97.The sad end of Ngee Ann Poly India Immersion Programme

Thus,  we were  approaching  the  end of the  India  Immersion Programme  of Ngee Ann Polytechnic  students. The   people who had been invited  to take classes   for them were selected   based on their expertise, not   based  on their fame and public image. Of course,  good communication  in English was absolutely essential. A   few    members of  faculty  from our own institution were also included. Many others  from outside  had also  taken  classes.

Just  one week before the concluding week of the  programme,  our Director  called  me to his chamber and asked  me. “ Do you need a speaker  for taking class to the  Singapore  students ? I can give you one, he is a close friend of mine”. I could  easily understand his  predicament. He wanted   to invite   one of his friends to N.I.T.C and spend  some time  with him   in the  pretext  of this  lecture.  We  had already  fixed up the  speakers  for all days, but  could  not say no  to the  boss. So, we agreed to arrange the class early next week. However, we  had no idea   what this ‘friend of mine’ is going to talk about or how long he is going to talk. Boss  did  not ask us nor  did he ask us to tell   him what is to be talked about. We thought  he must have  talked to him  about the  programme.

His  class  was arranged on a  Monday. At 7AM, I phoned  up the  guest house  to make sure  he has come. I tried  to talk to him  several times but I could get  him  only by 8AM just before  I was about to start   to  NITC  from my residence  in the city. I asked  him “ Sir, what are  you talking about ?” Then he started asking. “ What  is this programme? What am I supposed  to  talk about?”   I told him about the programme and said as  per our programme , every session is of 2 ½   hours duration   to be engaged  by each speaker. There  will be a break of about 15 minutes in between for tea. I think he was upset when I told him thus. Obviously, he was  not prepared  to talk to the students for   this much time. He  must have  thought   he has to talk for  15-20 minutes  in an inaugural  meeting  or something like that. That is  what  very big people  do these  days!

As I was driving  my car  to the  campus, I straightaway  drove to the  guest house  to meet him. I wanted  to meet him in person  and arrange for his pick up from the  guest house  to the  place  where  the  class  is being held. As  soon as  I met  him, he said   he will   give me an email address of a person in Chennai  who will  send  me a video  which he asked  me to download  and bring it to the class room. He   will  start the  class and this  video will  be useful   for the  latter  part of his  class.  I went to my office and requested  the person   to send  the  video file. I found from the  person that what he is asking for is a nearly 2-hour video which cannot  be sent   by email. As per the  technology available at that time, this could be sent  only  on a CD  or DVD. There  was  no Google  drive or cloud computing to share large files as  of now.  The person   who was  asked  to send the  file to  me  did not know  about any   method of sending/ receiving  the file  in half an hour. I personally  walked  up to the class room and told me  that  there is no way the video file  can be  brought for the class.  While  I  was approaching the class, may be because  of the class  till then, I found most of the   boys and girls playing something on their laptops without attending to what he was  speaking.  Probably, he was  talking on something irrelevant or  on something  that they were  not interested in.  Somehow, he  continued  till the  tea break, that was all. He returned to  the Director’s chamber and  I  managed  to keep  the  students  engaged  for the  rest of the time.

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The story  did  not stop  there. In the  evening, as is  the  regular practice, Director  took his friend to the  Taj hotel and he returned  to Chennai in the morning flight. When I met the  Director  after he left, he  was  very angry. It seems  he had  told him that  the boys and girls have  no manners and they were  squatting  on the  chairs instead  of sitting  on it. He  continued “What is the  benefit for the  institution  in training these polytechnic students? What benefit we will get for improving our research?” etc. Now   we knew, what was  the  reason. His friend  had taken anticipatory bail to cover his  inability to engage  the class  for the students. He was telling all  bad things about the manners and inattentiveness  of the  boys and girls.  This  was like  the  justice’ on the road when an accident  occurs. When  someone   comes and hits your car and he comes out  and starts  attacking you, the  driver  of the  car  who was  hit from behind. Just   by the  casual  remark  by a ‘friend of his’, all  our efforts  for the  last  six months or so was declared  as useless. This was the benefit we  obtained  by obliging to   bring his ‘friend’   to address  our students. We could have  comfortably avoided  him  by telling that  all speakers  have been fixed already.

Except for  this minor  aberration, the  students and accompanying teachers  were  very happy   for the  programme. As  soon as they returned  to Singapore, all of us   in the  administration  received   congratulatory messages  thanking us  the way their  students and staff were taken care of during the six weeks  in the  campus. They wanted  the programme  to continue  for three more years and made a request   to that effect to the  Director.

 However,  in spite  of the positive comments  from all quarters, our boss decided  to unceremoniously drop  the  programme. The  reason   he stated  was  really  funny. “What benefit we  will  get to improve our research   by training a few batches of polytechnic students?”. It is strange  why  he could  not realize this  before venturing  on this  programme. For many of us, this was a  golden opportunity   to tell others  what  N.I.T. Calicut  is and what it is capable of doing to a set of students and faculty  from abroad. These  days, reputation  of an institution   is not evaluated  only based  on their website, but also by word of mouth  from  students, parents and visitors  like  this from abroad. In spite  of our hard work for   conducting this programme  in an exemplary manner,  the  boss  believed  only the  blatant  lies of his  close  friend  who   had  to cut a  sorry  figure  in front  of these   youngsters.  We  hear  that the  programme was  taken up by some other  N.I.T next year and continued  for a few years. Well, bosses are  bosses, they    have  the power  to do and undo  at the flick   of a second. Very few  of them  care a penny about the  hard work put up by their subordinates.