CHENNAI: Around 250 students of IIT-Madras went on a token hunger strike outside the Himalaya common mess on the campus on Thursday evening, protesting the poor quality of food served by the private mess contractor. The students, who later marched to the Director’s bungalow, claimed they were forced to protest after repeated requests to change the contractor failed to attract any action from the administration. According to the students, as it was vacation time at IIT, both the messes run by the administration — Krishna and Cauvery — were closed. Therefore, the 2,600 students, who had stayed back at over 15 hostels on campus over the vacation, were left with no choice but to register with the mess run by the private contractor.Terming the quality of the food at the Himalaya mess “pathetic and miserable”, the students said they had resorted to the hunger strike because the contractor had closed one of the four functioning dining halls on Thursday, on the grounds that there was a labour shortage. The students said this left them standing in long queues in the sun for lunch. When questioned, the supervisors allegedly challenged them to report the issue to the college administration. “The milk here cannot be called milk. It is water with milk flavour. If you throw a rock on the roti, the rock will break. That is the scenario in the mess,” said Shravan (name changed), a third-year mechanical engineering student. Some of the students said having one contractor for all the halls had never been the arrangement at the institution. This happened only after the current contractor won the bid for the mess by quoting an extremely low price in the tender last year. “They gave the entire mess to one player and it became a monopoly. This is the reason for the state of affairs,” said one of the students. Dean of Students L S Ganesh said the administration was aware of problems with the service provider and was taking all steps to rectify the issue. He said a fresh tender to choose a new contractor for the next academic year would be put out on Monday. Further, officials said notice had already been issued to the current contractor to open the dining hall that had been closed on Thursday. Several checks and balances would be incorporated in the new contract for the next academic year to ensure quality food, they said. However, issuing executive orders to close the mess immediately as sought by the students, was not possible as alternative arrangements to provide food had to be made before taking any such step, the officials said.
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