2021-09-12 : Appeal to Academics and Civil Society

Dear Friends,

As some of you may have heard, the campus workers at IIT Kanpur have been facing tremendous difficulties making ends meet in recent times. Situation has been especially grim for the mess workers and in order to get their cause the support it deserves, please consider endorsing the following petition: https://forms.gle/RyjayGnewBoBwRD47

In the form:

- If you are an academic, please indicate your institutional affiliation.

- If you are an alumnus of IIT Kanpur, please indicate the same and also indicate your year of graduation.

- If you are neither but would still like to endorse this petition, please indicate your occupation.

We also request that you circulate this e-mail / petition across your professional and personal networks, as much as is possible.

With thanks and regards,

The NotA Collective

https://notacademy.in/author/notacademy/

Appeal to Academics and Civil Society

Regarding Workers' Plight in IIT Kanpur Campus

We, the undersigned academics, IIT Kanpur alumni, and members of civil society are appalled to learn of the plight of workers, especially those engaged in running the messes, at IIT Kanpur.

In a recent letter (see here) penned by the mess workers and endorsed by over a thousand campus workers, we have learned that they have only had an average of between 30 to 40 days of work over the last 15 months. Monetary support during this period has also been scant and paltry: in 2020, they received only Rs. 18,400/- for the entire second half of the year, and after the second wave of Covid-19 struck in April 2021, absolutely nothing. Their letter speaks of difficulties meeting expenses for their children's education, medical expenses, and even sufficient meals on a regular basis.

That workers, who play a key role in the smooth functioning of a hallowed institution such as IIT Kanpur, should be treated in this manner by the administration is simply unacceptable.

The workers have expressed two key demands:

1. To provide them with work for 26 days a month at minimum wages, including ESI and EPF benefits.

2. In case work cannot be provided, to provide them with an allowance adequate to meet their families’ living expenses.

We fully support both these demands, and appeal to the administration of IIT Kanpur to fulfil them at the earliest.

Signatories - IIT Kanpur Alumni

Sushil Handa

IITK Alumni (1966)

A. P. Shukla

Retd. from IITK

R Ramachandran

IIT Kanpur (Retd)

Ashoke Sen

1978, MSc Physics

DR. VIJAYANAND SHARMA

IITK/M.Tech (MSE)/1978

Rajesh Baid

Alumni MT Mech 1982

Purandar Bhaduri

IIT Guwahati/ BTech CSE 1985 IITK / Academic

Amber Habib

Shiv Nadar University / IITK90 / Professor

Siddharth Ramachandran

Professor, Boston University; IIT-K Alumnus 1991 Batch

Harish Rupakula

1994

Puneet Srivastava

IITK Alumni - 1996-00 batch (roll number: 96200)

Santosh Anand

IIT Kanpur/2002/Educator

Vaibhav Vaish

IIT Kanpur Alumni (BTech EE 2004)

Pranjal Nayak

University of Geneva/ Alumnus Y8

Rohan Poojary

T U Wein, IITK Alumnus (MSc Physics, 2009 batch)

Swati Kumari

Y9/IIT Kanpur

Rishikesh

Y11

Srajal Nayak

Alumnus (Y12 batch)

Richa

2012/ private employee

Abhishek Savarnya

IIT Kanpur/Y12/Ph.D. student

Suhas Banshiwala

2013 batch

Atul Jaiswal

Research Scholar TIFR, IITK Alum (graduated in 2013)

Pradeep Kumar

University of Iowa/IIT Kanpur Batch 2013-2020/PostDoc

Akshay Zade

Alumni Batch 2014

Shivam Chudasama

IIT KANPUR (M.S 2015-2018), Assistant Manager-TVS Motor

Ayush Mukherjee

Y14 Alumnus

Piyush Bagad

BS Math Y15

Amartya Kumar Prusty

IITK Y16 Alumni

Himanshu Arora

Y16

Siddharth Jha

Alumni 2017

Shaurya Aarav

Class of 2018, BS physics

Jay Deshmukh

BS-MS Physics/ Batch of 2019 / Research Scholar

Paul Mathew

Assistant Professor BITS Pilani (IIT Kanpur, PhD 2019)

Shashank Gupta

Alumni, Y16

Shaurya Aarav

Class of 2018, BS physics

Pinaki Banerjee

Postdoctoral fellow, IIT Kanpur (2019-2020)

surya prakash

IITK/2020/educator

Siddhartha Srivastava

IITK 2020 (BS MTH)

Varun Jindal

Alumni, Dual Degree, Batch of 2020

Aditya Bansal

Alumni 2020

Abhinav

Alumni 2020

MOHAMMAD UMAR

Jan Chetana Kala Manch IIT Kanpur

Grishma Udani

IITK (Y0363)

