HYDERABAD: Six students crammed into one hostel room; lax security measures for girls; no quality library or free access to journals; poor classrooms and infrastructure; mosquitoes and monkeys grabbing plates from students at the mess; electricity cables laid carelessly in the open; these are few of the many problems plaguing the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) campus in Gachibowli, which it shares with Roda Mistry College of Social Work (RMC).
Express visited the campus on Wednesday and interacted with students staying and studying there from across the country. The hostel for TISS students studying in the RMC campus consists of two parts; a rundown building having visible external cracks where about 50 students stay and another building about 3 km away from the campus operated by a private service provider where about 20 students stay.
The hostel fee, however, does not reflect these shortcomings, as students are charged a whopping Rs 9,000 a month for the ‘facilities’. Only 70 students stay in the hostels as rest of the 250 students studying at the campus are from Hyderabad. Most of them in the hostels are from SC, ST and OBC communities, dependent on the scholarships provided by the government to complete their course.
Many students who can afford to pay out of their pockets have shifted out to PG/private hostel accommodations in Gachibowli or Kondapur.
They claim the rent there is lower than the hostel fee. As there are no raised compound walls around the campus, outsiders have an easy access to the areas around hostel premises, allege female students. They claim there have been incidents of harassment right inside the campus.
“This curtails our free movement around the campus and hostel,” says one students who does not want to be named.
The RMC campus is located adjacent to the highly polluted Khajaguda lake that has turned into a breeding ground for mosquitoes. Students claim that every year at least 7-8 cases of fevers are reported, including malaria and dengue. Their bigger problem, however, is lack of educational infrastructure. “There’s a namesake library with just a handful of books and projectors in the classrooms are of old and damaged. They also have no power backup sources in the campus,” says another student. After a person allegedly died of electrocution last year, students themselves have erected a danger signboard on a tree inside the campus. Electric cables run freely without insulation casings, posing a threat to life and safety.
TISS Kothur campus yet to materialise
TISS Hyderabad, that started functioning in 2009, was allocated about 100 acres land at Kothur mandal in Mahbubnagar. The campus, however, has still not materialised. A 2012 brochure by TISS on MA courses says the college “aims to run full-scale operations on its campus from June 2013.”
However, this gets perpetually delayed and students continue to suffer. A CAG report on land allotments released in 2012 had pointed out lack of utilization of 65 acres land allotted to TISS along with other defaulters.
The Acting Director of TISS, Prof Shalini Bharat did not respond to an e-mail sent by Express asking for a response from TISS on the issues shared by students and on the issue of delay in shifting to permanent campus.