“TIP was my first job. I’ve served TIP for over a decade, and this is what they do to me. I’m literally being pushed out of the gates”, said one victim before breaking into tears.

A number of the diligent employees who lost their job had been serving TIP since its inception, while most had been rendering valuable services to the institute’s management and upkeep for over past 5 years.

According to reliable sources, majority of the employees who have been terminated under the pretext of ‘cost cutting’ were in the petty salary range of Rs.7,000 to 15,000 per month.

It has also been reported that none of the TIP employees have received any form of increment in the past two years. Despite this, the governing board which consists of some of the most well-known and successful names from Pakistan’s textile industry and elite circles, found it appropriate to start sacking employees to compensate their questionable organizational planning and management competence.

In an anonymous survey conducted within TIP during the past two days, the following comments were received from furious students and unmotivated employees:

Mera bas chaley tau is pooray board ko jail mai band karwadoon.

Ek mohtaram, apna itna bara F*r**q textile mill band karwa kar ab TIP ko band karwaney par tuley hain.

These elitist frauds in the board should be ashamed of themselves. They teach the students in management and HRM courses that layoff is not the way to make an organization in financial crisis recover, better planning is.

How come the sleeping management doesn’t fire people who sell TIP’s assets to buy luxuries without permission?

Mustafa bhai [faculty peon] had tears in his eyes. I could not look him in the eye.

As TIP heads towards the end of a terrible year, several controversial questions and ironies need to be addressed. For instance, how can a non-profit organization which has been systematically brought to the brink of collapse and finds temporary sustainability by disposing off employees afford an expensive president whose salary level matches that of the corporate world? Similarly, many questions have been raised about the justification and competence of some of the lavishly paid new appointments by TIP salary standards in the admissions and short courses division.

Indeed, these sentiments are heartfelt and must not be ignored how ever displeasing they may appear to top most tier that governs TIP and their well wishers. This is the voice of TIP.

[Related post: Popular media rejects TIP's layoffs]

No one knew what they wanted. One time we stopped our car and the poor animal halted dead in its tracks, its bark fading into a puppy like squeal, and scared out of its wits it retreated in its own tracks.

Then one day they just disappeared. Perhaps they were trying to say something.

Is it “ Uhm..can you tell me exactly where this is located?

Or, “Oh wow! Beautiful campus, hun! Wonderful lake that you have got there!”

Or,  “ Okay. I have heard Texperts are kindov spoilt; they aren’t as hardworking as NEDians you know”

Or, ” That’s nice, you know their designers are so much better than Indus.”

Or something else.

This one punch line tells you where your identity stands as a TIPian. This very first thought that comes to your mind is the marketing image that TIP is selling to the academic world outside. Every institution has it; though probably out of concern of maintaining the sanctity of the educational institutions as distinct from the corporate world, the academic world does not research on their image nor do they device strategies to market it as aggressively.

But every institution has an image nevertheless.

What comes to your mind when you think about LUMS, or NED or IBA or IVSAA, KU or even Jinnah University for Women?

This first sentence that comes to your mind about an institution is THE characteristic image that an institution carries. For instance IBA is associated with honesty and punctuality in wider corporate and academic circles. LUMS is considered to be pretty efficient, high profile people, but effectively removed from the reality of the common masses. They are also known to be apt in world-class extra curricular activities. NED has this instant recognition world wide that it provides the best engineers from Pakistani territory; though locally there are competitors that are equally significant. NCA is fun loving and creative and artsy.

What is TIP known for?

What do you think it should be known for? Does TIP have an institutional ideology? If yes, how does it attempt to market it, if at all?

I pass by this route daily for TIP, and each day see things that make me feel sad, depressed, emotional, and guilty and make me realize how selfish I am, yet I do nothing.

I saw two little kids today sharing out of a thrown away theli of dried up biryani on the sidewalk. I saw a small boy probably two, begging a shopkeeper for candy and the man in return throwing water on the little boy to move him out of his shop. I saw a tiny girl of around four carrying a bag of rice her size on her head while older men glared at her with hungry eyes. I saw an old man hitting a boy half his size for breaking a bottle. I saw a little puppy being kicked and the men around laughing as it whimpered. I saw a mentally handicapped girl of about seven, covered in dirt, lying on the sidewalk alongside a dog and eating what the dog ate, and being treated like one. I saw men making obscene signs at little girls who were walking to school. I saw a homeless man sleeping on a broken bench, with only an opened up cardboard box covering him.

This is what I saw today. This is what we all see everyday. Yet we do nothing.

Korangi today has a very large slum of its own.

We applaud the makers of ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ and sing Jai ho!, but did we actually learn anything from it?

Criticizing, looking away or simply drawing the curtains may make the truth go away for a while but it doesn’t hide the reality, this is just the easy way of getting away from it all. Making a change is harder.

Giving up buying an LCD for the café, or buying phone cards or a really nice dress to help someone is the hardest.

Have us proletariats (the middle class) really become just as selfish as the bourgeoisie (powerful upper class) that all we see are our own interests, needs and consider only our gains? We are no better than the very politicians we cuss at. Maybe its time we changed and did something ourselves today, instead of expecting others to.

Here’s the Video I played at the annual dinner, hope you guys like it. Graduates 2008 .

The song that’s playing is Collapse the Light Into Earth by Porcupine Tree.