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print version[Posted below is the unedited version of an article that appeared in the Hindustan Times]
Soaring cut-off marks for admission to the Delhi University (DU), triggered though not caused by the flawed April directive from the Administration to do away with pre-admission forms, will lead ironically, into an academically diminished University during the academic year 2011-12. These cut-offs are only the latest of many SOS signals that have been coming out of the DU in recent years, ignored by an Administration impervious to calls for intervention, and since 2009 obsessed only with hurriedly and thoughtlessly forcing semesterisation onto DU.
I
Large numbers of teachers, students and non-teaching staff have been crying themselves hoarse during the past few years about over-crowded class rooms, libraries and laboratories, increasing workload in rapidly worsening employment and working conditions, declining student-teacher interactions and falling academic standards and values. Anxieties regarding inordinately high CBSE marks, inadequate state funding, and the uneven spread of quality Higher Education across the country and among DU Colleges have been repeatedly voiced. Calls have gone out to College and University Administrations to secure and expand employment and infrastructure, including hostels, especially for women, so that problems stemming from admission procedures and ‘over admissions’ may begin to be addressed without closing all doors to increasing numbers of admission seekers, while taking care that the ratio of reserved to general seats is maintained at new student strengths. Currently, ‘over admissions’ take place in the general category only, mocking the meticulously worked out proportions between reserved and general seats. Teachers have also been demanding thoroughly debated course revisions and a re-appraisal of the internal assessment scheme introduced a few years ago.
University-wide sensitization campaigns by students and teachers have drawn attention to sexual harassment and caste, class and gender discrimination on campus, communal, racist and homophobic sensibilities, the everyday insensitivities vis-a-vis the differently-abled, and the violence that keeps exploding ever frequently in orgies of blood-letting in college hostels, canteens, corridors and the streets of the University. The demand for effective intervention by University and College Administrations towards creating an enabling environment in which teaching-learning can take place unhindered and all may benefit equally from the academic and cultural opportunities at DU, is now an old one.
Unfortunately, the silence of the Administration on these and other crucial concerns voiced by students and teachers, their refusal to respond to signals, listen to, encourage and tap into multiple ideas and energies from below, dynamise existing debate and discussion so that academic reform could come to the University organically, have meant the steady impoverishment of intellectual life at the University.
II
The crippling blow to DU’s academic, intellectual and democratic integrity and standing has come however over the last two years from the arbitrary decision of the Administration, at the behest of the MHRD [Ministry of Human Resource Development], to rapidly and thoughtlessly impose semesterisation on a University the size of DU, swaying to the rhythms of an annual calendar. The head of the elephant, wonderful logo of DU, must replace the tail and vice versa, no matter what the consequences. No reasons proffered, no questions to be asked, this top-down ‘academic reform’ must happen tomorrow though no one seems to know how.
Out of the blue, leaving existing ills to fester, huge qualitatively new crises are being inflicted on the University. All energies are being directed at tearing apart a time-tested and academically sound, though by no means perfect annual system of Honours teaching at DU. A massive structural change with huge implications for the quality and texture of University life is being rammed through as a decision already taken instead of being proposed as an idea to be democratically, patiently and open-mindedly discussed by members of the academic community.
Neither the questions raised internationally regarding the assumed superiority of semestered education, especially at the UG [Under Graduate] level, nor the grave academic, pedagogic and functional concerns articulated by teachers and students regarding semesterisation at DU, have even been acknowledged. No thought has been given to all the strands in the web of University functioning that would need to change—nor to whether this is possible or desirable—if this ‘reform’ is to truly enrich academic and intellectual pursuits at DU.
Irresponsible and thoughtless adhocism is substituting for preparatory groundwork and well-defined structures. No one seems to know, for instance, how semester-based timetables are to be made or two University wide examinations conducted in one year for 400,000 students spread over 75+ Colleges and the School Of Open Learning (SOL)! Sound decisions questioning semesterisation taken at Department General Body Meetings of teachers from across Colleges and the patient brainstorming and ‘epic battles’ that have given us meaningful syllabi are being rubbished, and teachers forced to improvise course structures, cut up existing papers or cobble together new ones overnight.
If the experience of forced cut-paste semesterisation in the 13 science courses is anything to go by, the prospect of a University-wide debasement of the substance of teaching and learning, a huge spike in alienation and anxiety among students and teachers, the large-scale exclusion of the most vulnerable students through increasing failure and drop-out rates and unimaginable administrative chaos at the DU stares us in the face, perhaps even the break-up and sacrifice of this University at the altar of commodification.
III
Worse still, semesterisation, accomplished through attacks on the structures, practices and spirit of democratic functioning has blown a hole through the sense of freedom without which no University can survive. The conscious and aggressive exclusion of most members of the University community from the processes of ‘academic reform’, the contempt for debate and the exchange of ideas, the silencing of the DUTA, the relentless intimidation, humiliation and harassment of teachers, and the flagrant violation or at best the reduction of democratic procedures to legal niceties by the Administration augur ill for the future of rights, autonomy and the rule of law, so central to generating new ideas and ways of being at Universities. Shockingly, even the Delhi HC, reserving judgement on the issue, has, in partisan orders since November 2010, allowed the DU Administration to go ahead with semesteristion while increasingly curbing the rights of teachers to dissent and protest.
‘We expect to prevail through the foolishness of preaching’ said the non-violent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in 1838. When this principle is sacrificed, especially at Universities, and Vice-Chancellors—as at DU—with their teams of ‘dons’, cops and courts begin to maul syllabi, procedures, reason, imagination and the freedom to think, speak, discuss and rebel, with threats and emergency powers in the one hand, promises of the moon in the other, then clearly, shrouded in fear, the University is suffering its biggest possible loss and being destroyed.
IV
The merits or otherwise of semestered education apart, semesterisation at DU, driven by the immediate and long-term needs of Capital and State has brought this University to the edge of an abyss. ‘Academic reform’ has been the cloak, vilification of teachers the ruse. The implications for generations of students and employees at DU, and for Higher Education and Democracy everywhere are grave indeed.
The DU teachers’ movement, down but not yet out, needs to unshackle thought, speech, debate, writing, the DUTA [Delhi University Teachers Union] and collective protest from the fear ruling the University at present. Reaching out beyond DU, it needs to assert the role of all members of the academic community in re/making the University with the richness of visions and understanding that can only come through free and democratic debate on the web of issues demanding urgent attention.
Until this happens the DU will remain vulnerable to the continued imposition of the impoverished truths of the few, like the one that abolished pre-admission forms this year, further compounding the current crisis. The hope lies in that the current silence among teachers, reflecting largely a forced, reluctant complicity with the unconscionable, retains the possibility of distress, critiques, no-saying and progressive visions for education sparking another ‘springtime of the peoples’.
The dissonant opening notes to 2011-12 may yet hide symphonic harmonies.
Mukul Mangalik
Associate Professor in History
Ramjas College
University of Delhi
July 02, 2011
