TISS Hyd students demand financial autonomy, threaten to go on hunger strike

Students said that the campus faces other issues such as sexual harassment, poor infrastructure and lack of security, which can be resolved with partial decentralisation.
TISS Hyd students demand financial autonomy, threaten to go on hunger strike
TISS Hyd students demand financial autonomy, threaten to go on hunger strike

Students of the Hyderabad campus of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) have decided to go on a hunger strike from Tuesday, seeking financial autonomy from its main campus in Mumbai.

Students in TISS Hyderabad have even demanded that TISS registrar Dr C P Mohan Kumar come and resolve issues on campus.

Since February 21, students of TISS Mumbai, Hyderabad, Tujlapur and Guwahati have been agitating against the the administration for withdrawing financial aid to students from marginalised communities.

In addition to this, students of TISS Hyderabad said that their campus is plagued with several other issues such as sexual harassment, poor infrastructure and lack of security which can be resolved efficiently only if the campus is decentralized partially.

“There are several Hyderabad campus specific issues, which are not being resolved only because all the directions have to come from Mumbai. There is no accountable authority who can immediately address our grievance. All the communication has to come from Mumbai. And, the communication via email in which we expressed several of our problems have resulted in nothing,” said Pallavi Prathiba from TISS, Hyderabad media team.

She also alleged that the TISS Hyderabad campus committed a blunder and promised all 2015-2017 OBC students scholarships, while the management had issued a notice in 2015, withdrawing financial support to OBC students.

“Due to a miscommunication, the TISS Hyderabad took all the OBC students from 2015-2017, assuring that they will receive the GoI-PMS (government of India-Post Matric Scholarship scheme). But now after learning their blunder, they are asking the students to pay the money. How will those students pay fee? Had they known about the withdrawal of the scholarships, they would have desisted from enrolling into the institute,” Pallavi lamented.

The TISS students’ council released their list of demands, which includes: decentralization of financial powers to campuses, accountable authority, equal representation in the placement committee, due representation from all campuses in the Students’ Union and regular students’ council meetings of Hyderabad, Tuljapur and Guwahati campuses.

Apart from this, the Students’ Action Committee also requested authorities not to withhold degree certificates of those students who failed to pay the amount, as it was a blunder by TISS Hyderabad authorities.

Meanwhile, on Monday, students took to twitter with hashtags such as #injusTISS and tagged MHRD twitter handles and minister Prakash Javadekar after the management refused to revoke their decision. The hashtag soon trended on Twitter and several academicians expressed shock and solidarity with the students. 

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