Gaganjot

IIT Kanpur

Shikha Chauhan

Btech/ Y0/ Software Professional

Bhavna Joshi

IIT Kanpur

Signatories - Academics and Civil Society

Madhusudhan Raman

ICTS-TIFR

Alok Laddha

CMI

Amit Singh

IIT Bombay

Anupam A H

IMSc, Chennai

Nirmalya Kajuri

IACS, Kolkata

sundar

imsc chennai

Sridhar Narayanan

IIT Bombay

Siddarth Raman

BITS - Goa, 2011

Mohamed Rameez

TIFR Faculty

Debmalya Sain

Indian Institute of Science

Debangshu Mukherjee

IISER Trivandrum/ Postdoc

Arnab Priya Saha

Harish-Chandra Research Institute

Sujay Ashok

IMSc, Chennai

Suman Kundu

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai

Soumangsu Chakraborty

Postdoc at TIFR

Subham Dutta chowdhury

Tata institute of fundamental research

Dileep Jatkar

Harish-Chandra Research Institute

Sumati Surya

Scientist

Neetu

IISER Bhopal

Suratno Basu

SRM University , AP

Sagar Premkumar

Private professional and concerned citizen

kinjal banerjee

BITS-Pilani Goa Campus

Sayali A. Bhatkar

Physics research

Dhiman

Faculty, IITM

Dattaraj Dhuri

New York University Abu Dhabi

Himanshu Badhani

IMSc

Manu

Chennai Mathematical Institute

Ruchir

Alum 2014 iit madras

Arpan Kundu

IMSc, Chennai

Saravanan V

JNU

Aneesh P B

Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai

Shiva Shankar

IIT Bombay

Aditi Dudeja

Rutgers

Ronak M Soni

Stanford University

Nishit Jain

IIT-Delhi 2013 alumnus

Kunal Anand

Product Manager

Ajin K Thomas

Researcher, Ahmedabad

Shivani Upadhyaya

UC Berkeley

Neelesh Kumar

PhD Candidate

Ronak Gupta

University of British Columbia

Sreenivasan Subramanian

Independent Scholar (Retired)/Economist

Neha Sangwan

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

Nandini Dhar

Teacher

Manasvi CM

University of Transdisplinary sciences and technology

Kabeer

ANU

Suhas Vijayakumar

Harvard University

Vivek

IISc

Isha P

CHS, JNU

Nandita Narain

St Stephen's College, Delhi University

Payal Verma

Jnu student

Debaleena Goswami

IIM Udaipur

Suvrat Raju

International Centre for Theoretical Sciences

Aanchal Balse

Tifr

Gagan

Student

Chandrashekar KA

The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai

Sounak Biswas

University of Oxford

Aatika

JNU

Ahina Nandy

University of Osnabrück

Prashant Kocherlakota

IIT Madras (2013)

Adwait Gaikwad

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai.

Anand Pathak

Dartmouth College

Aaditya Narasimhan

University of Basel, PhD Student

Abhishodh Prakash

Postdoc, University of Oxford

Anurag Tiwari

Kent State University

firoz ahmad

Researcher, CIE, University of Delhi

subhashini ali

Resident of Kanpur

Venkatesh Athreya

IITM batch of 1969

Divyarthi Mohan

Tel Aviv University

Lakshmi Ramesh

Student. Alumni of IISER Mohali

Gaurav

IISER Mohali

K Babu Rao

Indian Institute of Chemical Technology / Retired Chief Scientist

RAJU GAUR

Teacher

Sumithra

ETH Zurich

R L Narendran

Research Scholar, iit madras

Sourya Majumder

COLLECTIVE Delhi

ginni khurana

Visitor

Subramanya H

Harish-Chandra Research Institute

Vatsala Nema

IISER Bhopal

Sanra R

PhD Student

Shalin Jose

IISER Thiruvananthapuram

Shilpa Sajeev

IIT Kharagpur/2021/

Sukhmani Malik

Asian College of Journalism, Chennai

Sanskriti Jain

Student

Anwita Pal

MBA 2nd year, Jamia Millia Islamia University

Sajesh Vijayan

PhD student, IISER TVM

Bijoy Mathew

IISER Thiruvananthapuram, PhD student

Richa

PhD student

Sanjana Ramachandran

Marketer

Aditya Goyal

BITS/2011/BFSI

Ninad R. Jetty

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai

Kaberi Goswami

PhD student

Sourav Roy

Syracuse University

Athira P V

Chennai Mathematical Institute

T R Vishnu

Chennai Mathematical Institute, Research Scholar