Anna University's unholy liason

‘Happy men are full of the present, for its bounty suffices them; and wise men also, for its duties engage them’. Victorian writer Thomas Carlyle while penning the opening lines of Signs of the Times would not have had Anna University in mind but that seems to be the case in the light of a recent article by our staffer in Chennai. According to the report, second generation victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy along with college alumni have requested the authorities of Anna University to return Rs 5 lakh received from Dow Chemicals as sponsorship for an annual college fest. All attempts by the group to get in touch with the authorities have been in vain. Dow Chemicals currently owns the Union Carbide India Limited factory that caused India’s greatest — even on an international scale — industrial tragedy, which killed an estimated 10,000 people within 72 hours of the leak. Many thousands more have been affected by diseases related to the leak.

More than 25 years after the catastrophe little has been done for the victims and the region is yet to be detoxified, with about 390 tonnes of chemicals abandoned at the factory, contaminating the groundwater and posing a clear and present danger to the lives of people in the area.

Anna University, the report says, has been receiving the sponsorship from Dow Chemicals for the third straight year and has been stonewalling repeated requests to discontinue its association with the company.

It is disgraceful that an educational institution with the reputation of Anna University should take such a stand and bring disrepute upon itself. That the authorities have preferred to take the money and run rather than weigh the costs of an association with such a tainted company shows that they have no thought for their social responsibility or the impact on students. Their avarice becomes even more appalling in light of the fact that the gas tragedy is covered in the university syllabus under Professional Ethics. Whatever the institution believes, it certainly does not include ‘practice what you preach’.

Strict dress codes and regulating the use of mobile phones in the campus do not make for better citizens. For that you need a commitment to right behaviour. Since the management seems so clueless, perhaps when the next Professional Ethics class begins, it would not be a bad idea if the who’s who of the university attend it. Who knows, they might learn a thing or two, even this late in life.