15 History of REC, Service rules and a promotion

The first engineering college to start functioning in Kerala was the College of Engineering Thiruvananthapuram and that was in 1939. The second one, Government Engineering College Thrissur started functioning only in 1957. The first engineering college under private sector started its operation in 1958 at Kollam, T.K.M.College of Engineering due to the sole efforts of a great human being Jb.Thangal Kunju Musaliyar. Subsequently N.S.S.College of Engineering  College (1960) Palakkad, Regional  Engineering College Calicut(1960) and Mar Athanasius College  Kothamangalam (1961) started functioning.  The aim of starting Regional Engineering Colleges in each one of the states  was to have a model engineering college in each state as ‘pace setters’. Indian Institutes of Technologies were too few in number set up at Kharagpur, Bombay, Delhi, Madras, and Kanpur. RECs were set up as a second-tier models for the other colleges in the state. However, formation of these colleges had several flaws in their administrative set up. First of all, there was nothing common between these colleges except the names and the pattern for financial support. Each REC was affiliated to the nearest university in the geographical area with   no uniformity in the syllabus. Capital expenditure for building and major equipment were available from the Government of India through liberal grants and recurring expenditure for salary of staff and maintenance were shared   equally between the   central and respective state governments. The state government was to provide land, water and electricity for the institution.  

These were set up as autonomous bodies with administration under a Board of Governors (BoG) with the Chairman usually the State Minister of Education and Secretary, Principal of the college. Other members from the state government were the Director of Technical Education, Higher Education Secretary and Secretary of Finance.  There was one member from the Government of India and one representative each from the university to which the REC was affiliated and another representing the industries in the region. This BoG  used to meet once or twice  in an year and very often these meetings were just to formally ratify the decisions taken by the  Principal and Chairman. Effectively these institutions were functioning like a private institution funded by the Central and State governments.

 The RECs  were registered under  Societies Act  of 1860 and the relations between the  employees and employer(BoG)  were governed by the master-servant  relations. If the employees had any grievance, they could go only to the local court to get their grievance redressed, not possible to the High court in the respective state. Even though 95% of the annual budget was met by the Government of India, the state government had almost full control over the administration of the institution just spending 5%  of the  budget. Too much of power was concentrated with the Principal and Chairman and the saying “Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely” was the situation prevalent. A Staff Association to present the grievances of the teaching staff and a Non-teaching Staff Association for the non-teaching were formed. However, the Principal having absolute control of the administration was not happy with  others questioning  his decisions.

The service conditions of the teaching staff and nonteaching were also a mixed bag without any uniformity. Even though the service rules applicable to central government employees were applicable to the teaching staff, the BoG   found it convenient  to  add their own amendments  as there  was a mention  in the  document of formation of RECs that  service  rules of central government employees will be applicable mutatis mutandis ( meaning ‘with necessary modifications’). The management found it convenient to change or make rules as they please under this pretext.   The pay scales of the teaching staff were that of Central Government staff and their dearness allowance as given for state  government staff. The service conditions of the non-teaching staff and their pay scales were as in the state service. Except at the entry cadre of Associate lecturer, higher teaching posts such as Assistant Professor and Professor were filled by all India selection and the promotions as per Kerala government service rules were supposed to be available to the non-teaching staff. There were instances in which unnecessary interferences were   made in the appointments to higher cadres in teaching positions.  This was pointed out by one Committee appointed for reviewing the governance of the RECs. In general, there were too many departures from the ideal situation.  Due to the constant pressure from the Staff Association, steps were initiated by the BoG to formulate a set of service rules for the teaching staff.

As an individual,   a few  of us  were at the  receiving end of a tussle  between the Principal and Staff association. As Principal was enjoying unlimited power, he was not at all happy with the associations’ demand for transparency and uniformity. We, a few Associate lecturers, were the immediate victims of the new service rules.  As briefly mentioned earlier , those who were appointed as Associate lecturer was promoted to the post of lecturer as and when vacancies arise. We, three of us who joined REC together in Sept 1969 were about to complete a year when three posts fell vacant in our departments. Accordingly we were promoted to the post of lecturer. We were very happy we had a monetary benefit of almost Rs.100/ on promotion. Personally, as we had a new member in the family, it was very welcome and thought that our  little angel has  brought us luck. But this pleasant feeling was short lived. The service rules formulated by the administration for teaching staff were approved in the meeting of the Board of Governors held a few days after our promotion.  It took a few weeks by the time the minutes of the BoG was approved by the members and the service rules were declared effective once the minutes were approved by all members. Meanwhile, a few more vacancies of lecturers arose in the departments and Principal took a stand that as per the service rules, only those who have completed the probation period of 2 years can be promoted to the higher post. The persons who were denied promotion like us, requested the Staff Association to intervene and the office bearers took up the matter with the Principal. They argued that as three of us were promoted just before the meeting of the BoG, others also have to be promoted. But Principal flatly refused. As the office bearers were insisting that others also should be promoted, Principal in his anger issued an order cancelling the promotion orders issued to us, citing the representation from the Staff Association as reference. We were left to curse our fate and had to wait for another year for getting our legitimate promotion only because of the interference of the Staff Association.

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