23 A brief history and some problems

Calicut Regional Engineering College (CREC)  started functioning in  1961 as one of the  very few   institutions of higher education in the  Northern part of Kerala. CREC  was the 9^th REC to be started  in India. Sri.Pattom Thanupillai, the Chief Minister of Kerala then, appointed Prof.Rajaraman, Principal of Government Engineering  College as  the Special Officer  for taking the initial steps for setting up the college. The college started functioning in the building of the  Govt. Polytechnic  at West Hill, Calicut. Later  Prof.M.V. Kesava Rao  was appointed as Principal. It was in 1963 that the college started functioning  in the  campus at  Chathamangalam, 22 KMs from the Calicut  town. The campus was spread over 120 hectares  in area and to start there were only three branches Civil, Electrical and Mechanical with 40 students  each. Prof.K.M.Bahauddin  became the Principal in 1968 and continued till 1981. Subsequently Prof.P.K.Charlu was appointed as Professor in charge until Dr.S.Unnikrishna Pillai took over in 1983. Dr. SUP  continued till July 1998. Dr.M.P Chandrasekharan  became the Principal afterwards and RECs  were   declared as  National Institute of Technology    under the  Ministry of Human Resources and Development(MHRD) by an act of parliament in 2002. MPC was confirmed as the first Director  of N I T Calicut. Subsequently, as a matter of policy, MHRD   decided that the Directors of NITs cannot be appointed from the same institute. With this shift in the policy denying those who have worked  hard to bring up these institutions an opportunity  to lead their institute , several  directors were appointed as the appointment  was on a contract basis  for a period of 5 years in the first instance  with a provision for renewal for another term if  agreed  upon by the  individual and MHRD. Consequently, Dr.Gokhale(I.I.T.Madras), Dr. B.N.Nagaraj (In charge, CREC ), Dr.G.R.C.Reddy(REC Warangal), Dr.M.N. Bandopadhyaya ( N I T Hamirpur) followed.  Presently Dr. Shivaji Chakravarthy ( Jadavpur University Kolkatta)  is the  Director  of N I T Calicut.

RECs were formed as a joint enterprise of the Government of India and the respective state government where the REC was located as ‘pace setters’ in these states. These institutions had  autonomy except for academic matters as  every REC was affiliated to the  university  in the geographic area where   it was located. Academic autonomy which permits starting of own courses, revise syllabus of existing courses and award degree after conducting examinations were not available until N.I.T.s were formed. With the dual control, there were situations in which the RECs suffered like a crying baby of  two mothers getting  milk  from neither of them. With the  formation of N.I.Ts,  full academic autonomy  was available with  the  powers  to have  its own  academic senate to frame and start new course, conduct examinations and award degrees  to is graduates on successful completion of the course. Along with this, service conditions of the staff   also   had some uniformity with the staff enjoying the service  conditions of  the employees  of the central government. Governance  of the N.I.Ts came directly under MHRD with the state  government  losing  its unlimited control hitherto enjoyed under REC setup. Many problems of the teaching staff were settled, but the nonteaching staff has some problems still to be settled due to the difficulty in mapping  the earlier  state government service conditions to that of the  central government. Even though, the ultimate   power is lying with the Board of Governors, service  conditions  are well defined .

It was well known that there were undue interference in the appointment of faculty some of which were pointed out by the  review committee  appointed  for studying the  governance of RECs. One specific case was the dilution of minimum qualification for the post of professor to suit  a particular candidate. The  meeting of the Board of Governors were held once or twice in an year and very often these  meetings were just to ratify the actions taken by the Principal with or without the approval of the Chairman, Board of Governors. The situation was such, in spite of the BoG, the Principal could do anything with approval of the Chairman. As the service conditions were not well defined, there were several cases in which   employees were denied their legitimate promotions. There was no forum to address the grievances of the employees for a long time. It took a considerable time to get a representation for the teaching staff and nonteaching staff in the BoG. Representations   of the grievances through Staff Association by teaching staff and Non Teaching Staff Association by were hardly  considered with sympathy.  Even legal   redressal had to start with the Munsif court,  as the RECs were registered under Societies act of 1860. Even when  representations of teaching staff anf nonteaching staff were made available, though late, there  were instances  in which their voice was  never heard by the BoG.  Committed office bearers   like Prof.A.Achyuthan and  Prof.Seetharaman tried their best  but in vein. Once Prof Seetharaman attended the meeting of the BoG fasting just to show  his protest but all their cries fell into the deaf ears of the BoG. Staff Association leaders  like I K Kurien  had to leave the college due to the  arguments with the Principal.

One  of the  major problems of the teaching staff in REC set up was  the limited chances were promotions to higher  positions. This was particularly acute in non-engineering departments. Many teachers   who joined REC  resigning their jobs in other colleges in the state  were continuing in the same cadre for  20 or more years without a single promotion. In the state colleges, those who have completed 12 years as lecturers could get a promotion to the post of Assistant Professor and those  after 20 years to the post of professor. In REC  all appointments were  after  advertisement  in national dailies and after interview. There were also instances of alleged nepotism in some of the selections. Even in the staff association, principal tried his ‘divide and rule’ policy as there were people who supported all actions of the Principal (to be in his good books for minor benefits) and the general attitude of the  teaching staff was “ I should get  without others  not getting it”. For example, staff association decided to give a representation for   promotion to higher scale based on length of service. The opinion from the teachers were  so widely different   that  a consensus could not be reached . Even some of the office bearers of the association started cheating to favour the principal.   After several years of fighting, some  form of a non-cadre promotion based  on number of years of service with an assessment  was introduced which again resulted  in many  complaints. The major reason for the lack of promotion was  the lack of adequate  number  of vacancies of professors and assistant professor.

Majority of these problems could be settled on Dr SUP  taking charge as Principal. Using the norms recommended by the Madam Committee, he got the higher posts restructured based on the work load  in each course creating more   posts for assistant professors and professors. During his regime, several post graduate and undergraduate course were started each one bringing in new posts. UGS/AICTE  scales of pay were introduced. Those who had acquired higher qualifications such as PhD  could  easily fit into these additional posts  created even though the  process  of selection remained the same. A few staff members who could not or were not in a position to take higher degrees even resigned and left the institute. The introduction of career assessment and time scale promotion  eased the situation in no-engineering departments whereas  new course  started in engineering departments improved the promotion   chances. In a way, without any doubt, the  period from 1983 to 2000  could easily be considered as the  golden period in the history of REC  Calicut.