How 'golden' is your varsity Gold Medal?

By Shekhar Hattangadi Like most public institutions in the country, the University of Mumbai has had its share of unseemly controversies.  But you’d think that a routine event like the annual convocation, with its boringly predictable speeches and its unchanging rituals, would pass off without a glitch. [caption id=“attachment_12977” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“A moment of glory ruined with a’ gold-plated medal’. Photo by Simon Alexander Jacob”] [/caption] Perish the thought.  This year’s convocation in February was marred, albeit in retrospect, by what was — in all probability — an administrative goof-up. One of the “gold” medals — which, as a rule, are only gold-plated—was not minted in pure gold despite specific instructions and sufficient sponsorship money from the donor. Not the strangest of happenings in a city of irregularities and in a country of mega-scams, though it exposed a very questionable policy that the university has been following. But before that, witness some of the reactions to the goof-up which were most telling of the kind of times we live in. The establishment’s damage-control mode was clearly evident. Controller of Examinations Vilas Shinde prefaced his explanation by first clearing himself and his department. He told the media that they’d sent out the correct instructions to the accounts department, responsible for minting the medals and therefore answerable for the oversight.  Note that the key aspect of his explanation was to emphasise “oversight” and not deliberate or intentional wrong-doing. Shinde also promised the winner a new and properly-minted medal, but that hardly impressed the donor, a Colaba-based businessman OPAgarwal. “The university has cheated me,” declared Agarwal, without a hint of equivocation.  Now “cheated” is probably the world’s most-loosely used word since “love.”  It takes in all versions of disappointment — and worse.  Thus, a family sacrificing a vacation to pay for coaching classes of a promising teenager feels “cheated” by the latter if he fails the examination.  A similar sense of let-down would overwhelm a faithful wife when her husband “cheats” on her. And every government-related scam, whether 2G or CWG, involves public officials and their private-sector accomplices “cheating” the nation’s tax-payers collectively of their hard-earned monies. Going strictly by statute — in this case, Sections 415-420 of the Indian Penal Code — “cheating” is a criminal offence encompassing a variety of fraudulent or dishonest acts of deception.  But to qualify as a “criminal offence”— or in simpler parlance, as a “crime” — the act in question must have been perpetrated with mens rea (Latin for “guilty mind”). In other words, the act must stem from a criminal intent.  Is OP Agarwal implying that a university official— or officials — conspired to deceive him by deliberately substituting a gold-plated medal for an all-gold one? The point is not whether Agarwal’s suspicion is far-fetched.  Rather, we need to realise that in a scam-infested climate such as the one prevailing in the country today, even the most bizarre of conspiracy theories acquires a peculiar credence of its own. So can anyone really fault a sponsor, who donated upwards of Rs 10 lakh for 30 gm of pure gold along with a dye carrying his dead wife’s image to be embossed on the medal, for crying foul when he discovers that the ultimate medal awarded to the MA (Economics) topper weighs nowhere near 30 gm and worse, is merely gold-plated with no image of his wife? Decidedly wackier was the over-reaction of the medal recipient’s mother, egged on no doubt by the presence of media persons. The world has all but collapsed around the family, if her statements are any indication. “My daughter’s once-in-a-lifetime moment has been ruined,” wailed Parma Subramanium. “She was the first member of our family to receive such an honour, but we could not celebrate her victory.” Of course, we sympathise with the Subramaniums. Their daughter Krithika deserved to get nothing less than a pure gold medal, if that was indeed the deal between Mumbai University and Agarwal. But since the mother laments the ruination of a once-in-a-lifetime moment, let’s see what really happened by way of atmospherics. The family enjoyed a celebratory meal with Agarwal, days before the convocation. And on its very eve, Krithika, like all other medallists, received a form-letter from the university citing rising costs for awarding a gold-plated medal instead of a real one. Krithika accepted this piece of communication without a murmur, and then also accepted the medal at the ceremony without knowing if it was plated or real. Only when Agarwal noticed the lapse at the end of the evening did hell break loose. What does all this reveal? Krithika’s real moment of glory — i.e. her actual receipt of the medal on the convocation stage — remains unblemished for the world at large, and was “ruined” only by a later discovery. And not least by her mother’s unseemly breast-beating: she could have placed much greater emphasis on the symbolic glory of its daughter’s academic achievement than on the market value of the symbol itself. While the system of awarding gold-silver-bronze medals originated at the Olympic Games, it’s instructive that prior to the introduction of precious metals as a medium of approbation, the victorious athlete was crowned only with a wreath of wild olive leaves. This Greek tradition sent shivers through the enemy. When a Persian general was informed about it at the Battle of Thermopylae, he exclaimed: “Good heavens, what kind of men are these against whom we’ve been brought to fight? Men who do not compete for possessions, but for honour!” Let me clarify. I hold no brief for an inept university administration. Needless to say, it must get its act together. In the process, it might also review some of its more inscrutable scholarship-related policies. Why encourage this discriminatory caste system among medal recipients, whereby a few get real-gold medals and the rest have to settle for plated ones? Why not standardise the medals by giving plated ones—even the Olympic and Nobel ones are gold-plated - and if the sponsorship monies for a particular category are in excess of the medal cost, let the donor award the surplus as prize money to the recipient. And why deprive a scholar of his prize because he does not pursue a higher degree? The student who tops the university’s LLB exam forfeits at least a couple of scholarships if he/she does not enrol for an LLM degree. Why should the appreciation of an academic performance be predicated on the performer’s future course of action? The writer is a freelance journalist who won three gold (plated) medals for topping Mumbai University’s LLB examination.