If India wants to transform its universities into world class institutions, it must safeguard the interests of young researchers and ensure permanent appointments for temporary faculty members
India’s higher education sector is faced with twin problems: First, reforms as initiated, are directionless. And second, future of researchers lies in limbo. Both of these create an adverse public perception of research and teaching. To explain, an example would be appropriate. In Shrilal Shukla’s book, Raag Darbari, Ranganath, the protagonist, ironically equates research with ghas khodna (as menial and unproductive as digging up grass) and explains his vocation to a truck driver in these terms: “I told you, main ghas khod raha hun. In English, we call it research. I did my MA last year. This year I have begun research.” This self-deprecatory remark of a callow young man not only gives an insight as to how people have traditionally perceived research being done in the Indian universities but also speaks volumes about successive Governments’ indifference to higher education.
Problems with the great reform: The question that demands attention here is that since the 1960s, what (if anything) have the intellectuals, policy-makers, the Government and the society done to change the lukewarm response to research and teaching profession in general and to the humanities in particularIJ The failure of Indian universities to make it to the list of the top universities across the world has received a plethora of responses from our intelligentsia and the Government, but nothing substantial seems to have been done to bring the much-needed transformation in the education sector.
One does not necessarily need to adopt international benchmarks for evaluation of universities, which hardly includes the parametre of social inclusion that our publicly-funded institutions are ethically and constitutionally committed to. One cannot, nevertheless, blatantly reject them. Ironically, whenever our policy-makers have gone overboard to initiate ‘the great reform’, they have done so without consulting multiple actors, namely, students, professors, researchers and teachers.
In the last 10 years or so, the University of Delhi (DU) alone has been bombarded with a slew of hasty reforms such as the introduction of semester system, the Four-Year Undergraduate Programme and its withdrawal soon after, the Choice Based Credit System and many others. Even before students and the faculty members get to understand and act according to the new system, another reformatory measure is imposed on them, without properly assessing the old system and seeking the opinion of students and teachers.
Consequently, both, international ranking and quality of education, have plunged sharply. Academicians-turned-administrators, in their keenness to please their bosses, often privilege their administrative selves over the academic ones which eventually benefits none except the hangers-on. Incidentally, in comparison to previous year, there has reportedly been a decline of some 45,000 applicants seeking admissions in DU’s undergraduate courses, this year.
University is a space where the youth are taught how to think critically on debatable issues such as structured gender and economic inequalities, nationalism, and the violation of rights of the marginalised communities. Students learn how to empathise with the weaker sections of society, a virtue which is essential to the exercise of nation-building, irrespective of the profession one chooses. To undermine the significance of such an important space, or any other institution which does not generate money directly, will be detrimental to the society in the long-run.
If we want to reap benefits of demographic dividend, as pointed out by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on various occasions, we will have to bring an end to apathy and crass utilitarian approach to the education sector. As a student and then teacher at DU, this writer observed a large number of issues, hitherto unresolved, which include inter alia — skewed student-teacher ratio, lack of hostels for students, indefinite delay in regularisation of temporary teachers, misguided education reforms, and promotion and pension of hundreds of permanent faculty. These problems are equally affecting and dismantling other Indian universities.
Ad hocs: Foot soldiers of teaching community: Today, various colleges of DU alone have more than 4,000 temporary faculty, aka ad hocs. The unlucky ones have been teaching for a decade or so (losing their jobs frequently) as their appointment letter is renewed every four months, depending on their rapport with students, principal, senior faculty and the administrative staff. Basically, they have the daunting task of remaining in every one’s good books, or be ready for dismissal in the upcoming semester, which makes them the subaltern ‘foot soldiers’ of the teaching community in true sense.
It is worth mentioning here that they cannot stake claim to medical facilities, insurance, study leave, maternity leave and some other benefits enjoyed by permanent faculty members. In light of this, one can well imagine the miserable condition of some of the colleges located in tier II and tier III cities across India, where one professor, like a one-man army, takes care of an entire department, let alone taking classes regularly or conducting exams on time. Those living in metropolitan cities may find it unbelievable but there are still Government universities in India, where it takes students around five years to graduate. I wonder if the respective Governments or the University Grants Commission ever considered initiating action against the erring officials for ruining the two most productive years of thousands of young graduates across the nation.
Is the pursuit of knowledge antithetical to the pursuit of comfortIJ: Nowadays, PhD scholars, enrolled in a central university of India, get a meagre sum of Rs 8,000 per month as stipend, in comparison to their American counterparts, who get around $2,000. And then, if we expect them to survive in an expensive city and produce world class research, we are either being too naive or we assume that they will continue to work in the midst of abject poverty, a characteristic of students in pre-modern times. Incidentally, for Chanakya, the pursuit of knowledge was antithetical to the pursuit of comfort: Sukharthinah kuto vidya kuto vidyarthinah sukham. sukhaarthi wa tyajeeat vidyam vidyarthi wa tyajeat sukham — it roughly translates as those who run after comfort will not gain knowledge and those who pursue knowledge, will not get comfort. Those who crave for comfort should forget about knowledge and those who seek knowledge should forget about comfort. The choice is ours whether we want to reinforce the stereotype of a poor scholar and make him poorer, or conversely, ensure that the brightest of students are attracted to research and teaching by providing them financial security.
If we are really committed to transforming our universities into world class institutions, we must safeguard the interests of young researchers and thousands of temporary faculty members by expediting the permanent appointments in a time-bound framework and transparent manner. We can continue to defer their regularisation at the cost of reducing a large segment of budding intellectuals to malcontents whose low self-esteem and constant exploitation will never let them stand as the model of imitation for the younger talents. In these trying times teachers must also realise that if they do not inspire students through their exemplary actions and a wide range of reading and intensive research, they are to be equally blamed for the decline of academics.
The recent move of the Government to start permanent appointments in universities and the Niti Aayog’s announcement to promote research are welcome. We sincerely hope that these promises will not amount to paying lip service and hollow rhetoric but will translate into concrete action by bringing in all the major stakeholders on board.
(The writer is an Assistant Professor at Deen Dayal Upadhyaya college, University of Delhi)