In a seemingly brazen and arbitrary move, the Regional Institute of Education, Bhopal has expelled a woman student from the hostel, who lives with a moderate depressive disorder, after she requested medical leave for a week. The woman was asked to vacate the Vinay Niketan Hostel of the institute after the administration proclaimed her prescription as a fake one.
Pinjra Tod, a feminist movement that seeks to protest against gender discriminatory hostel rules against women, said that it was a completely authoritarian move. The institute, however, maintained that the produced prescription didn’t have the countersignature or the stamp of AIIMS, and the decision was taken to avoid any unforeseen incident in the future.
However, the AIIMS authority rectified their mistake and the father of the said student appealed to the administration to revoke their orders, which were a clear contravention of the spirit of the Mental Health Act of 1987. The official account of Pinjra Tod said that the plea fell on deaf ears, and the institute allegedly asked the father to take the matter to court. Furthermore, there were reports of denying the woman student in question, access to mess food, in order to make her comply with the orders.
If true, this raises serious questions on the accountability of the administration and the lack of student autonomy on ‘reputed’ campuses across the country. If a student can be expelled from the hostel for something like a fake prescription (that was later rectified by the hospital), then we are surely heading towards autocratic academic spaces, with unwritten equations of power and status determining one’s chances of availing justice.
Pinjra Tod claims that the stricter hostel rules came into place after the massive movement at the institute, demanding gender-neutral rules for female hostellers as well. Some of their demands included extending the curfew time from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. on all days, allowing female students to keep vehicles, appointing a non-academic female as the warden amidst others. The protesting students said that although the college officially accepted their demands, some ambiguous clauses might later be twisted to their (college) tune.
Once more, like many other incidents that have taken place across the country, this reinforces the need for legalized student unions in institutes of higher education. A formal body, that has stakes in deciding the course of action and standing up to the autocratic nature of decisions of the authorities. Some cases in point include the recent protests at JNU, protests at RGNUL Patiala, Pinjra Tod at RIE Bhopal, and RIE Ajmer as well.
Moreover, the brazen and arrogant call for taking the matter to court surely reflects the long-standing delayed form of justice prevalent in the country. The persistence to sue the institute and wait till the judgement is passed in the student’s favour can only lie with someone with the required financial resources and power structures, and anyone lacking it is bound to go through a continuous series of harassment. Given the laxity in administrative and police actions in the country, the student can hope to bypass her graduate degree if she waits for a judgement.
This calls for a functional Internal Complaints Committee, in colleges consisting of an equal proportion of students and teachers to sort out internal issues.
Another perspective that comes to play here is the mass trivialization of issues relating to mental health. A commonly held notion is that of drawing a parallel of depression with “madness.” The alienation that mental illness or mental health, in general, faces, in comparison with other illnesses, might have led the authorities to believe that depression cannot be a credible reason enough to obtain leave from the hostel. For this to change, there is a need to address the elephant in the room and introduce mental health/counselling sessions in the academic discourse from formative years and instill in individuals values of empathy.
Apart from this, there is a collective need to strengthen the dissenting voices in student circles and make them inclusive to people from underprivileged and marginalized communities. Only then can we hope to amplify the voices of students and especially women who have, so far, been subjected to restricted circles and lack of public spaces to be heard.