During their stay at IIT Madras, only a lucky few escape without having an encounter with the CCW. This, my friends, is my story, about the state of the art, unbeaurecratic offices in one of India's premier technical institutes.

CCW stands for "Chairman, Council of Wardens". It comprises the office (and its leader, the Chairman) who rule over the hostel zone in IIT Madras. Using methods of extortion, they spread terrors in the corridors of every hostel. They fine every fart a student lets out, and are notorious for being a financial blackhole.

To inconvenience students, the CCW comes out with rules that are beyond most people comprehension. One such rule involves students who return early from vacation.
If a student comes to Madras, and stays in the hostel, he has to join the messing facility. If a student is found residing in the hostel, but not availing of the mess facility, he is fined between three hundred and thousand rupees. Now, if a student does happen to come after the first week of the month, and decides to stay in the hostel, he pays a fine for joining the mess late.

I'm sorry for ranting it out this way, but to put it briefly, this is what their rule says -
If you return to the institute after the third day of a month, then -
(a) you may stay in the hostel without joiing the mess and pay a fine of Rs. 300
(b) you may join the mess and pay a fine of Rs. 150
Now, has it ever struck them that they leave students with no other opportunity? The idea of having a hostel is to give students a convenient place to stay during their academic year.

Another one experience I had was when I was trying to get permission to stay in my room. It is ridiculous when you think of it rationally, but rationale has been missing in CCW since its inception.
This is the procedure to get permission for residing in the hostel. In the paranthesis, I have given the time it took me to do so -
step 1 : Get signature from Head of Department (20 minutes + 1 visit + 10 minutes squabbling)
step 2 : Get signature from the Chairman, CCW (6 days + 8 visits + 2 hours squabbling)

Another gem coming from that office was to my request of making the process of getting permission more student friendly. My point was that considering that students come from home and have no place to stay but the hostel, the procedure should be make electronic so as to allow us to do the needful before coming. Also, this will save time (it's not worth running around in the scorching sun in search of signatures). When I put forth my point, the reply was, "It is not at all troublesome. The process is very easy, you can do it sitting at home. Just ask your friend to do it for you."

That, my friends, is CCW! And welcome again to one of India's premier institutions, IIT!