In Mint, S Mitra Kalita on IIT Bombay’s ‘LAN ban’ and the effect it’s been having on an old student pastime — that of hanging out
At the stroke of midnight, like Cinderella stripped of her gown and glass slippers, students at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai also lose something that defines their survival: technology itself.
Exactly one year ago, officials at the elite IIT Bombay began restricting the Internet in hostels after fearing high-speed access was impeding socialization, replacing talk with instant messaging, virtual gaming instead of the sweaty, heart-rate-quickening variety. Initially, the “LAN ban”, as it was dubbed, was between 4.30pm and 7pm, and then midnight and 7am. Participation in sports and extracurricular activities had dropped and “when we tried to figure out the cause of this problem, it didn’t take us long to find that these students locked themselves in the confines of their rooms,” Prakash Gopalan, the dean of student affairs at IIT Bombay, said in an interview back then.
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