Every day in the hostels of IIT Madras, a quiet injustice plays out. It’s not loud or dramatic. It’s not a breaking headline. It’s the kind of thing that slips under the radar because it’s become normal. And that’s exactly the problem.
We live in one of the top institutes in the country—surrounded by intelligence, innovation, and ambition. But when it comes to the way many students treat the cleaning workers here, there’s a staggering lack of something basic: consideration.
Let’s be real. This isn’t about whether we say “thank you” or smile at them. This isn’t about gestures of politeness. It’s about how we behave when no one’s watching—when we treat the hostel spaces like dumping grounds and expect someone else to clean up after us like it’s their fate.
Every morning, these workers come in early. They sweep, scrub, clean our mess. Within minutes, some students undo their work. Restrooms are trashed again. Water everywhere. Muddy footprints. Body hair scattered across the floor. Used sanitary pads thrown around like garbage with no cover, no shame, no basic decency.
It’s not ignorance. It’s indifference.
It’s the quiet belief that their time, effort, and presence don’t matter. That they’re just supposed to deal with it. That it’s okay to throw your trash in the corridor because someone will pick it up. That it’s fine to treat shared spaces like personal bins because “that’s their job.”
No. Their job is cleaning. Not enduring humiliation.
There’s a difference between cleaning and being treated like shit. And too many of us blur that line.
We talk a lot about dignity of labor in theory. But dignity is not a slogan. It’s not a poster on the wall. It’s the everyday choices we make in how we live with others. And here, in these hostel corridors and washrooms, we’re failing.
It’s not that students are actively cruel. It’s worse—we’re passively careless. And that kind of apathy is harder to fix. It comes from a mindset that sees cleaners not as people, but as part of the infrastructure. Like walls, or taps, or brooms.
We don’t even look at them.
They move through our spaces, fixing our mess, and we walk past them without a glance. Like they’re invisible. But they’re not. They are watching us. They see the way we disrespect the spaces they just cleaned. They see the way we treat them like background characters in our elite lives.
And the worst part? They don’t even complain. Because this is their reality in most places. Because they’ve learned to accept mistreatment as part of the job. That silence is not consent—it’s exhaustion.
This has nothing to do with background or upbringing or how “cultured” someone is. This is about character. If someone is smart enough to solve complex equations, they’re smart enough to understand basic human respect. Choosing not to is a moral failure.
What does it take to not leave your trash on the floor? To rinse your hair off a washroom sink? To wrap and dispose of sanitary pads properly? Nothing. It takes nothing but the smallest bit of thought. And if that thought is too much for someone, they have no business calling themselves educated.
Institutions like ours are supposed to shape not just minds, but people. What’s the point of all the degrees, the placements, the accolades—if we can’t act with the bare minimum of decency toward those who work behind the scenes to keep our lives running?
This is not a plea for empathy. It’s a call-out. We don’t need to be saints. But we need to stop being selfish.
So next time you’re in the restroom, or walking out of your room with a bag of garbage in hand, ask yourself: are you contributing to a culture of silent abuse? Or are you breaking it?
Because how we treat the people we think no one notices—that’s who we really are.
Design by Alphin Tom
Article 19 