Copyright timesnownews
A new attendance policy in the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has caused an uproar from the MTech and PhD students as they allege that senior PhD scholars are being expected to match their advisors’ 70–80-hour a week schedules, as per media reports. According to reports, the new attendance policy caused protests in the institute's Department of Electronic Systems Engineering (ESE). The department students have claimed that currently they have no specified working hours and just needed to mark attendance twice in a day. As per the policy, users of central facilities such as NNFC, MNCF and the IISc Microscopy Facility must record time separately. Remote work for medical or personal reasons needs written documentation and prior approval. The students have labelled this policy as an attempt to bring “corporate culture” of counting hours into academia, raising health, privacy, and surveillance concerns. In a survey conducted by the IISc Students’ Council (October 4–7), 97 per cent of 110 ESE surveyed students said mandatory working hours are unhelpful, and 96 per cent said they cause stress or hinder academics. The new attendance policy in question was introduced by department chair Mayank Shrivastava in an October 2 email. Following this, IISc Students Council submitted a petition to the IISc director requesting for withdrawal of the policy. As per reports, in the petition, students expressed concern that the new policy mandating 14–16 hours of work each day would leave them with no time for rest or social interaction. Students also warned that this potentially increase the risk of suicides. Students of other departments are also worried that this mandate might get implemented throughout the university, causing an issue for other departments too. This fear showed a hint of turning into reality after IISc on October 9 floated a tender for 7,000 access cards, according to a copy of the tender accessed by HT.
