FREEDOM and RESPONSIBILTY

My childhood days were not very uncommon. My parents used to take every decision on my behalf. Be it, what to eat? What to wear? When to sleep or when to wake up? Whom to make friends with and whom not? Where to study? When to study? And everything else. My mother even used to define my relationship with the girls of my neighborhood. According to her, all were my sisters. Today, I laugh at those things. Those were the days when I wanted to grow up, grow up like my parents, my elder brothers, so that I could be free to take all the decisions that affected me; remember the song of Taare Zameen Par, “All I Need Is To Be Free.” I am sure this is the childhood story of most of us. We all wanted to grow up so that we could be master of our lives, so that we could be free. My parents always used to tell me that you will understand the burden of being grownup only after you grow up. Earlier this simple argument of theirs did not make any sense to me, but today I am realizing that if the burden in their argument could be considered as responsibilities then it makes perfect sense. And it means “freedom is not really free, it always comes with responsibilities”. Both of these, the freedom and the responsibility are two faces of a single coin.

One could not have freedom alone but one has to take the responsibility as well. But the million dollar question is how many of us really want to take that responsibility? For most of us the childhood days were the best days, because there were no responsibilities. We all like that song which reads “Kitni Pyari Hoti Hain Yeh Choti Si Umer, Na Naukari ki Chinta, Na Roti ki Fikar”. But nature has some rules and even if we do not want to, we have to grow up and have to take the responsibility for our ROTI, the very basic need. But are we taking that? And are we in turn enjoying the freedom of deciding the various things related to that? Let us have a look.

Today 6 out of 10 messes in our campus are on contract. Earlier the criteria for giving the contracts used to be the lowest bidding one. But, according to the new policy of the institute, the present contract has been given on fixed cost basis. The details for the contract price are given in table.

Contract price is Rs 52/student/day
Approximate breakage of Rs 52/		Contribution
Food Cost	Rs 35/	From Institute	Rs 23/
Worker’s salary	Rs 10/	From Students	Rs 29/
Maintenance Cost	Rs 0.5/		Rs 52/-
Contractor Profit	Rs 6.5/

Table: Details of private mess contract prices.

As one could easily figure out students are not even paying the food cost. Here, we are assuming that the quality of food that they are getting is worth Rs 35/. Interestingly, a worker working in the mess pays Rs 35/day for food and that is about 31% of his salary. Rs 29/ is the cost which the students pay directly through mess bill, apart from this there is an indirect contribution from the students in the form of Mess Establishment Charges. Presently, it is Rs 5000/year and will grow all the way up to Rs 10000/year in the coming years. All this is planned to get Rs 23/ which is being paid by the institute today towards the mess bill/student/day, from student itself in the near future.

Now, let us have a look at the way in which institute run mess functions.

Approximately there are 50 workers in each mess; about half of them are Council of Wardens (CoW) workers who get most of the benefits of a regular institute worker and remaining are daily wage workers. Though most of the daily wage workers are working in these messes for quite a long time now, they are only entitled to the payment according to the minimum wage norm. The Basic Daily Mess Rates (BDMR) in these messes are approximately Rs 24/ in comparison to the Rs 35/- of the private messes. Apart from paying their complete food cost, the students contribute towards the salaries of daily wage workers. In combination with the food cost that amounts to approximately Rs 29/- (same as the students of private messes). Apart from this, these students also pay Mess Establishment Charges, hence contributing towards the salaries of CoW workers as well.

There is no deduction from the salaries of daily wage workers as the food cost because the daily wage workers work for both the shifts and the food cost is counted as overtime payment, though the CoW employees pay Rs 379/month for the same. Now, coming to the BDMR (Rs 24/-), one may say that this is very low and so the students are not eating well, but it is bound to be low because we are not talking about a person traveling in a train where it cost about Rs 55/- for basic food, but we are concerned with 450 odd students, dining together and sharing the cost collectively. But, the most important thing of this system is not its low BDMR but the freedom of raising/lowering the BDMR which lies within the hands of the people who are eating in the mess and of course on the market prices.

Ideally, it should be like that. Why should we be dependent on the administration to decide our food cost and for running our messes? Why can’t we together take the responsibility of running them? Why should institute have to pay 450*6.5*30=Rs 87750/ as the profit to the contractor every month for a mess? And if there are approximately 2000 students who are dining in private messes the profit amounts to Rs 390000/month. Moreover, tomorrow this burden will come on us. Today institute has to decide the food cost to be at Rs 35/- else no contractor will come and work here. Apart from that the contracting system involves many other things, which I don’t want to talk about, we all know about them. So, why can’t we think of making a system where we pay for whatever we consume and that too directly? Are we ready to take the responsibility for such a system? Are we really interested in growing up? Or, do we want every thing which affects us to be decided by someone else?

In childhood, our parents were taking decisions on our behalf because at that time we were not really prepared to take them. But they do not want it to be like that forever. Like us, they also wanted us to grow up and help them out in decision making at various stages of life. And one can understand how proud they be if they see their children taking sensible decisions. This institute in one way is like a learning ground for all of us, not only for our professional lives but our social and personal life as well. In a broader sense, the way we handle our collective and personal responsibilities here, will certainly going to makeup our minds to take our future responsibilities and in turn will decide how FREE we are.