What is IIT Roorkee lipstick competition or scandal ??
We all know about the infamous lipstick scandal at IIT Roorkee and government ordering a probe. Why so much fuss was there against this normal college prank?
Or was it really shameful on our part to conduct such an event?
The tragedy of people in their 20s is that while the society expects them to be independent, mature, responsible, and everything else you would associate with being an adult, their lives continue to be decided and governed to a significant extent by people in their 40s or older.
They live in a world whose laws are made, at best, by the generation before theirs, and at worst, by people who lived decades ago. While they are drivers of social change, they also have to bear the residual effect of whatever the generation before theirs thought was acceptable. It's the best of times; it's the worst of times.
The IIT Roorkee lipstick brouhaha is just another in the series of incidents resulting from the perennial conflict between the old and the new. Usually, the overall sentiment in such cases is decided by how the media treats the issue. They rose to the occasion and chose to create as much hype about it as they could, treating it like the scandal of the century because apparently a bunch of kids at a PREMIER ENGINEERING INSTITUTION like IIT are expected to show better discretion.
Ultimately, this links to the fact that Indian culture has an obsession with parenting. We parent our kids far too long and far too much. We want to look over them and take care of them well beyond adulthood. We then want to search for nice, fair, educated, well-bred brides/grooms for them, an exercise for which the entire extended family gets its cogs and wheels into motion. And while we take care of them, we want them to spend their time studying, because, apparently, college education is only about getting a degree,
However, there is one thing of note here—the cascading effect of mob mentality, which causes a need at every level to be seen as having done something in response to a problem.
The media made a big deal out of it, so politicians needed to be seen as having done something. So they rapped the knuckles of the Dean. In turn, he needed to be seen as having done something, so he suspended three organizers. This seemed to appease the mob, so everything settled and the country moved on something else to get outraged about.
At every link in this chain, someone could have used their head and made a judgment rather than pass on the parcel of responsibility. Above all, I expected the Dean to call bullshit on the whole thing and say that nothing objectionable had happened. But the pressure to be seen as having taken an action at that post is tremendous, and you need someone of immense strength to oppose it. It's just easier to suspend kids instead. IIT Roorkee is not alone in this. Just last year, a lot of outrage was created over the fact that a belly dancing performance was held at IIT Bombay. Jobless religious groups from the US rose to condemn the incident. The argument of course was that IITians are expected to study. The Director could have taken a call and asked everyone to shut up, but it was easier to punish the organizing body instead.
The IIT Roorkee fiasco is just an instance of a over-reaching problem caused due to a mix of Indian conservatism, obsession with parenting, the misplaced delusion that education is merely about getting grades, and the inability of the country as a whole to get a life.
Or was it really shameful on our part to conduct such an event?
The tragedy of people in their 20s is that while the society expects them to be independent, mature, responsible, and everything else you would associate with being an adult, their lives continue to be decided and governed to a significant extent by people in their 40s or older.
They live in a world whose laws are made, at best, by the generation before theirs, and at worst, by people who lived decades ago. While they are drivers of social change, they also have to bear the residual effect of whatever the generation before theirs thought was acceptable. It's the best of times; it's the worst of times.
The IIT Roorkee lipstick brouhaha is just another in the series of incidents resulting from the perennial conflict between the old and the new. Usually, the overall sentiment in such cases is decided by how the media treats the issue. They rose to the occasion and chose to create as much hype about it as they could, treating it like the scandal of the century because apparently a bunch of kids at a PREMIER ENGINEERING INSTITUTION like IIT are expected to show better discretion.
Ultimately, this links to the fact that Indian culture has an obsession with parenting. We parent our kids far too long and far too much. We want to look over them and take care of them well beyond adulthood. We then want to search for nice, fair, educated, well-bred brides/grooms for them, an exercise for which the entire extended family gets its cogs and wheels into motion. And while we take care of them, we want them to spend their time studying, because, apparently, college education is only about getting a degree,
However, there is one thing of note here—the cascading effect of mob mentality, which causes a need at every level to be seen as having done something in response to a problem.
The media made a big deal out of it, so politicians needed to be seen as having done something. So they rapped the knuckles of the Dean. In turn, he needed to be seen as having done something, so he suspended three organizers. This seemed to appease the mob, so everything settled and the country moved on something else to get outraged about.
At every link in this chain, someone could have used their head and made a judgment rather than pass on the parcel of responsibility. Above all, I expected the Dean to call bullshit on the whole thing and say that nothing objectionable had happened. But the pressure to be seen as having taken an action at that post is tremendous, and you need someone of immense strength to oppose it. It's just easier to suspend kids instead. IIT Roorkee is not alone in this. Just last year, a lot of outrage was created over the fact that a belly dancing performance was held at IIT Bombay. Jobless religious groups from the US rose to condemn the incident. The argument of course was that IITians are expected to study. The Director could have taken a call and asked everyone to shut up, but it was easier to punish the organizing body instead.
The IIT Roorkee fiasco is just an instance of a over-reaching problem caused due to a mix of Indian conservatism, obsession with parenting, the misplaced delusion that education is merely about getting grades, and the inability of the country as a whole to get a life.
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