‘Compassionate and open-minded look into students' stories can make difference’

As a director of IIT Guwahati for nearly six years, between 2013 and 2019, Gautam Biswas faced situations where students ended their lives not only on his campus but in other IITs too.

Biswas, now a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at IIT Kanpur, told DH's Sumir Karmakar that a compassionate and open-minded look into the stories behind such cases can make a difference.

As a former IIT director, why do you think similar incidents are still taking place?

We tried to address some issues specific to problems about the governance of the students: Everyone has their views about what is essential and why. A compassionate and open-minded look into these different stories can make a significant difference in handling this complex problem. We must learn to ask questions that can help us resolve the problems and better understand the background to prevent future incidents. We need to keep in mind that some students tackle plenty of obstacles. Some students find it more difficult to learn than others, some have social problems (including broken homes, and financial stresses). A few suffer from severe economic problems too! Some of them have lost confidence due to repeated failures. We are required to invent a variety of strategies if somebody is not learning and failing to perform. Professional Counsellors are helpful. During my tenure, we appointed a few outstanding counsellors. We formed several teams. To bring about improvements in the hostel conditions, we encouraged young, enthusiastic faculty members to have occasional dinners at the hostels once a month. However, it is a dynamic system, we must develop new strategies to handle this complex paradigm of governance. I am sure all the steps taken during my time have been strengthened a lot more now, to combat the undesirable incidents on the campus.

Such incidents happened in the past too, do you think the steps taken by our institutes are not enough?

Enhancing student engagement is not a small task. It takes deep passion, commitment, and compassion to motivate each unique student. There are ways to initiate and immerse students more actively into the teaching-learning experience, requiring their thoughtfulness and participation. By becoming active learners, one can hope that students will demonstrate a level of engagement that wasn’t present before. We must come up with ideas to keep students motivated and engaged.

What should be done to prevent such incidents?

There are many out-of-the-box thoughts that are needed to create an excellent "Students-Care" system. We created something unique in the entire IIT system, - a "Centre for Creativity" at IIT Guwahati. Indeed, this Centre acted as a wonderful stressbuster among the undergraduate as well as the post-graduate students for three years during my tenure of six years at IIT Guwahati. Unfortunately, the Centre was discontinued because of some reasons that I cannot take up here. Let us not discuss any "negative topic" today. The Centre for Creativity was developed in order to nurture the activities pertaining to “Performing Arts”. In every semester we used to run zero-credit courses (Senate approved) in the following sub-disciplines of “Performing Arts”: (a). Indian Classical Dance (with a special focus on Sattriya-Dance-form of Assam), (b) Instrumental Music (Violin and Tabla) and (c) Hindustani Vocal Music. With a team of Artists in Residence, the Institute performed collaborative tasks with some of the renowned cultural organizations of the country in performance analysis of the regions through performances and curation. The wholehearted participation of students and their enthusiasm were remarkably visible. The activities were to be extended for staging Dramas, Street-plays, Skits and Satires during various occasions. IIT Guwahati needs some wider stencil to integrate all the students interested in dramatics. IIT Guwahati may like to start a forum for Creative Writing involving several Indian Languages and some Foreign Languages. A similar effort in Painting and Sculpture can be envisaged too.

What is your message to the students and families of students?

Teaching is empty without the heart’s devotion; research remains dependent on several resources involving hardware and software. The teaching-learning exercise needs another “ware” - we can call it “soulware”. The universities/ institutes can set up laboratories with state-of-the-art facilities. However, it requires “soulware” to make it a success. According to Professor Way Kuo, President of the City University of Hong Kong, “soulware” means culture, mindset, behaviour, passion, and thinking patterns. The combination of teaching and research is essential, and we require a spirit of conducting education research. As academicians, we must be careful and responsible builders of humanity and society. A graduate must acquire the requisite skills in the discipline of choice. Besides this main attribute, there are a few issues of “human-making”. A graduate must know about the society in which they live. The students should be encouraged to spend time with the downtrodden; they should be allowed to understand the plight of the service personnel who do not get adequate money to cover 100% of their living expenses. All graduates must be able to relate themselves to the art and culture of the land. Getting involved in “Performing Arts” is an essential component of the completeness of life. At the same time, the fear of failure must be removed from the mind. We require multiple attempts with a little more personal care for a few individuals. The ethos of academic institutions must be centred around imparting education. To resonate with the great poet and educator, Rabindranath Tagore, “Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depths of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection, Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit.”