Minutes of the Executive Committee Meeting of the Faculty Association Held on 27/10/2000 Members present: 1. Prof. S. Manohar 2. Prof. D. Sen 3. Prof. B. Ananthanarayan 4. Dr. C. Shivakumara 5. Dr. A. Suyambu 6. Dr. V. Kumaran 1. With regard to the CHSS, the General Secretary informed the members that the institute was considering going in for Mediclaim coverage for all institute staff in order to provide a minumum assured coverage per family per year. The details have not been worked out. The FA EC expressed concern about this, because the new Mediclaim scheme does not include any cost cutting measures, and permits treatment at any hospital. Consequently, the inpatient treatment bill is likely to rise to the levels of last year. However, the premium to be paid by Mediclaim to the institute is a constant, and Mediclaim is unlikely to reimburse bills which are much higher than the premium being paid by the institute. This could lead to difficulties in the institute reclaiming the medical charges from Mediclaim. The EC decided to discuss this once again after members have had an opportunity to go through the details. However, at this point, it was felt that the scheme proposed by the FA was significantly better than the scheme currently in operation or the Mediclaim scheme, and it is necessary to bring this to the attention of the authorities. 2. The housing issue was discussed, and the General Secretary informed the EC that the Director was opposed to allocating land in the present garbage dump for faculty housing. In view of this, it is necessary to discuss what further course of action should be taken. 3. The functioning of SID, and the lack of transparency in decision making by this organisation, was discussed. Of particular concern to the EC was the fact that the minutes of the Executive Committee, Finance Committee and General Body meetings of SID are not available to even the members of the faculty who are the project investigators. It was felt that all project investigators should be made members of the General Body of SID, and they should have this information available. It was also decided to open a web page to collect feedback from the faculty on the functioning of SID. 4. It was brought to the attention of EC that the Ladies Club had a proposal to start a creche at the institute. It was decided to provide all necessary cooperation to the Ladies Club for setting up this creche. 5. It was decided to once again request the Director that the Kendriya Vidyalaya should be treated as a separate department, and should be provided with assured annual funding. 6. The General Secretary informed the EC that Rs. 10,000/- had been allocated for construction of the foot bridge linking the institute campus to the KV campus, and Prof. Raghu Prasad of Civil department had been requested to design the bridge. 7. The post of Professor of Eminence had not yet been set up by the institute, though it had been approved by the Council more than a year ago. At the recent meeting of the office bearers with the Director, he had requested that the FA give him feedback on the norms for the position. It was decided to provide the feedback to the director expeditiously.