Backpage

FOR some months now, India’s premier university has been locked in a bitter wrangle between the university administration and the teacher’s union (DUTA) over the decision to ‘semesterize undergraduate education.’ With DUTA frequently resorting to dharnas and strikes and the vice-chancellor obdurately refusing to review the decision, teaching in most colleges remains severely disrupted such that, probably for the first time in its long history, many fear the loss of an academic session. For a university that has long prided itself on both its academic standards as also the ability to hold examinations and declare results in time, irrespective of circumstances, this stand-off marks a new low.

Most commentators, and the media in general, have been extremely critical of the stand and practice of the DUTA, castigating it for its muleheadidness and anti-reform attitude. The DUTA, in any case, has been better-known for its trade union orientation, focusing on ‘pay, perks and working conditions’ far more than as a ‘thought’ leader in matters academic. Somewhat unfairly, because many teachers are conscientious and struggle against odds in a difficult environment to meet their commitments. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny that university teachers, particularly in Central Universities, are seen as a ‘privileged lot’ – a feeling that has only grown since the implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission – who are unwilling to ‘pull their weight’ and thus undeserving of any sympathy.

With the Delhi High Court now placing a seal of approval on the administration’s plans, and simultaneously admonishing the DUTA for not being sufficiently concerned about the welfare and future of the students, many hope that this ugly chapter will finally come to a close. Fortunately, given the timing of the decision, the university authorities have agreed to defer their intention to introduce the new semester-based system to the next year. Hopefully, both sides will now use this grace period to meaningfully and constructively engage in a joint effort to rethink and reform the university, an exercise that is long overdue.

As Professors Shahid Amin and Shobhit Mahajan have persuasively argued (The Hindu, 8 November 2010), there is need to think through the ramifications of this proposal to semesterize, more so in a place like the Delhi University, which is not only overwhelmingly undergraduate and where different constituent colleges embody very different standards, draw in students from widely different backgrounds and varying initial endowments, and which are governed under different systems, introducing a ‘one size fits all’ system without simultaneously addressing the varying contexts may, in fact, weaken the impulse for needed reform. Moreover, to believe that merely by introducing a semester system, the university will be pulled into a modern era, is to miss the point. There are far too many other issues plaguing the university, above all bureaucratization, centralization, politicization and unequal power relations, needing urgent attention.

Whatever we might think of the teacher community and its union leadership, converting them into ‘enemies of reform’ who need to be put down with a firm hand is only to guarantee future conflicts. The administration needs to ensure a ‘buy-in’ from its primary resource – the teachers – if the university is to have a future. Equally, and this is far more important, the teacher leadership too needs to ‘grow up’, stop living in the past, understand the changed times and context, and pro-actively come up with meaningful and implementable proposals. To be active agents of change, teachers have to stop thinking of themselves as victims of an unjust order.

When, for instance, is the last time DUTA took up the issues of teacher absenteeism and work shirking, most of all by senior teachers, show sufficient interest in library reform, or in organizing remedial courses for first generation and ill-prepared students? Why does it blindly oppose proposals for autonomy and flexibility to different colleges? Does it not realize that this only contributes to holding back those capable of doing more and better, while doing little to improve general standards? Above all, why the hostility to breaking up the over large and diverse university such that different constituents can experiment with context-specific strategies for advancement.

Universities, the world over, are facing difficult issues of transition in an environment where both teachers and students have the possibility of shifting to locations that they find more congenial. Quality concerns have now become far more paramount. Rigidly sticking to older (possibly dated) frameworks for imagining both the university and modes of struggle, even if invoking noble principles as defence, may well contribute to collective decline. That, at least, should serve as a wake-up call.

Harsh Sethi