The Mess-y Situation

The Kadamb mess has faced significant issues in recent months , including food safety concerns that culminated in October 2024 with incidents of contaminated food. These events led to necessary renovations and restructuring of mess operations. The renovation work involves relocating some operations to the guest house, though capacity constraints at this temporary location have influenced the new registration policies. 

On the 28th of December 2024, the students of IIITH received an email highlighting changes to be implemented in the mess registration process from the Mess Office. The Mess Office claim that these changes attempt to ensure a good dining experience for students, while implementing a reduced workload on mess workers considering resource constraints imposed by the renovation. However, it is unclear as to how these changes would yield to a meaningful change in the assurance of food safety. Furthermore, there is conflicting information about the duration of the policy, with certain sources claiming that the policy is only until the renovations in Kadamb are completed, while another stating that it is here to stay.

Changes introduced in the new Policy

Before the implementation of these changes, the Mess Office had two meetings with the student parliament’s mess committee. While we leave it to you to read the minutes of the meetings and interpret their proceedings, it is clear that the administration has chosen to disregard the opinion of the Student Parliament on several issues raised by the Student Parliament. The MPs constituting the Mess Committee in the Student Parliament have assured Ping! that they are trying their best to push back against the measures.

Below are the more salient points that the new mess policy introduced. We urge you to read the rest of the mess policy as well, as it consists of important points that otherwise should not be missed.

1. All mess registrations are to happen on IMS. These were previously happening on mess.iiit.ac.in. According to reports from a student MP part of the MessComm, it resulted in more work for Mess Office members, however, the reduction of work is unclear. It is suspected that moving the mess portal over to IMS would result in better maintainability, however, going by the history of IMS, this seems to be a dubious claim.  Prof Girish, chair of the Mess Committee, mentions that it was difficult to integrate the new mess policy in the exisiting mess portal, which was a contributing factor to the movement.
   
2. Each mess (North, South, Kadamba, Yuktahar) has a fixed weekly capacity; once reached, it’s no longer an option.
   
   The reasoning given to Ping! by anonymous sources is that there is an imbalance in labour in messes across meals, with some messes overrun by people on certain days, depending on the mess menu. This would allow for reducing the burden on the staff during peak hours while being able to serve most people throughout the day.
   
   There is, however, very little information on how the numbers were arrived at. This is particularly in focus with the Kadamb mess shifting to the guest house facility for the time being, for which the seating numbers are not public. It has been conveyed to Ping! through the MPs of the MessComm that this decision has been taken based on historical usage for the remaining messes. It is also to note that the low number of registrations in Kadamb mess is temporary and will rise once the renovations complete.
3. Instead of registering for every meal, one can now only register for a single mess for the entire week. There is a very small window of registration, going from 14 days before the week starts to 4 days before the Sunday of the respective week, with no provision for default or monthly registrations. If a student fails to register on time, they are allocated a vegetarian mess randomly. Once a mess is chosen, their choice is frozen for the week, and no further changes would be entertained. Any single day cancellations would only be allowed upto 4 days before the day of the cancellation.
   
   If this makes your head hurt, you aren’t alone. Let us demonstrate with an example. If one wants to register for the week starting 26th January 2024, the registrations for that start only from 12th January 2024, and allowed upto 22nd January 2024. During this registration period, one is allowed to pick any one mess, say North mess, and once selected and entered, this cannot be changed. Yes, it means that if you, for some reason, wish to eat in South mess instead during that week, and try to change your registration on say, 21st, you cannot do that.
   
   Like with most other decisions, there appear to be no clear reasons for this change. The arbitrary deadline of 4 days remains unclear (why is that not shorter, like earlier?), and the same with prevention of changing the registration (why not allow for arbitrary changes as long as the capacity is maintained). Similarly, there appears to be no clear reason for forcing only a single mess for the entire week: surely the number of registrations can be capped without having to worry about overworking the staff.
   
   Previously, students were free to register at any mess, for any meal. They were allowed to change/cancel their registration upto a few hours before the actual meal, within reasonable limits.
4. One can no longer pay and avail unregistered meals at messes. While this may seem as a mere loss of convenience for most, it goes beyond that for those who rely on this for their meals on campus. Interns and other guests use this to eat meals on campus, and losing this facility implies losing the only way of eating in messes. Ping! has been told by the MPs that this is not something that came up during the meetings.
   
   Previously, one could pay for the meals that were not registered. Alternatively, one could use their biometrics or ID cards to add it to their mess bill, and this existence of provision also seems unclear in the face of the new changes.
5. Until the renovations are complete, Kadamba mess would be taking in only non-vegetarian registrations. To make up for the spacing requirements, non-vegetarian food would be available to students with roll numbers starting with 2023 and 2024 on even weeks, and the rest on odd weeks.
   
   Previously, Kadamba mess had both veg and non-veg registrations opened separately, at different price points. Also, the week-wise division did not exist. 
6. Meals need to be cancelled 4 days in advance. Once cancelled, meals cannot be re-registered. This seems to be motivated by very little actual proof. Ping! has it on record that raw material was being ordered 2 days before a meal. Why, then, restrict cancellations earlier? A quick check with the MPs in MessComm confirmed that there has been no response from the administration during the meetings held. 

All these (and more! Read the full policy in the mail) are into effect immediately, with the registrations for 1st January closing on 30th December. 

From responses collected using a form that was circulated over WhatsApp (unfortunately, not over email, because of the ongoing Microsoft migration), there seems to be dissatisfaction over the new mess policy. Detractors claim that this is a backward step from an otherwise flexible mess system that worked mostly fine for several years now, and the changes serve to further the discontentment that the student body seem to face. (For more entertaining responses, wait for our next article!)

What now?

We reached out to the Mess Committee for answers over email. To their credit, they responded to us at 7 AM on a Sunday, which is extremely commendable for the holiday season. On the other hand, the response contains little substance. Quoting Prof. Girish, chair of the Mess Committee, “…The decisions regarding the mess system were taken after a lot of discussion and thinking. We will not be able to accurately put it down in a short write up…I will be happy to explain it to a small group…” We don’t mind reading pages, but that works as well. If you have any further questions to ask, email us at pingiiithyd@gmail.com, and we would be happy to relay them to Prof. Girish.

Thanks to Aditya Shankar for the the phrase “We are cooked”
Additional thanks to Chinmay, Debangan, Aadi, Ihsan, Monish and the other anonymous sources for helping us cover the article.