As we leave, IIT Kanpur feels like a prison

Disclaimer: The views presented below are of the author (Shubham Mirg) and are not in any manner representative of the views of Vox Populi as a body or IIT Kanpur in general.

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“There is a machinery that assures dissymmetry, disequilibrium, difference. Consequently, it does not matter who exercises power. Any individual, taken almost at random, can operate the machine: in the absence of the director, his family, his friends, his visitors, even his servants (Bentham, 45). Similarly, it does not matter what motive animates him: the curiosity of the indiscreet, the malice of a child, the thirst for knowledge of a philosopher who wishes to visit this museum of human nature, or the perversity of those who take pleasure in spying and punishing. The more numerous those anonymous and temporary observers are, the greater the risk for the inmate of being surprised and the greater his anxious awareness of being observed. The Panopticon is a marvellous machine which, whatever use one may wish to put it to, produces homogeneous effects of power.”

—–Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison

I lost my bicycle last summer, perhaps SIS guards took it for ‘protection’, perhaps it was stolen but I have come to enjoy my little wanderings around the campus. A little far from my favorite tree on the campus stands the statue of a soldier in front of which I now stand. I stare at him with a certain unease, beyond him someone stares back at me, the camera stares at me. Even the soldier looks the other way and so do I and so do we.

“Hall premise is not a private place which includes your room,” reads a mail from the hall warden^[1] and the unease finds me again. I meet Butterscotch on my way back and we both enter the hostel. I enter my very public room alone leaving Butterscotch behind and now I am faced with a dilemma would stripping in my room count as public obscenity? There are no easy answers and Butterscotch nods from outside.

The camera greets me at the hall block entrance^[2] and it knows all about me but then I ask myself, what do I know about it? As the French philosopher Michel Foucault said, “He is seen, but he does not see; he is the object of information, never a subject in communication”, I am but reduced to a set of appearances for the judgements of the observer, so be those for his well meaning intentions or for his perversions, it does not matter for I do not see. Back at the hostel gate I am drawn to a confrontation happening between the SIS guard and a hall resident. The entry of non residential females has been barred by the decree of warden until parents are informed.^[3] And just when I thought I had left the unease behind, it returns.

I wait the confrontation out to engage the SIS guard in a conversation while a camera shamelessly looks at us. “Keep standing, that is what we have been told, if you sit, if you go fetch water, if you take a pee break we will know and we will come for you,” he says with a sigh, as he opens the register for the female visitor to enter her details. I stare at him concerned and with a certain unease. Noticing the same, he tries to reconcile by saying “The camera helps us catch miscreants”. I move towards the library not entirely convinced.

In my anxious self to find my escape in books, I walk with a certain enthusiasm, almost feeling rejuvenated, to the library until I am stopped for my I-card at the entrance. I tell the SIS guard I do not have it, slightly annoyed that I still haven’t found my books. He asks me to enter my details and since the overhead camera wasn’t enough, I provide yet more information about me. The unease returns and I hurry towards the books.

Later in the evening, I grab a coffee in CCD and with a certain ease, I leave the laptop on the center table knowing that the camera watches us and no one will steal it. In doing so, I trusted the camera more than the people and the realization turns my ease into unease. I am tempted to do something about it but where do I start, what can I possibly do? I leave for another wandering and I come back to find my laptop still at the place I left it in. 

I find a mango tree with ripe yellow delights hanging all over its branches, I try to pluck one only to be stopped by the SIS guard who has orders not to let anyone pluck and he informs me the same and further that any exceptions will not be made in the face of the camera watching us. I give up my desire to eat a mango with some reluctance but with the same old unease.

In a disgruntled sigh and a certain nonchalance, I sit underneath that mango tree and rather than resisting the unease, I peer through the time spent in the campus looking for the same unease. I am reminded of the arbitrary closure of gate between GH1 and GH2, because apparently free movement between the above two halls is not okay but between hall 10 and hall 11, it is okay. I am reminded of the student evicted from the hall because he spoke to the warden like an equal.^[4] I am reminded of the pointlessness of the confrontations with SIS guards when the ones yielding power sit in offices passing ordinances. The SIS guard walks to me and requests me to sit on a bench and I smile and I nod and I leave.

In my desire to read something soothing and apolitical, I start reading Vox. While sufficiently distracted, I find myself back at the statue; we are, after all, that soldier in the gaze of the camera. The soldier looks the other way and so do I and so do we.

[1] Mail sent out to H1 students

[2] Cameras are present at the block entrances of Hall 12

[3] Being followed in a particular hall as communicated in the GBM dated 31/10/2019

[4] Eviction- from GBM dated 31/10/19