It was supposed to be a very normal day for Nimish… An ordinary day packed with classes at the country’s best engineering college IIT Delhi. Only, it didn’t turn out that way… That fateful day changed his life… forever.
Nimish had his MEL 120 workshop that day. And he was supposed to go the welding shop and learn the fine and precise art of welding under the able guidance of the lab instructor wearing full protective equipment and taking all precautions…
Or so he thought. What he saw there was a small room with four welding guns in an area of about 8m^2 being operated by unskilled freshers. The shield was defective with cracks running down the glass and there were no gloves or protective specs. This, my friends, was IIT…
He wondered, "This looks dangerous…should I leave? But what about the 5 marks… My CG will be ruined… No. I must do this. I will have to. After all everyone does it… my seniors, batchmates.. nothing happened to them." And with this argument he started welding.
But in all this mental arithemetic, there was one minor flaw… a flaw which had the capability to increase exponentially… MEL 120 had a history of eye injuries in welding- a history which had been very cleverly hidden by the institute management. And every year a large number of students required hospitalization.
But ignorance is bliss, and Nimish carried on welding… At first nothing happened… except some vision blurring… which of course is normal, thought our budding Einstien, "After all the pupil contracts in bright light and sudden lowering in intensity causes instantaneous blindness for some time......"
But at around 8 that night his eyes started burning. He washed them, washed them again, kept washing them… but to no avail. Worse, they hurt even more on closing, implying that he couldn’t sleep. His situation worsened and at 2 in the night he couldn’t take it anymore and he started screaming… The ambulance came and took him away… The diagnosis- Severe Corneal damage. MEL 120 had claimed another victim.
Yes, Nimish recovered in a week’s time but even today he carries the permanent eye damage that welding caused… Thanks to IIT.
Nimish is not an isolated case. As mentioned above, each year many Nimishes suffer. An not just in welding but also in other dangerous shops like Blacksmithy where students ae made to work in hot furnaces in dingy rooms.
I ask you, is this why students prepare so hard for IIT JEE? Is this why parents dream of sending their sons and daughters to IIT? I don’t think so. What we expect is quality engineering education along with overall development and not health degradation.
The answer the management gives is- "Students need this kind of workshop exposure"
Exposure??? Sure we get exposure. Exposure to UV and IR waves… Exposure to radiations which could permanently impair vision. Exposure to countless other health hazards. But not exposure to learning.
I do not advocate a totally theoretical education with no practical component. I agree with the essence of the statement quoted above. We need experience in welding and all other engineering practices. But what I don’t agree with is the manner in which this experience is given. Why compromise on safety? Across the world in every premier Engg. Institute a basic set of precautions is followed to ensure safety of the students… Then why do we at IIT compromise on safety? Why do we play with the health and lives of students? The students who constitute the cream of the country’s intelligentsia…The students who tomorrow have to drive the nations progress machinery towards the goal of development?
It is high time this problem is tackled and the first step in tackling, as with any other problem, is to spread awareness. This issue is so far hidden from the eyes of the general public. The media should exercise its power and make this situation public. IIT management should stop trying to cover up these problems and should start trying to solve them. And last but not the least, the students should speak out. A first step could be a blanket ban on these kinds of dangerous workshops without protective equipment. For only then can we hope of a complete engg. Education free from worries of health and full of interactive hands on learning experience.
Of Chick Love and Nirvana…
6 years ago
