Principal Punde Resigns

In the year 2006-7 there was a huge debate on a social networking website when the then principal of AOA  had to step down to make space for another one. The discussion meandered from AOA to NASA to god knows what! Names were taken, different people were accused and personal enimity was all over the website. The news soon reached the management and potential (avant-garde) faculties were removed from the system. People did not sleep for nights answering to threads of conversations and some people (outsiders included) distantly enjoyed the whole scene. We did not learn any thing from the ruckus. They have started it again over another social networking website - the blame game has already begun. Sadly, no one shall use this period for self reflection. Let us discuss larger issues here.

In the ruffle of the Principal of Academy of Architecture resigning from his post, I got to learn from Prasad Shetty the dynamic of actors that control architectural education in India. I shall discuss the rubric of this situation through multiple narratives I have voiced on my blog earlier. There is no best way to connect them, but through this very event.
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i

ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION IN INDIA:

Three prime bodies are involved here (we shall discuss later why it is important to understand the roles of the following):

1. The Council of Architecture (COA): The Council of Architecture is the body which legitimizes a person to practice as an architect in the country. It is a national body and looks after the architectural production of the country. At the same time, it also has to regulate the architectural education in the country. Basically, it keeps a check on the logistical issues of setting up an architecture school in India. The architectural curriculum is decided by the State Universities (and hence it varies from school to school). COA hardly has any role to play in the curriculum of architectural education.

2. The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE): This body overlooks all the different branches of technical education in the country, out of which architecture happens to be one. It  is "an advisory body in all matters relating to technical education." (source). AICTE's understanding of architecture is, without doubt, technical and hence COA is in constant tensions with AICTE. Again, AICTE is a national body. The Directorate of Technical Education is, in abbreviation, known as DTE.

3. The Mumbai University (MU): The Mumbai University is one that controls / disburses the degree to a graduate of architecture in the city. Its role is completely academic. It is more of a state body. The head of MU is the Chancellor who represents the MU in the state while it is the Vice Chancellor who does the real job of the Chancellor under his instructions.

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ii

GAME OF MONEY:

Note that the funds for the national bodies come from the Central Government (the Centre) while that of the MU comes from the state.
Academy of Architecture is a government aided college where partially, the funds for running the college come from the Mumbai University.

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MANIFESTOES:

Rachana Sansad trust was created as an educational trust "to promote education in the field of art, architecture and ... allied disciplines" Further, it says : "Talking about the nature of Education here, even after 55 years, Banyan is our logo, representing growth, strength, stability, service and trust."(source)

Note the words : "growth, strength, stability, service and trust."

In 2009, Rachana Sansad opened a private course for architecture with questionable infrastructure in place. This was precisely for:

growth = raising money

strength = making networks and gaining power

stability = using networks to build money banks

service and trust - to whom and for whom?

Under larger question is what we read on the Academy of Architecture Website: "...As a result AOA's enlightened students step into the professional world with wisdom and confidence gained at the institute."

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CRITICAL LENS:

"A recent declaration of the Management at the Academy is that the institution has been allowed to build additional 14 floors onto itself. Although there was a huge confusion about what should be an appropriate image for the new academy, there has been no stake of the people who are using it. There was considerable debate on the design and the designer.... The lack of any history of the college restricts any outlook and participation of the students, faculties and the staff – which essentially remain the stake holders of the space..."

from: "Archiving the Academy", unpublished research proposal, Anuj Daga & Arjun Sharma

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THE CASE:


Disallowed List put up at the end of the year > Some Students unhappy / disagree with decision > Try convincing Punde > Punde Firm > Students try Arm Twisting, their parents use contacts with DTE > DTE calls up Management of AOA

The DTE asked the Management of the Academy of Architecture / Rachana Sansad to reverse the decision taken by the Academic body - the Principal and the teachers. The Management gives orders to the Principal to allow the 3 influential students to escape, to which the Principal rejects - safeguarding the remaining students who may not have political contacts to save their lives. In the pressure of a decision, the solution comes out to be a resignation.

This looks like a clear case of interference of the DTE with the management of the college.
Why?

Because some rich influential parent decides to show off his/her power to save the case of his child.

What does a firm disciplined behaviour of the Academy mean to the high authority?: Spoiling relationship with the bodies that may give concessions and money for its 'growth, strength and stability'.

