For me, it was a visit to the campus after more than 15 years. The first thing that struck me was the traffic on campus: I think I saw more vehicles in a day than I did in all four years of my B.Tech. I later heard that the situation had been even worse before motorbikes had been banned for students. Perhaps the campus should have a no-motorised-vehicles Wednesday or some such for people to realize what is possible with cycles.

The other thing that strikes one is the number of new buildings and buildings-under-construction. Infinity corridor seems to be acquiring an infinity of buildings. I suppose this is unavoidable given the four or five-fold increase in the number of students and the concomitant increase in departments, faculty, administrative staff, what-have-you. After all outside, too, things have changed dramatically: One night on Gulmohur Terrace, I was stunned to see the lights of "Hiranandani": The last  time I looked, it was undulating hills as backdrop to the lake.

The lake: Well, now that Vihar is out of bounds, Powai lake is the only lake accessible to campus residents. Surely the uncared-for look of the lake is avoidable. On one of our morning walks, Varun actually burst into tears and said, "The next time we come, there won't be a lake". From various conversations I had with faculty and students (I won't quote anyone:You are free to comment on this post if you like) I too got a discouraging picture. The students claim they are overworked, and have no time for extra-curricular activities like cleaning up the lake or anything else. The faculty seem to suggest that students inhabit a certain "comfort zone", and the sense of "One person can make a difference" has disappeared.

This sense of disempowerment, I am quite familiar with, living in Thekambattu: People feel that one person cannot make a difference any more; so one may as well join the herd where there is safety in numbers. It is quite possible that the increase in size of IIT-B with the increase in bureaucracy has given rise to this sense of disempowerment.

As I see it, the two stakeholders who can be prime-movers are faculty and students. The faculty are the long-term residents and the students are the most numerous. It is obviously impossible for fifty faculty to gather on a Saturday morning to pull water hyacinth out of  the lake, but three or four faculty working with fifty students can make a great difference. Together they could create a sense of community which could come to include mess workers, non-academic staff, and just about anyone who enjoys an evening walk or a morning run along  the lake.

I know of one success-story-in-progress at Baner Hill in Pune which started with Rohit and a handful of people and now boasts involvement from people from all walks of life.

And, who knows, if the campus residents can script a Powai Lake success story; the next time I visit, I could perhaps take the boys out rowing from a functional boat-club rather than having to tell them 25-year-old stories about it while showing them the unused jetty.