Plight of Ram Sharan's widow

From:Citizens' Forum
To: Director, IITK
CC: DRPG; Past President, AA; Preseident, AA; Chairman, IITKF; President, IITKF; Convenor, FF
Subject: Plight of Ram Sharan's widow
Date: Sun, 23 Dec 2012 22:16:08 +0000

Dear Prof. Manna,

At Citizens Forum of alumni of IITK, we have written to you twice in last few weeks on the issue of death of Mr. Ram Sharan and we have not received any response.  A friend from the campus community has shared an email release by you on the safety issue and recent deaths, reading which gave us some hope and we applaud you for this.

Unfortunately to our dismay, things continue as usual, the cycle of incompetence or callous indifference by officials continues. The pregnant widow of Mr. Ram Sharan was made to return to her village (appx 1000 Km away) to bring necessary documents. Since then she has been asked twice to produce more documents. This time she has to return again to her village, which will make three trips back and forth with her two toddlers in tow. The contractor and Institute seem to have created a circus in which the bereaved widow is being strutted around like a puppet.

Are the officials so incompetent that they must work in such an ad hoc manner, that they could not make a comprehensive list of necessary documents so that she could have obtained them first time around?  Could they not have found some way to prevent the family from having to return again? The illiterate pregnant widow and her brother have never stepped out of their village in their lives and are overwhelmed by all this. They can barely speak the Hindi language. They do not deserve this. This is why we had asked you in our previous email (December 14) to appoint a facilitator who may be sympathetic to a fellow human being and help someone from a village because of circumstances imposed on her with no choice of her own. The family returned after first set of documents on Dec 10 and are still waiting for compensation while being intimidated. The contractor’s men who bring the family some provisions deride them with demeaning remarks. In your email release you had mentioned 'In addition, IIT Kanpur will reimburse the entire cost of her travel and stay at IIT Kanpur along with her family members.' Yet from our information, she is staying outside the IIT gates in a dark unlit space which is more damp than usual in bone chilling cold weather. They have been given 2000 INR which barely covers their return journey with no allowance for other essentials and cost related to obtaining  the documents.

 Today, it has been one month since Mr. Ram Sharan died at a construction site at our campus. He came to help build a building which will be used by students, faculty and researchers of this world-class Institute. He died because of shoddy safety practices by the contractor under the supervision of our Institute. The way its officials behave is so embarrassing to all of us.

As alumni we believe we have made reasonable demands. We, the alumni who strive to work for human rights and dignity of workers are unable to comprehend this callous indifference. Instead of making yet more demands, because the solutions must be obvious enough to intelligent people at IITK, we simply ask you Prof. Manna, “Do you find the treatment of Ram Sharan’s widow normal? Do you find it human?”. We wonder what, do you propose to do about this situation.

Sushil Handa (1966 Batch)
On behalf of Citizens Forum

c.c. DRPG
President AA
Past President AA
President of Foundation
Chairman of Foundation
Faculty Convenor