You are a city commissioner. There is a reputed college in your city, which has the maximum number of girl students. The condition of the toilets/washrooms in this college is very poor and pathetic, due to which the girl students have to face many mental, physical and hygiene-related problems every day. The college administration is not paying any attention to these basic facilities of the girl students. As a city commissioner, what steps will you take to improve this basic facility for the girl students and address the indifference of the college administration?

Stakeholders and values

• Girl students: privacy, menstrual hygiene, safety from infection, and mental load of avoiding campus hours.
• College administration and affiliating university: duty of care as an educational institution.
• Parents, municipal health wing, pollution/sewerage utility, and, if the college is aided, the education department.
• Values: dignity (Article 21), equality (Article 14 and 15), compassion, and trusteeship of a public city office.
• Example: a student skipping lectures to go home to use a toilet is a learning loss the city can count as harm.

Ethical issues

• Indifference of a reputed campus is a failure of institutional empathy, not a shortage of prestige.
• If the commissioner only writes a polite letter, the girls remain the means of the college’s reputation.
• If the commissioner barges in as if the campus were a municipal ward without law, that is another arrogance.
• Gender: washroom neglect is often treated as a “soft” complaint; ethics requires treating it as core infrastructure.

Immediate steps

• Visit with a woman officer, student representatives, and a health inspector; photograph and record, not a surprise humiliation show if girls’ privacy is at risk.
• Order a public-health inspection under municipal by-laws: water, drainage, cleanliness, menstrual-waste disposal, lighting, and lockable doors.
• Direct the college in writing to submit a time-bound repair and cleaning roster within a short, named number of days.
• Provide interim municipal support if lawful: extra tankers, desilting, sanitary-napkin disposal bins, and a temporary mobile toilet unit so that girls are not asked to wait for a tender.
• Open a named grievance channel for students that does not route only through the same indifferent principal.

Addressing indifference

• Escalate to the affiliating university, the directorate of higher education, and, for a private college, the trust board, with the inspection report attached.
• Use licensing and occupancy levers that actually exist: health trade/building fitness, sewer connection, and fire-safety occupancy if toilets fail basic sanitation — not a invented vendetta.
• If the college is on municipal land or receives city grants, tie the next grant to a completed washroom standard.
• Publish a speaking, anonymised status note so that reputation works for the girls, not only for the prospectus.
• Convene a compliance meeting; if still inert, recommend affiliation or aid review to the competent education authority.
• Do not collect a “speed money” narrative; keep the file RTI-ready.

What not to do

• Do not shame individual girls in the media.
• Do not close the whole college as the first tool; that punishes the students twice.
• Do not let a contractor from a relative’s firm “rescue” the campus.