The General Secretary called the meeting to order at 4:30 pm on 7 March 2001. Since there was not sufficient quorum for the meeting, the meeting was adjourned.

The meeting was reconvened. The General Secretary welcomed the gathering, and requested the President to make the opening remarks.

The President, Dr. Swami Manohar, thanked the attendees for attending the meeting. He apologised for the inordinate delay in the elections this year. He stated that from the previous GBM to now, the FA had been concentrating on the housing issue and the health coverage. As far as housing is concerned, he stated that we have not yet been able to convince the administration about the necessity of housing. The Health Scheme was taking a course of its own, and the Health Committee was not adopting the suggestions given by the Faculty Association.

The minutes of the previous meeting was read by the General Secretary. There were no comments or corrections. Dr. N. C. Shivaprakash proposed that the minutes be adopted, and Dr. P. R. Nott seconded the proposal. The minutes were unanimously adopted.

The General Secretary made his annual report:

The FA executive committed had a total of 14 meetings in the past year, and had met with the director 5 times and with the registrar on 3 occassions. The minutes of all the meetings were available at the FA web site http://www.iisc.ernet.in/~facasn.

He described the new initiatives that had been undertaken by the FA in the past year. The Grievance committee had been reconstituted, with the mandate to consider any grievances of members of FA which were duly

forwarded by the Chairman of the department of the Secretary of FA. Though the committee had been reconstituted a year ago, there had not yet been any referrals to the Grievance committee.

The FA had been reallotted a new office space for the present year which is situated next to the Tata Book House. The Secretary thanked Mr. M. A. Murthy and Mr. T. Shankar for getting this allotted.

There is a severe shortage of housing for faculty on campus. This is particularly important for new faculty who are joining the institute, since they do not have any housing of their own when joining. Most faculty currently live in houses which are smaller than those they are entitled to. The FA executive committee had vigorously pursued

various options to augment the housing on campus, and made various suggestions to the administration in this respect. However, there was no realisation in the administration that this is a serious problem, and faculty housing is still not of top priority for the administration. The next Executive Committee will also have to further pursue the housing problem, and if a resolution is not found soon, it will become difficult to attract high quality faculty to the institute.

The FA has also taken up the issue of health care in the past one year. A proposal was made by the Executive Committee and circulated to all the faculty. After further modifications, this was forwarded to the Medical Committee for consideration in July last year. However, the Medical Committee did not consider this seriously, and adopted an alternative plan. This year, once again, there has been a crisis with the health expenditure increasing uncontrollably. The Medical Committee has come up with an insurance proposal, where the hospitalisation charges would be transferred to an insurance company at a fixed premium. The FA representatives on the Medical Committee have expressed their opposition to this, as this does not reduce the hospitalisation costs.

In the absence of cost control, the expenditure of this year will be transferred to us as an augmented premium next year, which will be unaffordable. Despite the opposition, the Medical Committee is going ahead with the plan. However, the FA should take the initiative to formulate an alternative policy during the coming year, so that in case the current plan collapses, and alternatinve will be available to the institute. In addition, it is necessary to impress on the administration that health insurance is a long term benefit for employees, and some commitment should be made by the institute for the long term. This cannot be changed every year.

The Returning Officer Dr. Shivaprakash read the election results. He thanked the outgoing members for their efforts in the previous year, and welcomed the new members to the Executive Committee. There were two vacancies for the Executive Committee in Category III for which no nominations were received. Nominations were sought from the floor.

Mr. Shivakumara was proposed for the post of member of the Executive Committee in Category III by Dr. Kumaran, and seconded by Dr. R. Seshadri. He was declared elected. Dr. Ragottama was proposed for the post of member of the Executive Committee in Category III by Mr. Raju, and seconded by Dr. Suryaprakash. He was declared elected.