, nor any other official forum. The incident raises several serious issues regarding the contracting practices of the Institute and the working conditions of the contract workers, but before that a brief description of what happened. Mr Udayvir Yadav, was polishing stone in Hall IX when the machine he was working with became live giving him a massive electric shock due to which he died. Udayvir was 24 years old and is survived by his wife and two children aged 6 months and 3 years. The death probably occurred because of the crude and extremely unsafe method used to draw electricity - without any safety tripping device. The Institute does not insist on or monitor the safety practices that must be followed for construction and other maintenance work on campus.

What is even more shocking is what happened after this fatal accident. The construction of Hall IX has been contracted to a contractor named M/s Raitani who in turn has sub-contracted the entire work to several petty contractors. The immediate response of the employees of M/s
Raitani was to hush up the entire incident. They took the body to a nearby nursing home where he was declared brought dead. After that the contractor's men tried to persuade the co-workers to take the body away immediately to the native village of the deceased in Banda. They even
advised them to not mention that death had occurred due to electrocution but instead asked them to say that he had died of a heart attack. When the co-workers tried to get the body back to the work site they were prevented from doing so by the SIS guards at the gate, on orders from their higher ups. Subsequently, when the workers went to the police station to file an FIR they found the contractor's men had preceded them there. There is also fear that the contractor's men were trying to influence the post mortem report as they were reported to be present in the hospital both before and much after the body was handed over to the hospital for the autopsy. The family has been contacted multiple times by the contractor's men to work out some kind of a settlement - they do not want the family to make any complaints and would want them to settle the whole matter by taking some money. The family and the co-workers fear that the whole incident may be passed of as merely a case of 'heart failure'. They are also worried that proper compensation will not be given and Mr. Yadav s young wife and two children will be left witout adequate support.

In this whole episode the complete silence of the Institute to own up its responsibilities and actively attempt to address the whole issue may end up in letting the contractor get away scot free. When a person dies at work at an institute construction site should not the institute take
up responsibility and ensure that proper procedures are followed? We have conducted an enquiry into the matter and the report is being submitted by the MWMC Chairperson to the Institute. We have made the following recommendations:

- A proper Institute level enquiry into the whole incident.
- Implementation of safe work practices in the campus.
- A group insurance policy to cover all work related mishaps in the campus.
- Emergency first aid and medical support availability close to the work
place.
- All contractual workers to be given employment cards so that Institute
knows at all times who is working on contract for the Institute.
- Immediate compensation (as per law) to the family of Mr Udayvir Yadav

Two deaths in two weeks (possibly three we have been unable to verify the third one since the body was immediately removed), two lives unnecessarily lost, how many more deaths do we need before waking up to our responsibilities? In the midst of the deluge of national and international interest in what is happening in our 'Institute of Excellence' is it not time for us to put our house in order?

A Tragic Death at IIT Kanpur

I got to know about this incident via Abi at Nanopolitan.

And people with whom I place trust with commented that the child incident is true. What is wrong with us?
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This is to share an incident which reflects the state of affairs for the disenfranchised in our Institute of excellence. I suspect this incident could not be reported by anybody in authority in the Institute and hence would not reach most of us. In this case too we got to know of it just by chance, as would be evident from the account, which makes us believe that occurrence of such incidents may not be a rarity after all, but that is just not shared with the community. A similar incident happened a month ago and the sequence of events are much similar. This account is to inform the community of this incident, acknowledge a feeling of collective shame that this
could occur in an Institute which claims to be the best, and hopefully to evoke some collective action to prevent such occurrences in future. I am sure of the facts, as I got to know of it from a first person account and yet would not name anybody to avoid unnecessary personal vilification. This is the system and not the individuals involved.