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LARGER QUESTIONS:

I have questions:

• Do students come to an Institute for education or to show off their money?
• Do students understand the essential difference between education and degree?
• What value systems are parents operating upon today?
• What must be the ethics of using powerful political networks?
• What do we look forward to from an Institution that claims itself to be one of the best architectural institutes in the country?

And I already had these remarks earlier:

Problematising Academy of Architecture

Socio cultural issues in Academic projects

Bourgeois culture has forced people to mistake education for a degree, which can be applied to any job to earn a lot of money. Students are completely taken by a degraded value system where parents teach them to cheat. Some parents come to us demanding unreasonable grants, to the extent of telling us "that's how it works..."

As Prof. Shinkre shrugs: "Students no longer come here for education..."

Ravindra Punde lived Noam Chomksy's essay "The responsibility of Intellectuals". Chomsky opens his essay by saying "IT IS THE RESPONSIBILITY of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies."

I have longer comments that I must not mix up with this post.

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vii


REFLECTIONS:

Lastly, as I said four years ago, and they gave me all awards for voicing it:

We live in a "cinema for the blind"!

Faces

After Disallowed Lists:
All of them were really tensed and busy today.
Here is what their faces said:

Thesis Tidbits

Process / Cinema for the Blind:

These are some discussions that I had with all my faculty during my thesis. I realized that I hardly have ANY process drawings for my thesis. While I looked into my older files lying in my cupboard today, I found this file where I had preserved neatly all the papers that I scribbled on for 2 years.

That is a lot of writing - most of which seems absolute useless. However, what I do realize is that I wrote - whether it mattered or not - i kept clarifying myself and wrote. Lot more things. But here I put mind maps with:

1. Padma Desai

2. Prasad Shetty:

3. Madhumita Nandi:

4. Myself.

Sunday Times

Sundays are best time to reflect on the self and outside oneself. I am with the newspapers at length over the morning and in my mind I keep reflecting over every piece of news that I read - subject wise, content wise, language wise and from my own position. Then carefully pondering over all of it, I channel the entire information in the way it shall make sense to me or be relevant to my interests. So there is a kind of reshuffle in the brain and restructuring of the entire news that I read. The mind becomes like a hard disk with sectors of information. Images, text, events - all are chaffed out. 


Often I make imaginary discussions in my head or smaller lectures which I could discuss with students. These are always lost. The funny part with news is that it is so generic that it always allows you to form an opinion - agree or disagree. I love rationalizing my formed opinion , because it gives me a chance to engage with my own history and reconsider my own biases. I keep refining my biases and recording them so that my opinions are consistent. I wonder how successful i have been with being consistent. 


For example, I was wondering about how interesting it is for a newspaper like Times of India to bring out a supplement on spirituality in times when our actions are heavily driven by commercialization and unrationalized aspiration. For India, spiritualism has still not assumed a relegated position in life, given people's priorities of money, material and possession. Spiritualism or spiritual thought still remains the essential component that validates their action. On one hand, such a supplement tries to infuse some amount of idealism within the masses. On the other hand it makes people evaluate their actions by laying out moral standards. But at the same time, it also reinforces the ideas spiritual living as against the rational way of living.


A supplement like Times Life reflects on the issues of social behaviour of the elite. They mostly talk of a refined class, critically bringing their actions into contrasting perspectives. It is interesting for a bourgeois society like ours to read such reflections. 


I personally like reading the technology section where the news paper discusses how to choose between technology and how best one can exploit their gadgets. They also tell you softwares and tricks which simply ease your life. But there are so many interesting things going on. One can not possibly engage with all of it! sigh! However, they exist and we must acknowledge them... and be aware to be able to pull out of our archives at the right time in the right place!

Spatial Chaos in Personal spaces

We do not know how to move in our own houses when a lot of people gather in our space. We create awkward pockets- completely displacing and misplacing objects and people when population of both increases. This is what produces chaos. Some people celebrate this chaos and describe it as the character of our society. I am not a fond proponent of this theory.

The contradiction is that although there may have been arguments that our society has been excellent in space management, I wonder if we need to invent a new term to address a chaos like such. What is this shortcoming to handle more people to be called? This cumulative change in our living conditions have always been beyond our comprehension. Many amongst us like to romanticize about such condition of chaos. This chaos is physical because of the indecisiveness of a lot of individuals. It is mental unclarity that manifests physically.

Architects therefore have a definite role to play here. The essential job of the architect is to plan spaces for people in such a way that this mental chaos can be abated. In some ways, it is mismanagement or lack of planning that should be attributed to people of here. But long old arguments have always maintained that Indian ways of planning and management have been meticulous. But I wonder how to place my argument amidst this metanarrative...? Is the context I am talking about specific to a specific time in history? It is of global historical space of now? I shall have to investigate into historical records and ascertain my argument....

