3 About the REC Hostels of that time

During  the 1969 -70 period , there were  only  five hostels A, B, C, D and E with the A hostel  near the Main Building and E hostel at the far end close to the Kattangal market  on the Eastern boundary of the campus. Students could freely move  from one hostel to another. If one enters the corridor of A hostel at the Western end near the  hostel office, they could walk through A, B and C hostels and enter  the  D mess without even using an umbrella during rainy season. As the building for D hostel had not been  completed , for a few years D  hostel remained just a D mess. E hostel at the boundary remained almost independent as there was a gate to enter the main road if one goes out of the C hostel.

 A Hostel 

Each hostel had a mess for the students. A student  could  live in any hostel and can take food from any of the  messes in A,B,C,D or E hostel. Change from one mess to another can be made only at the beginning of a month, that was the only restriction. A-hostel was reserved for the students admitted to the first year as they   have to be protected against possible ragging. Frequent inspection of the hostel by the wardens and other senior faculty members during day and night were a regular feature for the first few months. Most of the rooms in A hostel were quite big and could accommodate 3 or 4 students with each student having an independent cot and a few study tables and chairs. Subsequently an innovation was to make cots in 3 tiers like those in trains to have more free space  for movement. As the  number of students admitted increased, the number of students in these rooms were increased to 4 or 5  based on the needs. Subsequently   more hostels have been added with the recent mega hostels and super-mega hostels with spending huge amounts like 40 to 60 crores of rupees. Only difference now is that the work is entrusted with Central Public Works Department and as they have less man power and resort to subcontracts, consequently takes more time for completion and it seems the quality of construction also looks not so good. 

From the beginning, admissions to RECs were regulated as half from the  state and the other half from other states all over India. With this heterogeneous group, REC or now NIT represents a cross section of the nation. As Regional Engineering Colleges were started after the Indian Institutes of Technology in each of the states with national integration in mind, this admission process gave an opportunity for the students from different parts of the country freely mix and learn about each others culture and habits. 

B Hostel

RECs were   founded as model institutes or ‘pace-setters’ in each state  as a joint enterprise of the state and central governments. Capital  expenditure for buildings and equipment was met by Central government and recurring expenditure was shared  50-50  by the  two governments. With the majority  of the members of the Board of Governors(BoG) drawn from the state government, the state  government had almost full control over the administration spending a nominal amount as part of recurring expenditure. The state education minister was the Chairman of the BoG,  Director of Technical Education, Finance Secretary,  Vice Chancellor of the university to which the REC is affiliated were all members of the Board. This dual control had its own problems which will be described later in these discussions.

C Hostel 

At the time of admission of students to hostels, students from different states were allotted same room so that they can get to know the culture and traditions of other states easily. No rooms were allotted to students of the same state. This created opportunities for the students from different states to mingle easily loving and learning  to live together forgetting their regional  priorities. Mess was available in all hostels run by students under the dividing system. A hostel mess was predominantly vegetarian in nature, B, C, and D hostel messes used to serve both vegetarian and nonvegetarian food. B Mess was known to be beef  mess , even though beef, mutton or chicken or fish and egg used to be served. Similarly in D mess was occasionally called Mutton mess. C mess was known to be cosmopolitan as both rice and chapathi were available during lunch. Most of the students from North used to prefer this mess if they wanted Northern type of food always. Inmates of A hostel were not allowed  to join other messes during the first few  months to avoid opportunities for ragging by seniors.  In A hostel, most of the rooms were three seaters or four seaters so  too in B and C with very few single rooms. E hostel had only single rooms and senior most students only were allotted rooms in E hostel.

E Hosel 

Management of the messes was done  by elected representatives of the inmates which form a Hostel Committee with wardens, hostel secretary and mess representatives. The Mess Representatives were responsible for the day to day supervision of the work done by Steward and mess employees. Every day, a student  representative was present while  materials such as  vegetables and nonvegetarian items are supplied to the hostel . They would make sure that the quality and quantity are correct. Those on mess duty were given  leave on other duty from the class. At the end of the month, expenses were calculated and mess bill prepared by dividing this among all the inmates of a particular mess. This was called dividing system. Provisions such as rice, wheat and pulses etc were procured in the central store and issued to each mess once in a week. Rice, wheat, sugar etc were available from the ration shop under subsidised rates. Strict supervision was necessary as some of the stewards used to collude with vendors taking commission. Wheat  procured from the ration shop  in bulk was cleaned and converted  to flour in a flour mill located  among the  residential quarters twice or thrice in a week. Some  mess representatives(MRs)  were  also smart enough to make ‘something’  from the  vendors. To become  popular, every new MR used to add  one more chicken biriyani and  sometimes we had to intervene  to reduce too much oil  content in the food. ( Instead of ghee or dalda, litres of refined oil used to be poured into the biriyani). With all these measures the mess charge per head per day was quite low. If I remember correct, the costliest  mess was D  mess where daily charges rarely crossed Rs.8/ day with three chicken biriyanis in a week. Only exception was the mess in the ladies hostel (there was  no ladies hostel  per se, a quadruple of staff quarters  forming a flat was converted as ladies hostel at that time)where  the mess bill per day was mostly below Rs 4/ per day and the mess was  called  ‘kanji  mess’  as  the girls were all dieting with   gruel  those days!!!

After 430 PM, the play grounds used to be full with most of the boys and girls playing games. In the beginning, there was no quarrels or fight between them. But sometimes, boys from Jammu Kashmir, UP and Bihar used to fight among themselves forming state-wise groups. Some of the leaders in these groups used to help the new batch of students coming from the respective states. But later, this has taken an ugly turn with the promotion of interstate tournaments and state-wise representations elsewhere.  It seems later even ragging was being done state-wise, all these against the policy of national integration for which RECs were founded.

(to be continued)

Photos  from NITC website :www.nitc.ac.in