On Sunday morning at about 4.15 am one of the canteen owners of one of the Halls was going back after work when he chanced upon a crowd of migrant workers at the security crossing near the Motor Transport/Air-Strip road. Apparently a boy, whose family had been employed in the construction site of the Environment Engineering building had been bitten by something poisonous (they were not sure whether it was a scorpion or a snake), in his sleep. The workers
including the family consisting of the father a brother and a younger sister (his mother is no longer alive) had come to the SIS (institute security service) for help. The boy who was around 12-13 seemed to have been bitten around 3 in the morning and was alive though unconscious. The SIS guards (there were around 20-25 of them there) kept urging the workers to take the boy to the city hospital but refused to extend any help. The group of migrant workers did not know anything about the city, and this is usual because they are brought from far of places like Malda and Chhattisgarh by the contractor and are herded back at the end of their term. The canteen owner requested the SIS to lend their jeep for transporting the boy to the Health Center. The SIS guards refused to ask for their jeep (though several of them had their walkie talkie) and instead told this man that the boy would not be treated in the institute Health Center and hence has to be taken to the city. At this point the Canteen Owner decided to take the boy in his motorcycle, along with another worker to hold the inert form, to the Health Center.

At the Health Center, the person at the desk refused to entertain the case, when he came to know that the boy was not related to an Institute employee and was neither a student. The canteen owner tried to impress upon the person that the case was very serious and the boy may just survive if only the hospital intervened and the formalities and the expenses could be handled later. He also volunteered to get the health card of his father who is an Institute employee, as treating guests is routinely done in the HC. The attendant at the desk refused to comply but conceded to give the phone number of the doctor on duty. He told the canteen owner that he may call up the doctor to check if she would treat the boy, but not to mention that he was calling from the HC, but tell her that he was calling from one of the hostels.

The canteen owner called the doctor, who when she realized that it involved the child of worker, was extremely annoyed and said that this facility was not available to them. When the canteen owner pleaded that the case was serious and may turn fatal she apparently shouted 'which language do you understand?' and slammed the phone down. After that the canteen owner decided to take the child to the city and requested the hospital attendant to provide the services of the ambulance so that he could be taken as soon as possible and anyway it is extremely difficult to negotiate the GT road with an unconscious person. But he was refused even that. The boy was still alive till
that point.

The rest of the story in short - the canteen owner took the boy to a nearby nursing home in Kalyanpur (about 2 kilometers from the institute) but that setup was not equipped to handle snake bites. Then he drove with the unconscious boy all the way to the Hallett (medical
college) - the doctor on duty was much more prompt and immediately attended to the boy, but unfortunately he had already died. Then this canteen owner drove all the way back to the campus with a dead child in the pillion. As he ended his account 'bilkul kuch achcha nahin lag raha hai tab se - health centre hote hue ek chote se bachche ko marne de sakten hain - kyun ki woh ek mazdoor ka bachcha hai sirf isiliye?'

Students have investigated the reported event and their representatives are in possession of the names of all the people who are involved in this incident. The students arranged a condolence meeting yesterday evening and marched to the Health Center to demand an explanation from the Chief Medical Officer. After a long standoff and hours of deliberations with the authorities the CMO met the students but failed to answer many of the questions students had about the issue. Students are presently planning to get the whole campus community involved in the protest. What saddens the entire student community and me is the reluctance of the institute administration letting the entire campus community know and the tax-payers know about the incident. The reasons they give are beyond any sane argument. Witnessing a few incidents during my stay at IIT Kanpur has led me into thinking that this time too, the incident and related issues shall be buried to bask into what I feel is vacuous feeling of glory.

Mess Food Saga

There is something about mess food that makes it beyond comparison to anything else of the edible variety I know. After five years of living in a hostel for my undergraduate and master’s degree, I thought I had undergone every kind of torture possible. But then I arrived at IIT Kanpur GH (girl’s hostel). Here the mess food was in a different league altogether.

I don’t know how they managed it but the roti (flat bread) would always be kaccha (uncooked) at the end and burnt in the middle. There would be a layer of oil, two inches thick, floating on top of the yellow dal (curry) that looked almost black. The rice would be half cooked and every damn vegetable would have aloo (potatoes) in it. The only salvation was curd, and omelet or butter that were ‘extras.’ How many times I managed with curd rice (no, I am not a South Indian, and curd rice is not my religion, unlike H) or omelet and roti. When all else failed, I would eat Maggi noodles in the Hall 3 canteen along with my friends. Later it almost became my staple diet.

One afternoon after finding the food quite unbearable I requested our cook, Rji to make an omelet for me. I almost always managed to get hot rotis courtesy R1ji, a member of the serving staff. You see, talking politely to mess people (or for that matter anyone) pays dividends in unexpected places. So to make my meal complete all I needed was that double omelet.

