Page 2: Meet the men who preserve
the campus lifeline
Page 3: Discussions from the recent
Senate meet
Page 4: Lectures you shouldn’t
miss—Think Again ‘14
SEMESTER II
ISSUE II
PILANI
MARCH 2014
8th March, 2014. It was a hectic day, mid-sems were on. Everyone was busy ghot-ing and no one
had time to worry about anything apart from the exam the next day. Suddenly, phone calls were
being made, angry one-liners were being exchanged, rumours of Tandoori Chicken prices skyrocketing were all over the place; Sodexo had increased the prices of all food items at ANC by
an astounding 33.3%. The English Press Club brings you the whole story.
Aditya Bhatt, President of the Students’ Union, wasted no time at all and called for students to
boycott ANC in lieu of the price hike. The entire student body responded wholeheartedly
(almost) and followed in his footsteps. ANC was left deserted for the next three days. “The SU
believes that these prices are uncalled for,” says Bhatt. “We aren’t happy with the prices, so we
decided to boycott.” His reasoning is that ANC is after all a student canteen; the concept was to
have no profit and no loss. This seems to have changed after Sodexo came into the picture.
The reason for the boycott was of course the exorbitant rise of prices. But why did these prices
rise in the first place? Bhatt tries to explain in simple terms: What we used to pay earlier was a
base price. This base price included the cost of the raw materials, maintenance charges, workers’
payment and that was it. Now we pay maintenance charges through our mess bill. We pay the
workers’ salaries through our mess bill. Why should we have to pay this amount twice? And a
12.5% inflation on top of that.
Of course, not all items’ prices went up by 33%. It was only the most sold items; the crowd
favourites. The tandoori chicken. (The initial price quoted for this was Rs. 265/-.)
There are those who will go on to say that the boycott was forced upon them, and they just
wanted to eat at ANC. However, Bhatt denies these allegations. “Yes, it is true that I encouraged people to boycott ANC. But I could do nothing more than request them. I merely asked
them not to go inside; I wasn’t imposing anything on them,” says Bhatt.
Many of you probably remember one of Aditya Bhatt’s manifesto points, which stated that a
meal cancellation system in the messes would be implemented. When questioned about the
status of its implementation, Bhatt looks disheartened. “The situation with Sodexo is at a critical
place; the institute supports my stance, but if I try pushing things further with Sodexo, we might
get into trouble. Workers threaten to go on strike almost every week. Something like this might
actually push them over the edge. We are trying to avoid that. Once things cool down, maybe
by the end of this semester, we can bring this point up for discussion once again.” One has to
wonder however, why this problem wasn’t anticipated by Bhatt, considering how the mess system had always been fragile.
He remains certain, however, that if Sodexo proves to be unsatisfactory, they will be removed.
The major problem that will come forward if this happens is the termination clause in Sodexo’s contract. It states that if at any point of time the institute ends its partnership with Sodexo, the institute is liable to pay them Rs 32,00,000. “That won’t be a problem. If the institute
agrees that we no longer have the need for Sodexo, the amount will be paid off. It’ll only cost
students around Rs 150/- per semester for the next five semesters.” It’s fair to say that not
everyone will agree with his assessment of ‘only’.
When Institute authorities were questioned, they had no comments on the matter. They refuse
to take a stance, since it is all completely student-run.
We were also able to speak to Chandeesh Gurajala, the President of SSMS. Earlier this week,
SSMS had released an official document which stated their stance. These can be found put up
in all messes and in ANC itself. In brief, the situation as per them is as follows:
On the 8th of February 2013, a deal was signed with Sodexo, wherein the mess system was
completely handed over to them, and SSMS was brought into the picture to act as an intermediary body between the students and Sodexo. According to the contract, every year on the date
the contract was signed, Sodexo would be allowed to increase prices as per inflation rates. This
includes both daily mess prices as well as ANC prices. This year, the first round of prices quoted by Sodexo on the 8th of February was too high. SSMS refused to accept this and asked them
to come up with a better solution. The day-to-day mess food was their top priority. ANC sales
in an entire year are about 1.5-1.7 crores, whereas mess bills of all the students come up to
over 10.5 crores; there is no doubt which should take higher precedence. (cont. on page 3)
Internet - Every BITSian’s lifeline. Well, almost. Howev- everyone will get access.”
er, recent times have seen us complaining about our
major source of entertainment and education. EPC de- But what is the criterion for blocking sites? “In the beginning, I had personally gone through each site to check
cided to investigate.
if it should be banned. All that effort ended with a list of
From a network of 20 devices across FDs in 1996, with about 5000 sites. Now we have devices which categorize
Internet in 1997, the campus saw a network revolution web pages and ban those categories which contain conin 2003, thanks to funding from alumni and the institute. tent not related to educational purposes. This has reduced the amount of spam received in the system to one
Quick history lesson, check.
-tenth the original, which is no mean feat. ”
Since then, bandwidth has been increas