The campus has several lawns and shrubs which require extensive maintenance, along with a large collection of potted plants that pop up whenever there is a major occasion. The English Press Club spoke to Mr. Radharam Arora, who oversees all activities related to horticulture on campus.

Maintenance of all gardens, which include those in NAB, SAC, and the hostels, come under Mr. Arora’s overview. Along with gardening, he has worked on the construction of NAB, the renovation of hostels, and other activities which are part of Project Parivartan. To help with these tasks, the gardening department has a workforce of 26 permanent employees and 38 contract labourers. There are eleven additional labourers who work only on the maintenance of GymG and the MedC Grounds.

Apart from the handling landscape development and preservation, Mr. Arora also manages a nursery which has a thousand potted plants. Due to extreme weather conditions for most of the year, these plants don’t last long, and the Institute has an annual budget to purchase new plants. These potted plants are used as decorations during Institute events and fests.

Mr. Arora directly reports to the head of the Estate Management Unit (EMU), Retd. Lt. Col. A. K. Bhataiya, on a daily basis. The maintenance tasks of the gardening department remain more or less the same every year. They plan out work to be done every month, at the starting of the year. ‘The whole job of maintenance is problem-tackling. It is only due to cooperation and teamwork in the gardening department that we get work done. All members are multipurpose labourers who can work on multiple jobs. To tackle fresh problems that crop up daily, we all discuss and formulate a plan of action for the following day,’ he replied when asked about the problems he faces as the in-charge of horticulture.

He did mention that most of the limited resources that the gardening department gets, go into maintenance. ‘Every year, there are candidates standing for the Student Union elections who make a lot promises on improving the landscape. However very few of them can actually be implemented as maintenance gets a higher priority over development of new land.’

The latest project is the construction of a two-storey house in the new faculty sector. Mr. Arora signed off by lamenting, ‘As long as maintenance work goes according to plan, nobody bats an eye. But if work stops for even a single day, the effects can be seen all over the campus, and chaos reigns.’