(investigation under construction)

Of Financial Institutions & Social codes

Financial institutions (banks, investment companies, stock markets, etc.) have flattened peoples lives by sucking in all their money at their nascent ages making them think of their lives 20 years later. What financial institutions do is that they create within people's minds fear of the future. They always project people's futures as negative - completely blanketed with health problems, social problems and emphasizing the negative projections of today's world. Through this they are able to construct a story where life seems unmanageable at the beginning, which when mediated by these institutions assumes a positive end. Financial institutions do not allow you to take any risks. They flatten your life. Your life is made uni-dimensional. One track - where you are projected to be in a bad state and vulnerable to all possible harsh effects of life. So we never live the present but think of 20 years hence. This is not to say that we must not anticipate our futures. But the proportion of our resources that we allocate for 20 years hence may seem questionable.

In this process, it is only the financial institutions that reap the benefit of our money, giving us a paltry sum out of their profit. Are we such timid people who donot have ideas to do more creative things with our money? These financial institutions have created a hegemonic (subconsciously dominating) condition where their web of difficult descriptions of life do not allow us to be or think creatively. We get caught in our 'constructed'/'projected' difficulties even if our life may be much better. They stunt our creative growth as creative individuals. They suppress our enthusiasm. They restrict our dreams. On of the biggest problems of our society is that we do not appreciate dreamers - or people who have the capacity to dream.

Measured risks form an essential part of our life. Financial institutions create within us fears of failure. They choose moral ethical and social tactics to target their audience. They would talk of family values and the assumed responsibility of a son/daughter towards his/her family and make them conscious of their roles. One doesnot need to be burdened by such roles but take it up willingly, naturally. Financial institutions force it upon us and make our family relationships formal. Money becomes, quite absurdly, the medium that ties us to our family members more than relationships...these misplaced notions have to be critically considered. They create frictions and unnecessary tensions that donot need to exist within a familial setup.

And what can financial institutions do for a person losing ones life any way? In the middle class, how many people really lose lives because of lack of money? I guess middle class people do have strong networks to sustain themselves of such eventualities. Here too, the financial institutions create an image of 'awkwardness' that one 'should' feel while borrowing money from their own friends and relatives. Every person in a middle class setup understands each others' needs and the financial institutions almost project it as profane. In  other words, money and its virtual lack (as created by such methods) creates a completely new social and moral code of behaviour. It is internalized and you are forced to follow it - that is hegemony. I wonder if one person shall be ever able to challenge it.

But essentially, one needs to keep a check of inflation - thats the reason one must make a basic investment. Other than that, it's paying someone else to fiddle with your money. And on top of that, we get into countless amount of paper work and maintaining documents. There may be exceptional stories, no questions regarding that. There may be cases where such systems help. But I strongly feel it's over emphasized and becomes deterrant - because it is almost like a fever that grows on to you...

Oxygen Machine

Lungs of the Building

Detail: Outside & Inside 

Opposite to Academy of Architecture, I saw something that I found really fascinating.

I related it back to the Oxygen Machine that our students had proposed during the Orientation workshop 2010-11. 

"One of the direct consequences of a grave traffic jam would be increase in the amount of pollution. Students overtly pointed out that there would be need of more fresh air and hence the idea of Oxygen Supplying Machines, which would provide fresh air to the much needed spaces in this situation. The group chose an external facade of the college to suck in fresh air and prepared a large blowing assembly - a contraption which throbbed through specially designed bamboo hinges and covered by a cloth which would blow in fresh air. The Oxygen Machine magnified the experience of breathing in the city."

excerpt from "Orientation Workshop Summary 2010-11"

More ideas. To be elaborated later.

