Mukul Mangalik - Delhi University's summer of shame
“People are people through other people” — Xhosa proverb
“We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery” — Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator
Colleges of the Delhi University are in the grip of frenzy. With the university administration breaking promises about appointing permanent teachers against existing and newly sanctioned posts since 2009-10, large numbers of ‘ad hoc’ appointees are being shown the door as new ad hocs are poised to replace them. This has been happening systematically since 2012, but the scale on which it is being pursued this summer appears to be unprecedented.
This is being done through the unfair practice of holding repeat interviews for the same jobs. Serving ad hoc teachers, it must be emphasized, have been selected at different times through due process for these jobs. This renders the repeat interviews nothing but forms for the exercise of power over ad hocs, and instruments for deepening the presence and footprint of malleable labour at Delhi University. The large-scale sacking, or threat of removal, of teachers currently under way needs to be brought to an immediate halt and dignity and secure employment guaranteed for all colleagues.
‘Ad hoc’ appointees become teachers after going through merit-based interviews. They are appointed for durations of up to four months. Within this period — in the event that the vacancy in question may be longer than four months — selection committees are supposed to be constituted, fresh interviews advertised, and appointments made against temporary or permanent posts. University ordinances are clear on this issue. If, for whatever reason, this does not happen, the fairest practice has been that the previously appointed ad hoc teachers, who are not responsible for delays in interviews, continue until such time in the near future that this process is completed.
All of this has been informed by the understanding that ‘ad hoc’ conditions must remain, at most, a transient moment in teachers’ lives, and that too only if absolutely necessary. The regular work of teaching demands regular forms of employment. Anything else would have a negative impact on teachers’ work apart from constituting unfair labour practice. There is also adequate evidence regarding the long-term mental and physical destruction caused when people are faced with job insecurity or unemployment. Yet, all across the colleges of Delhi University, undergraduates are being taught by thousands of teachers struggling to offer the best they can in the face of indignities, terrible economic insecurity, and the increasing threat of stress-related illnesses.
In spite of the provision in Ordinance XVIII (7) of the University of Delhi, that “Not more than one-third of the total number of the teaching staff shall be on a temporary or contractual basis at the same time”, 4,500 of 9,000 plus teachers at the university are teaching as ‘ad hocs’, with many continuing in this capacity for years. This number, together with the few hundred guest lecturers, paid per lecture delivered, makes it clear that Delhi University is being run largely on the exploited backs of casual labour, and has been witnessing the rapid normalization of ad hoc employment practices.
This is unfair enough. The widespread compulsion now, that ad hoc appointees sit for repeat interviews for another set of ad hoc appointments at the same department of the very college where they are already employees, instead of appearing in a fresh round of interviews for a new category of posts, is massively compounding injustice... read more:
