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The University of Delhi (DU) has decided to provide hostel facility to students from Delhi-NCR (National Capital Region). 

On Monday, 11th February 2020, DU released an official notice stating the provision of hostel facility to students from Delhi-NCR. The notice further mentioned that students from the NCR under ECA and Sports quota shall not be eligible to avail the facility. The Varsity’s decision comes as a respite especially to students from Noida, Gurugram, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, and Faridabad as most students from these areas do not prefer commuting for 2-4 hours everyday.

Yogesh K. Tyagi, Vice Chancellor told DU Beat, “The University administration has taken this decision as a step towards shaping DU as a more student-friendly space. However, we have received some concerns about the same. We are looking into the matter.”

Deeksha Sharma, a student of Hansraj College said, “Many of my friends from Faridabad including myself, wrote letters to the administration of DU to express our problem- the menace of travelling everyday. I am delighted to receive a positive response.”

Reha Biswass, a first year student at Lady Shri Ram College for Women added, “I come from Greater Noida, it takes two hours to reach college. The interchange stations and missing of metros by a second are truly tormenting. I am glad to know that our juniors shall not have to face it.”

The decision has also sprouted dissent. Uday Bhardwaj, a student at Hindu College said, “I feel that students from areas adjoining Delhi know more about this place than outstation students like us. It would be difficult for outstation students to settle in the absence of hostels, given that the seats in hostels are limited.”  Many students also expressed their concerns about the exclusion of students from ECA and Sports Quota from the provision.

Meghaa Balin, a first year student at Ramjas College emphasised upon the exclusion, “I got my admission through Sports Quota. The distance between my college and my home- Faridabad, is same as that of a student from Faridabad who secured her admission through merit basis. How is my inconvenience not taken into account?”  The Sports Association of some colleges like Hindu College, Hansraj College and Kirori Mal College have put forth their concerns to the administration. A response is awaited.

The notice will come into practice during the year’s academic session i.e May-June 2020 Kindly check the DU website for details.

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Feature Image Credits: Deewanshi Vats for DU Beat

Priyanshi Banerjee

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Jon managed to go to Bear Island, made numerous trips to and from Castle Black and even sailed far south to Dragonstone to meet Daenerys.

Just like Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, the students of the University of Delhi living in the NCR region are also used to traveling great stretches every day. While they don’t have to deal with the problem of living “away” from home, they don’t have the comfort of living in Karol Bagh or Chattarpur either. Students coming from the NCR region have to deal with daily traveling, security issues, and the resulting loss of productivity.

Here are 9 things that an average Delhi University student living in the NCR would relate to-

  1.  The traveling time: If X, a student of Delhi University, is living in Faridabad, she has to travel for an hour and a half in the metro to come to college. This means she would have to spend three hours every day in the metro alone. Add to that the time which gets spent in taking the e-rickshaw to the college, talking to a friendly face in the way, and waiting for the next metro in the hope of finding a seat. It takes an average NCR student four hours to just ‘travel’. That is life in a metro, literally, and figuratively.
  2. The lack of attendance: Halfway through the year, the class gets divided into three broad categories:
    (a) Hostellers
    (b) Those who live in the PGs and within the Delhi region
    (c) Those who live in NCR
    While the hostellers have the best attendance, the second category manages a decent attendance, and the last category just lets go of those five marks.
  3. The inability to join societies: DU societies are known to be very taxing, demanding, and time-consuming. Hence, most students from NCR, either, don’t join societies or even if they do join them they end up leaving midway.
    It becomes impossible to maintain a healthy schedule when traveling eats up important hours of your day. For example, if your class ends at three, followed by three-hour society practice, and two hours of traveling then you’ll reach home at 8 p.m.
    (Calculations: 3 p.m.+ 3-hour practice + 2-hour travelling= 8 p.m.).
    A regular college student cannot afford this tight schedule.
  4. You’re winning at life if you get to sleep even for five hours: Sleep is for the weak. Tell that to the NCR kid who gets up at five every day for his 9 a.m. class. The morning routine of NCR kid is as follows:(a) You set the first alarm at 5 a.m., the second at 5:05 a.m., the third at 5:07 a.m., and so on.(b) You FINALLY get up at 5:40 a.m.(c) You basically spend the next 20 minutes in bed checking messages and well, doing nothing.(d) The day finally starts at 6 a.m. and you get on with the usual morning routine for the next 40 minutes.(e) You get out of the house at 6:40 a.m., and it takes you about 20 more minutes to reach the metro station.(f) A 2-hour metro journey to your college. (With some luck, you might get a seat)
  5. Every day is a business day you have to “plan” for: An average day of an NCR kid requires more planning and plotting than any average Red Wedding.  You have to make a mind map every night. Say, if you have a class at 9 a.m. the next morning, you have to go through a battle in your mind about whether to get up at 5 or 5:30. And when every day is a “planned business day”, any aberration in the form of a teacher rescheduling class or a class getting preponed at the last moment can be a “disturbance” to the daily business of getting yourself to college and vice-versa.
  6. Not everyone wants to hear “Class just got canceled”: Class getting cancelled is not always good news, especially for the NCR students who spend their morning travelling from North of the Wall to Westeros (read: Noida/Gurgaon to DU colleges) risk getting killed in Castle Black where members of the Night’s Watch just can’t enough to killing each other (read: survive Rajiv Chowk), and deal with the wildling invasion (read: office goers in Delhi metro).  If you have to put with this struggle to get to class, you feel a sense of loss at having to see your struggle go to waste, even if you might not say it aloud.
  7. Studying. What’s that?: It is almost a universal fact that NCR kids HAVE to spend sleepless nights to make up for the precious time lost in commuting. If an average NCR student reaches home at 7 p.m., the average student living within Delhi reaches home at 4. You can pretty much gauge the number of hours lost.
  8. You need to spend days planning about the day you’d hang out with your friends: Chilling is no longer about impromptu meet-ups where you casually text your friend, “Hey where are you? Let’s go to Big Yellow Door”. Chilling involves a string of strategies like coordinating the “chilling place” such that it would be convenient for your different friends who live in different regions of the NCR, and coordinating the “chilling hours” such that your NCR friends do not have to reach home too late.
  9. You learn life skills: Like every dark cloud has a silver lining and every Night’s Watch has a Jon Snow, every great struggle that an NCR student has to go through is a life lesson to learn from. You learn how to stress-management, time-management, and coordination, despite the odds. Whether they help you in college or not varies from student to student, but these life lessons surely come handy further in life.

 

Image Credits: Rise for India

Vaibhavi Sharma Pathak

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Last year, app-based two-wheeler taxi services such as Bikxie (in Gurgaon) and Baxi (Faridabad) were launched as effective means of easing congestion on the roads, providing commuters with an alternative to cabs and buses in the NCR (National Capital Region). While the reactions there have already been noted, Delhi still reels under heavy traffic and relies on cab services primarily. The app keeps a track of the route and distance covered, alongside the calculation of fare, working along the lines of a taxi’s metre machine. They also come with women drivers in many instances. So how does the student community react to the idea of such a scheme? Should it be inaugurated in Delhi too?

“Bikes and scooters are definitely more convenient. They will help with the Delhi traffic as well. But at the same time, one’s comfort level has to be kept in mind. I don’t think many people would be open to the idea of riding on a bike with a stranger. It’s not the same thing as travelling in a cab,” says Srishti Kapil, a student of Sri Venkateswara College, originally from Chandigarh. Another student from Lady Shri Ram College, however, sees no issues with the scheme if an equal number of women drivers were to be made available with a choice between drivers for each commuter.

Responses have been varied and wide-ranging, with some warming up to the idea and others absolutely rejecting it. There is, of course, also the issue of safety and necessity. While the app’s tracking feature makes it safe, it is not available on all operating systems. It is not available for Windows phones, which makes it inaccessible for several commuters. But the same could be said for several apps for cab-based four-wheeler services as well. In the case of Baxi, for instance, it is even possible to bypass the app and hail a bike directly, if the driver is not plying on any route and is standing free. Then there is the question of whether Delhi needs such a service in the first place. Several students also pointed out that with a robust public transport system, connectivity is not a major issue in the capital. According to them, with autos and cabs already plying on the roads unlike in the NCR, most of the parts of the city are well-connected. Besides, the Delhi Metro has been making in-roads rapidly too. The idea, however, is no doubt unique and one the capital could perhaps use as an alternative to cabs so as to cover shorter distances if not the longer stretches.

Image credits: Hindustan Times

Deepannita Misra
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