I did not have to wait long, within a few minutes the object of my desire arrived. I took a first small bite from one corner and it was bliss. I was about to take a second and bigger bite but my attention was caught by an unusually long piece of onion. I hesitated, and for a while I thought it was not an onion but something else altogether. But then my mind balked at such a possibility. I tried to dismiss the nagging doubt about the onion. I willed myself to take a second bite. By then, the doubt took further hold of my mind and I braced myself to take a closer look at the object of my attention. On second inspection, I identified it correctly and I of all people, was rendered speechless. I just walked to the food counter, called Rji and told him there was a baby chipkali (lizard) in my omelet in a very quiet voice and walked off.

I need not add that this incident put me off food for many, many days. Poor Rji came running after me and apologized profusely. He pleaded with me to come back and take food. I had to convince him that I was not angry with him but I just had no appetite left. I do not know how I did not ended up with food poisoning. And after this entire episode one person told me, “It is better to have a full lizard in an omelet you nibbled at, rather than having only half of it there.” Yuck, yuck, yuck is all I can say.

The First Few Days

The predominant feeling after getting into IITK Ph.D. was of relief. I was finally out of the unemployment trap. The scholarship was small, but it felt like kings ransom at that point of time and it was a great feeling that I would not be taking money from my parents anymore.

I think for one year at least I remained in awe of that place, frequently I would think, “Wow, this is IIT Kanpur!” It is another matter that the feeling later changed to, “Oh God Is this all to IIT Kanpur? But after working at other “academic” institutions, once again I feel, well, there is a lot to the IIT system.

Two things you learn very fast at this place. One is the presence of the swear words, feels better if I say gali, in Hindi and of the worst kind that keep flying in the normal conversations among guys, and I feel part of it to show off or shock if a girl is passing by.

Two, there are very few girls on the campus (must be changing slowly?) and you constantly have a feeling of being watched, and you have to learn to live with it. I later developed a philosophy that even if I do nothing, people will discuss my behavior, so why not go ahead and do whatever I please?

Three, that post graduate students are the lesser mortals and the under graduate students Einstein.

Day 1: IIT Kanpur

I still remember my first day at IIT Kanpur so clearly. It was a cold Christmas day in XXXX when I landed up there. Many people find the city of Kanpur unbearable but I come from a place that is even smaller and lacking in ‘happening’ things.

I had left my hometown after school, only to land up in a women’s institute where social life resembled more to a jail or a lunatic asylum rather than a college. The next five years were unimaginable, even though they did a damn decent job of educating me. I still remember the graffiti on the desk in one of my classrooms: ‘Anywhere in the world it is great to be young except XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX.’ But I will talk about it some other day.

Coming back to my first day at IIT Kanpur, I ended up at the girl’s hostel (what is called old GH now) and being a P.G., I was promptly allocated a single room. Having spent the past five years in a hostel, staring at a bare room with blank walls was nothing new to me. After a few hours of careless work, the room had acquired a touch of my individuality (read untidy and scattered).

I went to the mess for dinner later that day and found the food sad and pathetic, in other words the usual hostel fare. I think I did not do anything too important afterwards. At 10.00 pm I decided it was time for bed. The rooms in the ‘old’ GH have huge windows and on my first day I had no curtains to put on them.

And that was the beginning of my difficulties. I wanted to put on the lights and read for a while before going to sleep. I also wanted to change into more comfortable clothes. You my dear reader will say, so what was stopping you? You should just go ahead.

But my answer to you is, you may not know something that I did. Even before coming to IITK, courtesy my cousin, a Hall 3, boys hostel resident, I knew that guys could visit any room in the girls hostel from 6 in the morning to 12 at midnight and vice versa. Yes you read it right. In middle of Kanhepur, there exists this little utopia where there are no resident wardens for boys or girls hostel and both the genders can freely enter the rooms of each-other.

From my curtain-less room, the hostel at 10.00 in the night resembled a railway platform more than a girl’s hostel! I had not foreseen this scenario while building my plan for reading and changing into comfy clothes. Imagine no curtains on huge windows of my room, guys moving freely in the corridors and me slopped on my bed. Even though I would be wrapped in the razai (quilt), I still did not like the scene.

Finally, I read the book sitting on a chair and switched off the light before going to sleep and with the noise of feet, guys and gals in the air, I finally fell asleep with the railway platform feeling quite intact.