The Parting GenSecs: Amish Mittal
By: Surmai, Aditya Tomar, Sai Charan
As the Students' Gymkhana representatives of the year 2021-2022 end their tenure, we look back at their journey as Gymkhana core members, their ideas and vision for their respective councils, as well as their ongoing, incomplete, and complete projects. Read ahead to find out from none other than the ex-Gymkhana core members themselves - the VP, UGR, PGR and the GenSecs of the 5 different councils. This is an 8-part series with full-length interviews of ‘The Parting GenSecs’.
AMISH MITTAL
EX-UG REPRESENTATIVE
A UGR is crucial to the academic growth of any institute and Amish Mittal did not disappoint the student community in his role of doing the same. From trying to alter the grading policy to improving the Student Mentorship Program, here are some questions that we asked him about his journey and experience as the UGR of the year 2021-22.
Q - What were the major changes you observed during the role?
Amish - As the UG representative, I have not only worked on academic issues but on other issues concerning the student body as well. There were certain significant changes that came into the act like
The Student Mentorship Program has improved a lot compared to the last few years. The communication gap which existed before between the freshmen and senior batches has decreased substantially this year and will only get better in the coming years.
Research culture has been up to the mark in several branches, we even conducted several sessions with our juniors to let them know about the internship opportunities if they want to pursue research. I believe that usually several students take the charge and develop the research culture in their field of interest.
Earlier the major problem was that the funding to the gymkhana was terribly low and due to this reason the body lagged at places where money was required like for the fests and other events. Now the administration has surmounted the Gymkhana fund in the fee structure so hopefully, things will be better once it is implemented.
The mess and the hostel representatives got a major breakthrough in terms of control and responsibilities this year. Now, the maintenance and care of the hostel and mess will be monitored and acted by the representatives themselves.
As time has gone by, now the administration has also come to accept that the Student Gymkhana is a powerful and relevant body to rely upon. This is certainly a great difference I was proud to contribute.
Q - What was your experience being the UGR? Did any major changes get implemented as per the plan or not?
Amish - My experience being the UG Representative was bittersweet and was somewhere not at par with my expectations. Some of the major changes which I had planned to bring to the system, did not get enough attention from the administration. I believe that the reason behind this is that the administration lags somewhere in its manner of working itself. So, for example, there are three major positions in the administration which are the Assistant professor, the Associate professor, and Professor in a particular department. Now, the promotion of the post purely depends upon the professor in almost every department and they basically observe the overall development of that fellow at his/her current post and they try to challenge them for the contradiction of the thoughts, so nobody in the administration wants to be responsible for the revolution. Taking up new initiatives and changing the current system require the Deans to take the risk which I believe, they do not consider necessary.
Q - Looking at your manifesto, we found your proposal for a centralized grading system and bunch grading policy. How would this help the students and administration tackle the woes in the current grading policy? What steps did you take to get the grading policy altered?
Amish - Since the post is held by a student, the administration did not find the matter to be of relevance. The truth behind our grading policy is that our IIT follows a grading policy that is much stricter than many of the old and newer IITs. As the pandemic prolonged and the students were stuck at home, the situation became unfavorable for the administration as well as for the student body to push the policy to completion - as the examinations had become totally unreliable and there had been no proper invigilation process to implement on the exams. So all the efforts made from our side were diluted with time and majorly we were not allowed to criticize the grading policy since all the decisions are taken by the administration as far as the grading policy is a matter of concern. Thus, the grading policy was far from being the proper judgment of a student’s knowledge.
You’ve reached the end of this interview! Thank you for reading the 2nd part of the 8 part series - The Parting GenSecs. If you found this article interesting, do like the article and share it with your peers. Click on the button below to read the 3rd part of The Parting GenSecs!