For the last 12 years, M.D. Tiwari has held the reins of Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad. He has "ruled" the institute as a tyrannical dictator ruling a country, keeping the citizens quite by terrorizing them. The director of an educational institute of IIITA's stature needs to be a progressive academician who works with the students and the faculty to find ways to spur creativity and innovation at the institute. M.D. Tiwari (MDT), on the other hand, does the exact opposite of that. He is a politician. All he really cares about is power and keeping his post as the director for as long as possible and he will go to any lengths to make it happen.
Epitome of Nepotism
He has created a whole ecosystem in the college administration consisting mostly of his relatives or his relatives' relatives. The peons, the clerks, the Deputy Finance Officer, the Assistant Registrar - all of them apparently "personally know Tiwari sir". If you get on any of their bad side, if you try to say no to their tyrannical decisions, they would go and have a chat with "Tiwari sir" and get you suspended/rusticated. This is the kind of threats that we heard from pretty much everyone in the administration for 4 years of our time at IIITA. And the same continues today. IIITA's administrative department is the epitome of nepotism. The whole institute is run by Tiwari and his family members and the whole ecosystem is so strongly bound together that there is no way an erring officer can be punished for his wrongdoings. His/her boss and their bosses are all in it together. Everyone is scratching each others' back and siphoning off shitloads of money while they are at it.
The Scaremongering
M.D. Tiwari's "leadership" style has always completely been based on terrorizing the students or anyone else who demands change. Basic human rights like
freedom of speech are taken away from the students as soon as they enter this "temple of education". Students have to be very careful about what they say and to whom they say it because their statements may immediately lead to their suspension or dismissal from the institute. The fact that all of the interview videos from the recent protests at IIITA show the students with faces completely covered just goes to show the amount of fear that Tiwari has been able to instill in their minds. College is a place where you learn to question everything. 'Questioning everything' is how you learn science, and it is how you learn about various social issues of the day. This is how you develop as a socially responsible human being. What is mind boggling to me is that the head honcho of an education institute of IIITA's stature would actually adopt the practice of physically punishing the students if they tried to question his ways. There have been countless number of times that the students of the institute have seen their colleagues been physically beaten up by the director on the premise of "disciplining" them. There are accounts of students getting beaten up for not attending classes or just for walking down the street holding each other's hand.
Although he might try to create an image of someone who deeply cares about the students in front of the media, students are the least important item in his priority list which is topped by money and power. Evidently, in the light of current protests, the students were banned from drinking water from any of the institute's water fountains after protesting all day long peacefully in scorching heat. This is how much he cares about the students and their well being.
Time to go
There comes a time in every dictator's life when the people under his rule get severely overwhelmed by the tyranny, and revolt. Tiwari is no less than a dictator himself and he considers IIITA to be his mini-Egypt where he can rule for eternity without getting challenged. Evidently, he even got his age reduced by four years just to be able to keep his post and not retire (See related article here:
http://tinyurl.com/3l9leyn). I have news for you, Mr. Tiwari - your time has come. Your tyranny has cost too many innocent students their lives. How can you have these deaths on your conscience and still keep going? You may like to think that you are helping students by snubbing their protests and their questions but all you have been doing all this while is scaring them to fall in and conform to the tyrannical rules made at your whim. The students and the alumni stand together on this today - be it in front of the administrative building, or at the India Gate in Delhi, or in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Seattle, California, or wherever they are - we all stand together and demand your resignation. It's time for you to go.
