12.About the REC Hostels of that time.

During 1969 -70, in REC Calicut, there were only five hostels A, B, C, D and E with the A hostel nearest to the Main Building and E hostel at the far end close to the Kattangal market on the Eastern boundary wall of the campus. Students could freely move from one hostel to another. If one enters the corridor of A hostel at the Western end near the hostel office, they could walk through A, B and C hostels and enter the D mess without even using an umbrella during rainy season. As the building for D hostel had not been completed, for a few years D hostel remained just a D mess. E hostel at the boundary remained almost independent as there was a gate to enter the main road if one goes out of the C hostel.

Each hostel had a mess for the students. A student could live in any hostel and could take food from any of the messes in A, B, C, D or E. The only restriction was the change from one mess to another can be made only at the beginning of a month. A-hostel was reserved for the students admitted to the first year as they had to be protected against possible ragging. Frequent inspection of the hostel by the wardens and other senior members of faculty during day and night were a regular feature for the first few months. Most of the rooms in A hostel were quite big and could accommodate 3 or 4 students with each student having an independent cot and a few study tables and chairs. Subsequently an innovation was to make cots in 3 tiers like those in trains to have more free space for movement. As the number of students admitted increased, the number of students in these rooms were increased to 4 or 5 based on the needs. Later, more hostels have been added with the recent mega hostels and super-mega hostels with spending huge amounts like 40 to 60 crores of rupees. Only difference now is that the work is entrusted with Central Public Works Department and as they have less man power and resort to subcontracts, consequently takes more time for completion and it seems the quality of construction also looks not so good.

As Regional Engineering Colleges were started after the Indian Institutes of Technology in each of the states with national integration in mind, the admission process gave an opportunity for the students from different parts of the country to freely mix and learn about each other’s culture and habits. RECs were founded as model institutes or ‘pace-setters’ in each state as a joint enterprise of the state and central governments. Capital expenditure for buildings and equipment was met by Central government and recurring expenditure was shared 50-50 by the two governments. With the majority of the members of the Board of Governors (BoG) drawn from the state government, the state government had almost full control over the administration spending a nominal amount as part of recurring expenditure. The state education minister was the Chairman of the BoG, Director of Technical Education, Finance Secretary, Vice Chancellor of the university to which the REC is affiliated were all members of the Board. This dual control had its own problems which will be described later in these discussions.

At the time of admission of students to hostels, students from different states were allotted same room so that they can get to know the culture and traditions of other states easily. No rooms were allotted to students of the same state. This created opportunities for the students from different states to mingle easily loving and learning to live together forgetting their regional priorities. Mess was available in all hostels run by students under the dividing system. A hostel mess was predominantly vegetarian in nature, B, C, and D hostel messes used to serve both vegetarian and nonvegetarian food. B Mess was known to be beef mess, even though beef, mutton or chicken or fish and egg used to be served. Similarly, D mess was occasionally called Mutton mess. C mess was known to be cosmopolitan as both rice and chapathi were available during lunch. Most of the students from North used to prefer this mess if they wanted Northern type of food always. Inmates of A hostel were not allowed to join other messes during the first few months to avoid opportunities for ragging by seniors. In A hostel, most of the rooms were three seaters or four seaters so too in B and C with very few single rooms. E hostel had only single rooms and senior most students only were allotted rooms in E hostel.

Management of the messes was done by elected representatives of the inmates which form a Hostel Committee with wardens, hostel secretary and mess representatives. The Mess Representatives were responsible for the day to day supervision of the work done by Steward and mess employees. Every day, a student representative was present while materials such as vegetables and nonvegetarian items are supplied to the hostel. They would make sure that the quality and quantity are correct. Those on mess duty were given leave on other duty from the class. At the end of the month, expenses were calculated and mess bill prepared by dividing this among all the inmates of a particular mess. This was called dividing system. Provisions such as rice, wheat and pulses etc were procured in the central store and issued to each mess once in a week. Rice, wheat, sugar etc were available from the ration shop under subsidized rates. Strict supervision was necessary as some of the stewards used to collude with vendors taking commission. Wheat procured from the ration shop in bulk was cleaned and converted to flour in a flour mill located among the residential quarters twice or thrice in a week. A few of the mess representatives (MRs) were also smart enough to make ‘something’ from the vendors. To become popular, every new MR used to add one more chicken biriyani and sometimes we had to intervene to reduce too much oil content in the food. (Instead of ghee or dalda, litres of refined oil used to be poured into the biriyani). With all these measures, the mess charge per head per day was quite low. If I remember correct, the costliest mess was D mess where daily charges rarely crossed Rs.8/ day with three chicken biriyanis in a week. Only exception was the mess in the lady’s hostel (there was no ladies hostel per se, a quadruple of staff quarters forming a flat was converted as ladies’ hostel at that time) where the mess bill per day was mostly below Rs 4/ per day and the mess was called ‘kanji mess’ as the girls were all dieting with gruel those days!!!

After 430 PM, all the play grounds used to be full with most of the boys and girls playing games. In the beginning, there was no quarrels or fight between them. But sometimes, boys from Jammu Kashmir, UP and Bihar used to fight among themselves forming state-wise groups. Some of the leaders in these groups used to help the new batch of students coming from the respective states. But later, this has tn an ugly turn with the commencement of interstate tournaments and state-wise representations elsewhere. It seems later even ragging is being done state-wise, all these against the policy of national integration for which RECs were founded.

A Hostel