Minutes of the First Meeting

The session opened by laying out why political and institutional apathy persists at IIITH, and what produces it. Three arguments were put forward.

Meritocracy and the admission pipeline. The selection process rewards a narrow definition of achievement. This shapes who ends up here, what they feel entitled to question, and what they assume they deserve. The composition of the student body is not incidental; it follows from how people got here.

The aesthetics of democracy. From mess governance to disciplinary proceedings, formal representative structures exist but function mostly as ceremony. Students experience the appearance of having a voice without the substance. Those who normalise this carry the habit into their professional lives.

The political nature of technology. Institutions build technical competence in students while leaving them politically disengaged. The systems we build have political consequences, and treating them as purely technical is itself a political stance.

A consistent thread through the discussion was that disengagement is not a character failing but a product of conditions. The academic load, research work, and placement pressure leave little bandwidth. Students move from one objective to the next. “Nobody cares” largely means nobody has the time to participate. For many, silence is not a choice but a necessity.

Relatedly, IIITH is composed largely of people for whom the system works. There is a background assumption that things will be okay, that the status quo will hold and support you. Collective spaces that actively question this assumption do not currently exist.

Several participants noted a paradox: the presence of professors willing to listen actually softens student responses. Because faculty will hear an email, students stop at one email. This trains students to request change rather than demand it, a posture that offers little leverage outside campus. In the real world, requesting without pressure gets you nothing.

Specific incidents generate outrage but not sustained engagement. Students who were furious in the moment do not show up for follow-up discussions. The fire is lit and then abandoned. Sensationalism fills the space where organising should be.

One participant observed that ordering food instead of demanding better mess food is a form of privilege: the ability to opt out rather than contest. This pattern extends beyond campus. These are the same constituencies with the lowest voter turnout. The mentality of managed inconvenience is learned early and sticks.

Beyond time and fear, several participants noted something more insidious: you get used to not speaking. Awareness of a problem does not translate into action when peers are visibly silent. People assume someone else will carry it. Apathy kills the enthusiasm of those who might otherwise act. Several participants expressed a desire for more collective spaces where the burden of caring could be shared rather than left to individuals.

Multiple participants described the student parliament as having the form of representation without its function. Specific examples were raised: hostel policy changed without formal communication, anti-ragging procedures handled over phone calls rather than official mail, disciplinary committees that are ad hoc and opaque. The student parliament gets invited ceremonially. Its objections are not incorporated. Faculty justify overrides on grounds of experience and authority: they know better, and so they enforce.

The student body has largely lost faith in the parliament as a result. This apathy spreads outward to clubs, to Apex, to every intermediate body that manages grievances without resolving them. Accountability dissolves because blame circulates without landing anywhere. The disciplinary committee formalities are technically documented on the intranet, but student parliament has no seat in those deliberations.

The few instances of street-level protest that were raised ended with students facing disciplinary committee meetings. The disciplinary process itself is experienced as coercive: students are berated, procedures are ad hoc, and the outcomes feel predetermined. The university cannot be expected to protect students who rally against institutional decisions. Professional relationships with TAs, supervisors, and faculty are at stake. The campus is small enough that there is no crowd to disappear into.

That said, one participant raised the possibility of anonymous and incognito action: doing things that sit just inside the line of institutional safety, where the institution’s only real power is through formal identification and sanction. If that identification is denied to them, the leverage changes.

This was named directly. If you are involved in something beyond your academic track, it affects you. What if the TA or professor on the other side of an issue you are raising also evaluates your work? How do you position yourself in a discourse where your grades, references, and professional trajectory are all in play? Several students felt that the confidence that professional boundaries will be respected is low. Critical thinking itself tends to get dismissed: too much effort, too “woke.”

Faculty members who had been student activists shared a consistent view: organising is a skill, learned through trial and error, and it begins with the practice of gathering. Individual emails accomplish little. Collective memory and shared burden accomplish more.

Crucially, one faculty member pointed out that there has never been a formal student union at IIITH, but that a loosely connected body, used to demand collective action, does not need to replicate the structure of a union. What matters is that people keep meeting. The practice of meeting is itself the output, not a means to some other end. It retains a memory of collective action across batches, something that currently does not happen. Seniors do not teach juniors to push back. They counsel them to stay quiet.

On culture within the institution: faculty members were openly critical of the “sir and maam” culture at IIITH, seeing it as symptomatic of a broader deference that makes organising harder.

Specific suggestions from faculty included: connecting with student unions at other universities to understand how they function and assess the risks involved; younger faculty raising student disillusionment explicitly at faculty meetings, bringing the voice of students into spaces students cannot themselves access; and organising public debates or seminars, including one specifically on how students can stop being afraid of institutional repercussions. Having such debates regularly creates a practice of bringing people together and of thinking critically, which can be a legacy carried forward across batches.

Alumni were also raised as an underused resource. Alumni have power that goes beyond fundraising and reunions. A genuine connect between current students and alumni who care about these issues is something that has not been built.

Ping! was introduced as an independent student body, distinct from the student parliament and other institutionally embedded structures. The argument for something like Ping! is precisely that it does not suffer from the same institutional capture and procedural neutering as the parliament. It can act without needing to seek permission from the structures it might want to critique.

This raised a broader debate. One student argued that formalising any body creates problems: formalisation tends to reproduce the bureaucratic logic it is trying to escape. Another student pushed back: informal settings are where discussion starts, but informality alone is not sufficient to carry things forward. Both positions remained in tension, unresolved.

It was stated quite plainly: the highest power on campus belongs to the students. The collective, when it moves together, has leverage that individuals do not. When a student faces disciplinary action for organising, the collective’s job is to ensure the penalty does not land. The oppressor is not going to give consent. You do not wait for permission. You need to believe it is possible, and act accordingly.

The group committed to meet again the following week. A WhatsApp group was set up to stay in touch between meetings. Participants were asked to show up consistently; the explicit concern is that these meetings taper out.

Whether the agenda stays campus-focused or extends to broader issues was left for the group to decide over subsequent meetings.

A proposal was raised to put a piece of public art on campus reflecting the social realities students inhabit — around gender, class, or caste — as a low-risk, visible act of collective expression and a starting point for building the habit of action.

Students were urged to join existing student bodies and actively work to change the culture from within, not just critique from outside.

The point of meeting is not to immediately produce solutions. The question one faculty member asked was simple: what does this group want to accomplish? The answer offered was not a policy agenda but a disposition. Build a practice of gathering. Keep meeting. Develop the kind of collective memory that outlasts any single batch.