Where the Mind is without Fear (Rabindranath Tagore)

Human Size Abodes

World renowned Applied Mathematics department in Brown University was housed in an old house with a spiral staircase. It had a single bathroom for men and women. World authorities on Control system would write manuscripts on an old thick circular table, that seemed like it had served as a dining table in a previous avatar.

A souvenir from any college in India, on the other hand is a glossy affair. Cover of the magazine is usually a building with all students and faculty standing in front totally overwhelmed by the building's size. If one feels helpless to modify situations around him/her in India, it is because of such straight jackets, be it an imposing building, an inflexible system or the weight of any elder's advice. Advice becomes an edict from an authority and not a direction.

Manipal has several colleges and banking institutes. Staff of these institutions built homes for their use during retirement. Since students from Malaysia used to come to Manipal for part of their studies, a tradition of renting these houses to them had become established. Usually, but not always, these were two bed room houses, with an European style bathroom attached to main bedroom and another Indian style used by guests and children in the other bedroom. In addition, there were government built MIG houses, as opposed to LIG and HIG houses. The Medium Income Group houses were two small bedroom and a single bathroom houses.

KarMic Training centres consisted of finding a two bedroom two bathroom place and walking in with the whole gang to determine which room would be a good classroom, where we should have the library, remaining a bedroom and a kitchen usually serving as laboratories. Using Vivek Pawar's suggestion, we purposely had only three computers for four engineers, so the engineers were forced to talk to each other. In addition, we emphasized that you did not always have to be in front of the computer feeding it information.

In the classroom eight chairs would be organized in a horseshoe manner in a single row and classes would be held with only a blackboard. The other eight engineers would be in the two labs in groups of four. The engineers who would be students had a major say in the decisions. They could modify the arrangement anytime they felt necessary.

Initially, two engineers were placed in one of the MIG houses. First three months, the company took care of paying the rent, electricity and other bills. Later the responsibility was transferred to the engineers though the amount continued to be paid by the company. Last quarter, the engineers got trained in driving, applying for telephones and gas cylinders, big issues those years. During the initial phases, when the engineer understood the loan from the eventual design group, in a manner similar to what a bank usually does, an insurance was taken on him/her. In case the engineer died, the loan would be recovered from the insurance coverage. However, we enhanced this concept and paid half the premium for insurance that would pay the engineer in case of a mishap and also paid half the premium for payment to the engineer's parents. Slowly we ensured the engineer was now responsible for more than himself/herself. In initial years, the 11 weeks of class followed by two weeks of time off were followed strictly. Classes were held Wednesday till Sunday to allow outsiders to come and teach during the weekend. So no holidays were allowed during the eleven weeks - None. Classes were to start daily at 9:00 AM and at 2:00 p.m. First few days, engineers came late, we started making a histogram on how many joined at 8:57, 58, 59, 9:00, 9:01 etc and the classed started on time after that.

Food and living expenses were covered in the fess. We also covered all laundry to ensure engineers learnt to spend the day in clean laundered clothes. Monthly, Rs 250 was paid so that engineers could call home. Connection with home was important.

Engineers were paid Rs. 1500 per month for working for the company for one hour per day. Usually it is typical to pay a stipend. That decouples the idea of work and money. Each evening, we would all troop to the western edge of Manipal from where the Arabian Sea is visible and discuss this work. The work could be recruitment, accounts, computer set up or local administration or library maintenance.

Quite a few of our engineers came from poor families. There were engineers that sent money orders home from this monthly income. I think the number of engineers that were poor, or had lost family members etc makes up a good 70% of the population. We requested our engineers to use local small shops for phone calls even though the training centre had STD, we wanted to make sure the shops thrived.

We had our own electrician, plumber, gardeners and people to clean the houses. All houses would be swept daily and mopped every other day. Home owners were happy to entrust their houses. Sathish, who owned a STD booth joined us to organize all the help, he still works with us. He still operates the STD booth.

Detoxification

One of our engineers moved his household items. With rains being torrential in Manipal, it took the moving company a few days extra to deliver the items. Though our engineer was extremely upset and would not tip the people who delivered, feeling sorry I was trying to pay a small amount to the people who delivered. I got caught and one engineer asked 'if I was being naive'. I mumbled something that day.

A year later the answer was much clearer. We were trying to be naive. Our society has become so polluted that we have become extremely cynical. We expect everyone is trying to cheat, we also take this mode of operation to be natural. In US, the case is different. Strangers will greet you and normal assumption between two people is that each is honest. In our closed environment, we have become such people. It removes layers of distrust and allows us to live a fuller life. Friendships are deeper. When men and women work together late in the night, men will accompany women and see them safe to their homes. Library door is open and I do not expect our engineers to cheat. The trust has been returned. When new women engineers join the company, parents come to check how the environment. Once the morning is over, they are ready to return home, satisfied with the environment.

We had a case when some of our engineers were working in Bangalore. We had only one house, so one room occupied by women and others by men. One parent was concerned, came to Bangalore to make sure everything was OK, stayed in the house and on the way out said the daughter is safer there than in any other arrangement.

Our engineers go out and sometime lose things having gotten to this level of freedom. Question is why is it not like this in other organizations and places. Even big organizations are worried about theft of cellphones, laptops leave alone purses.