Quotations

Persons can be hypocrites. Can cultures also be so? Does the hypocrisy of cultures on closer scrutiny turn out to be a contradiction in the human condition itself? For that matter, is a hypocrite only a casual cheat? Or is he someone who reaffirms the basic human values in a word hostile to such values, while himself succumbing to worldly temptations? Is a hypocrite an unwilling critic of everyday life whose personal failure signals a larger cultural crisis?
-Ashis Nandy, the Uncolonised mind: A post colonial view of India and the west, pg 83-84

“Two clichés make us laugh but a hundred clichés move us because we sense dimly the clichés are talking among themselves, celebrating a reunion. Just as the extreme of pain meets sensual pleasure, and the extreme of perversion orders on mystical energy, so too the extreme of banality allows us to catch a glimpse of the sublime.”
-Umberto Eco

We all have our secret chart to tastes, distastes, indifferences, don’t we?
-Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, p. 18

Lapod Diary: Part 2

The Built Environment

Architecture:


It is refreshing to see the modernity has yet not adulterated the village to a large extent. In whatever taste modernity has been appropriated, it doesnot really deface or affect the village adversely as a visual journey. People here are conscientious and understand how their building techniques help them contextually.
One can find few typologies of houses here (Drawings have been made by students which shall form a part of the official publication):

1. A basic enclosure with bare minimum rooms: This kind of house consists of an enclosing wall. This thick wall has niches carved inside it where people store all necessities for daily activities. The only covered spaces are the kitchen and living space, which too are sometimes open – depending on the season.

2. A minimum set of rooms with an open court in the centre: These are houses which are typical of joint families. Various rooms are shared by individual families and the courtyard is the common space. Such houses have made these rooms ‘pakka’ over time and thus have a common terrace over them. This terrace becomes space to store various things like pots, dry twigs, etc.

3. Havelis: There are smaller havelis and larger havelis. Havelis mostly are more than one floor. Both types have various sets of rooms. However, the size of the courtyard in the centre varies. Some courts are just for bringing in light while others are voluminous spaces that connect internal public spaces across various floors.

4. Those with storage: Based on occupations, houses have different storage areas. These storage areas include those for pots, livestock like sheep, cows, buffaloes, etc. etc. These areas are just added rooms which connect either from inside the house or outside for servicing the buyers.

Water Supply

Water is supplied to houses in the morning. Currently, few people collect water from the tubewells installed around the village or wells present in the village. Larger houses (more than one storey) have water tanks installed while other keep them stored in containers.The basic houses have a partitioned bathing area and sanitation facilities. Waste water is let out in open drains that can be seen throughout the village. Soil water is collected in grouped soak pits.

Construction

Houses in the villages are mostly made by the local material such as stones, bricks and timber. The roofing is done either in clay tiles or in weeds. Newer constructions are in concrete and hence hace beams and slabs. Concrete construction is mostly unfinished due to unskilled labour.

Floors use kota stone or dholpur stone. Pink seems to be a dominating colour of the buildings. However, many of the smaller self-made houses use cow dung plaster on floors.

The traditional choolha is still a part of their daily cooking activity. Women folk collect firewood from the nearby forest edge. The choolha brews out sweet smelling smoke which acts as a disinfectant and gives the houses a peculiar sweet smell.

One can find neem trees in the village. Generous plantations of bogain villa shrubs can be seen over the village. As mentioned earlier, there is a wheat farm that bounds the place.
Peacocks fly over the entire village, hiding themselves from the people.

Stray Dogs

Many a times, when I watch at the stray dogs on the streets, I end up involuntary comparing their lives to mine. Most of the times, I feel they are better off, because they do not have to answer any one around them: They can sleep any where, any time, they can eat any thing any time, they can choose their partner any where, any time; in fact they can also choose if they want to exist or not any time. Stray dogs are important cases to consider since dogs have been a part of our domestic lives for a long time now. One can associate them with having domestic sociable characteristics.

I think the best aspect about such animals is that they are left to their own once they grow up by their parents. Parents do not bother them any more! I am not sure if they follow the taboo of incest.

I wonder how dogs are never able to make or designate for themselves a living space. They choose to remain stray. Kennels, are but built by humans for them. Why don’t dogs, particularly stray ones, build themselves anything? Can we thus conclude that they choose to be stray? I have seldom seen them being possessive over territory. They must be perhaps. I  have not really invested in their behavioural patterns. But I have literally seen them eat, drink, breathe, stay in anything and anywhere. They even choose to defecate anywhere. Can life get more simpler? Seems like a joke!

I wonder why all of a sudden I chose to write about this today, and yet not well written. I shall need time to make it structurally strong and coherent. But I believe I have been procrastinating the elaboration of a lot of ideas. This is absolutely dangerous and I had to break out of it. When I am in no frame of mind, I do produce incoherent work like this. This is the reason why I avoid working without the right mood. But then, there is an aspect of practice which one needs to inculcate. If I must do something in writing, I have to constantly hone my skills in this field by constantly practicing this activity. I must be rigorous with it and produce profusely - especially when I have ideas.