Prof. V.SRINIVASAN RESPONDS ....

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Prof. V.SRINIVASAN RESPONDS to the last post

Dear Dharumi:

You have given one aspect of the present day relating to our students. Good. Let me describe another sorry state of affairs of the present day.

A few days ago I was proceeding from Madurai to Aravind Hospital in Tirunelveli on one of my official business. As my car was crossing the Taluk office of Tirumangalam I was reminded of the day in the year 1965 when the faculty members of American College drafted for work as polling officers for the Panchayat elections as one group without exception challenged the then very powerful DRO (District Revenue Officer) of Madurai to apologize for coming late (not by a few minutes, a full 3 hours) to conduct the briefing of the polling staff.

Captain Sundaramurthy, myself and K. Srinivasan (all NCC officers) started the challenge by asking a simple question to the DRO very politely on what arrangements he has made for the lunch of the polling officer who have been waiting for him since 10 am that morning. He wanted to brush aside the question as irrelevant and proceeded straight away to start the briefing without even a word of apology for not keeping to the time. This infuriated The American College staff. We all (about 30 of us) walked out of the hall as one group to show the Government official that he will not be able to run the elections without our help. Prof. P T Chelappa, Prof. Moses Ponniah and several other very senior persons of that time were present. All of them walked out without any prompting. After a lot of pleading and almost begging by the subordinate staff and after the DRO came down apologized and requested that we should cooperate in running the election we decided to listen to him. Meanwhile he had arranged for refreshment (some snacks and coffee) as well. We cooperated did a good job and the election was held superbly.

The Tasildar of Tirumangalam who probably has been a victim of the tyranny of the DRO met us on the evening and congratulated all of us the staff of American College for bringing the tough RDO on his knees. He felt very happy. He disbursed our travel and other entitlements on the spot which was very unusual those days. As I was describing the entire episode iwith all minute detail to my colleague who was travelling with me and listening to the episode patiently, I did not realize that we had reached Tirunelveli already.

Do we have such a faculty in American College now to talk about? If that situation is restored the American College will save itself.



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