Mumbai: After receiving no response from the administration of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B), five postgraduate students of the institute started their hunger strike on campus on Saturday. Students have been protesting against a recent fee hike implemented by the institute on PG programs–MTech and PhD by almost 35-40%.
“Institute’s decision to hike fees by nearly 40% across courses, at a time when everyone is reeling under the effects of a pandemic, shows how inconsiderate the administration is towards the problems of students. Despite their (administration) efforts to discourage us from starting the hunger strike, we have managed to keep the agitation on,” said a student.
This agitation started in early July when the IITB administration first proposed a fee hike of nearly 35% for all their postgraduate programs.
The authorities highlighted that the hike was approved by the Board of Governors nearly three years back, but its implementation was halted due to the pandemic. Students, however, stated that the fee hike is nearly 45% in certain courses, and called the increase in fees unfair.
In an open house discussion held last week between the college administration and students, the administration stated that rollback of fees is not possible which prompted students to intensify their protests.
The deadline to pay fees for the current academic year is on August 9, and students have clarified that they will continue their protest until the management rolls back the fee hike.
On Saturday morning, officials from the management met the protesting students to convince them to call off the protest, but to no avail. “Police was informed about our protest, and we were eventually not allowed to stage our protest where we had originally planned, but none of their threat tactics worked. We are fighting against the privatisation of education and we won’t back out,” said another student.