Fee Hike Protest – A summary of events

An overwhelming surge in the tuition fee at BITS caused serious concern amongst its students. The recently published notice on fee structure for incoming students on The BITS admissions website listed the semester fee as ₹1,59,000, more than three times the fees in 2010-11. The student community felt that the rise in fees was getting out of hand and there was a need to approach the Administration regarding the same.

The President of the Students’ Union, Bharatharatna Puli, along with other members of the SU, organized a meeting to resolve the issue in Ram bhawan yesterday. The meet was attended by a large number of BITSians across all batches. A consensus was reached to organize a peaceful protest starting on Sunday, the 6th of May at 11 AM in the Auditorium despite the ongoing comprehensive exams. Over the night, memes and posters were generated to ensure BITSians would show up.

Against all odds, students did show up in overwhelming numbers on the stipulated time. Popular opinions estimate that around two thousand students gathered in the Auditorium showing great enthusiasm, carrying hand-drawn posters such as ‘No Fees until Low Fees’ and partook in vociferous sloganeering. The Auditorium was filled past capacity, with a large number of people standing in the corners or sitting on the floor.

Once SU volunteers had ensured that the crowd had settled down, Sidhartha Namburi, an ex-presidential candidate, addressed the gathering, talking about all the efforts that were made in the past to acquire information from the Institute regarding their expenses and income statements. He said that the institute hadn’t given an appropriate response and had avoided disclosing details. Moreover, other such attempts in the past to curb fee hikes had failed miserably due to a lack of student participation.

When the Director finally made an appearance, he refused to address the crowd until all members from media outlets had left, much to the disappointment of the representatives of Aaj Tak, ETV, Dainik Jagran, and Dainik Bhaskar. When he finally came up to the podium, he spoke about the lack of external funding BITS Pilani faces. With the popularity of Work Integrated Learning Programme (WILP) diminishing, the chief source of revenue outside student fees was drying up. Since Government colleges get grants and external funding, they don’t have to completely rely on the fees collected from students.

Following the address, the Director sat down with Namburi, BITS Senate member Jai Agarwal, and former Senate member Saurabh Shetty, to discuss the issue. The Director was questioned on various fronts, but failed to give any satisfactory answers resulting in multiple outbursts from the crowd. He was asked about how the Institute seems to disregard their founding principle of ‘quality and affordable education’. A key point that was brought up multiple times was that despite the fee hike, ‘quality’ education was something the students felt was lacking.

A direct outcome of increased fees would be a reduction in the quality of incoming students. The plummeting cutoff scores last year were widely attributed to this cause. However, the Director believed that the fall in cutoffs was due to the sudden increase in the number of seats in the Hyderabad campus, and a lack of prior announcement by the Institute.

The Director also spoke about the lack of alumni support, although he admitted that the Institute has become proactive in alumni affairs only recently. When the common complaint by alumni, that they are approached only for money was mentioned, the Director stated that they had been repeatedly contacted for other purposes such as spending time on the campus interacting with students as well, but the response had been very lukewarm.

Much of the debate relied on statistics, unverified for the most part, from both the panel as well as the Director. In response to many of the queries such as the necessity of student loans to cover the fees, and the aid provided by scholarships, the Director recommended that the panel look at the statistics from SWD, and draw informed conclusions from the same. In response to the questioning about the exact fee structure, the Director broke down a 12% fee hike as 8% inflation, 3% development, and 1% contingency. Later in the debate, the panel stated that the inflation rate in the country had been 4.8% last year. It hasn’t crossed 8% since 2013.

Eventually, the conversation began to stagnate with the same points being made repeatedly. To reach towards some conclusion, the representatives said that the bottom line was that they couldn’t pay the fees. The Director’s response was that even parents get salary hikes, a comment that was met with a lot of uproar. Namburi claimed that this was untrue, and went on to say that a lot of the students’ parents were farmers.

Due to the impasse, the Director turned to the students saying that the administration was open to suggestions from the students as they could not find another way out. The Director kept on reiterating that the demand for immediate action was irrational. Jai Agarwal replied by saying, “I know this is irrational, but I have been rational for so long.” The Director took his leave to discuss with the other authorities involved, and some students also left to have lunch.

The Audi gradually filled up by 1:45 pm as people returned from the messes. Food was also served backstage for the benefit of those who didn’t want to leave. For this, the SSMS workers received a big round of applause from the students, who had completely filled the Audi by 2:20 pm.

Over the course of the next hour, BITSians awaited the arrival of the Director. An announcement was made saying that he was in a closed door meeting with student representatives. During this period, #RollBackBITSPilaniFeeHike claimed the top spot on Twitter trending hashtag, being retweeted by alumni CEOs and eminent personalities such as Rajdeep Sardesai.

Good to see the spirit of a Gandhian protest is still alive.. students deserve a hearing.. #rollbackbitspilanifeehike https://t.co/Uv7moAWfDE

— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) May 6, 2018

At around 3:15 pm, Satyansh Rai, the President-elect of the Student Union, came on stage and spoke about the meeting. He said that the director refused to commit to any change, and he did not agree to appear in the Audi either. He demanded that the Director appear in front of the Audi within fifteen minutes, and told the assembled students to march to his chamber if he didn’t appear. Chants of “Director, Director!” reverberated throughout the Audi, and the crowd was clearly pumped. Several BITSians brought out their cameras to record the assembly. The song Sadda Haq was played on the speakers, to which the crowd stood and sang along.

Dr. A. K. Sarkar finally gave in and addressed the gathering for the second time. He first stated that he had spoken only to one other director, and not to the Vice-Chancellor who was travelling. He then said “I think you have made your point”, saying that the BITSians have created increased awareness about the fee hike issue both inside and outside campus. This was met by a loud “NO” from the crowd, following by chants of “We Want Roll Back”. The director reiterated that there is due process, and that decisions of this magnitude cannot be made in a day. He said that he will do all he can by sending a letter to the Vice-Chancellor, explaining what he’d seen, and expressing his concerns. He said “I will request him (the Vice-Chancellor) to take it up to the Chancellor, definitely by tomorrow.” He said an immediate decision was impossible, but the crowd was very unhappy. He restated that he’d do all he can, and asked them to trust the administration, to which the crowd again shouted. “If you don’t trust me, why have you called me here?” was his response.

The Director had two requests for the students – to not miss their compres, and to wait till tomorrow. The crowd, clearly not satisfied, continued to bombard him with questions, at which point the professor simply stood up and walked out of the hall.

The Vice Chancellor was scheduled to arrive at 8:30 to continue this discussion, but made no appearance. At 9:30 pm, a large crowd marched towards VFast in order to meet him, following which the representatives convinced him to give a statement in the Auditorium.

The story continues here.