Kharagpur, March 24: The country’s oldest IIT campus erupted on Sunday following the death of a third-year electrical engineering student who was allegedly left unattended for three hours in the institute’s own hospital.

Protests by some of the country’s best tech brains turned Scholars’ Avenue into a ba-ttlefield and the director was forced to quit.

The demonstrations by over 5,000 students took the authorities by surprise. But most students The Telegraph spoke to said that the “uprising” was waiting to happen.

“Discontent was brewing on the campus and Rohit Kumar’s death acted as a spark,” said one of them.

The Telegraph spoke to present students and alumni to investigate the main reasons behind the “discontent”.

Healthcare

In the country’s premier tech school, BC Roy Technology Hospital is the only medical option for over 7,000 students, 700 faculty members and around 1,500 non-teaching staff.

The hospital meant to serve over 10,000 has 25 beds and seven doctors. It gets Rs 4 crore every year but, according to the students, the money is not well spent.

A day after Rohit’s death turned the glare on the healthcare system, there were only three patients in the hospital. A student attributed the low occupancy to “fear”.

“There are no channels for oxygen, most of the oxygen cylinders are empty, the pathology lab cannot conduct advanced tests and there are hardly any medicines available in the pharmacy,” said the second-year BTech student.

According to him, the only two available medicines are Calpol and Digene.

Outside the hospital, the Maruti Omni on which Rohit was being shifted to Calcutta was parked. Unlike other vans-turned-ambulances, it neither had a stretcher or an oxygen cylinder. “We had to place Rohit diagonally on the back seat,” said his friend Vidya Bhushan, who was with him on the “ambulance”.

The biggest peeve point for the students: the authorities’ apparent lack of initiative in setting up a 400-bed hospital that was promised once.

“We have learnt that the human resource development ministry had cleared the pro-ject, but it did not happen because the institute was not proactive,” said a student.

Acting director Madhusudan Chakraborty said: “We are reviving the plan. Very soon, we’ll reach an understanding with a potential partner.”

Accommodation

The budding engineers learn the art of creating modern residential and commercial complexes, but they spend four years sharing a room of 100sqft or less with at least one more student.

In the first and second years, two students share a room that has only one bed.

“We take turns to sleep on the bed or pool in money and buy another bed,” said a student of the JC Bose hostel.

According to him, the situation is almost the same in the 4,500 rooms of the 18 hostels.

The students are charged Rs 6,000 every semester (four months) as hostel fees.

The campus is wired and the Net can be accessed from all rooms but none of them has a table to keep PCs or laptops. The students keep their luggage on the floor as no cupboards are provided. There isn’t much room left for cupboards anyway.

“We came with such big dreams and here we sleep on the floor, as in a chawl,” said a resident of the BC Roy hostel.

Food

Food served in the hostel dining rooms is also a concern for the students, who pay Rs 8,000 every semester for it.

“We don’t want variety… But we can at least expect safe food, which we don’t get,” said a boarder of the Lala Lajpat Rai hostel, where Rohit stayed.

Contractors to whom the institute has outsourced the supply of food are primarily responsible for its quality.

“If we raise our voice, the contractors threaten us,” said a resident of the Patel hostel.

The acting director said it was difficult to provide food to suit all tastes. “People come here from every region. Their tastes vary.”

In February, students staying at JC Bose had protested against the quality of food and the “high-handed” attitude of the contractor.