MOHAN J DUTTA - Amid Neoliberalisation of Indian Universities, Protests by Students is a Ray of Hope
The rise of the
administrator class is a global phenomenon across universities in neoliberal
times. The neoliberal
university is less a space for critical engagement, debate and inquiry, and
more a skills factory for the technocratic workplaces owned by transnational
capital. In the neoliberal university the student is a product, packaged for
the marketplace in marketing slogans and brand identities. Professors are
measured in economic terms of productivity and efficiency and cast in the
branding race.
Liberal arts and
critical thinking are repackaged in the neoliberal university to serve the
needs of the market. Instrumentalist logics about Silicon Valley innovators in
the tech industry being liberal arts students is the premise for pushing a
neoliberal version of liberal arts. To run the neoliberal
university, career pathways are forged for administrators who can discipline
the university into an instrumentalist assembly line of well-calibrated
workers.
In such
a university, the administrator class becomes a mouthpiece of
state-corporate power, reiterating the interests of corporate stakeholders. At
the same time the administrator class is appointed to align the university with
the agenda of the state in producing obedient workers for the transnational
workplace.
To administer a
university is to carry out the tactical frameworks that have been figured out
by powerful corporate donors and state actors. The administrator is a
technocrat, specialising in techniques of implementation and evaluation.In such a climate of
neoliberal transformation of universities globally, critical thinking and
analysis become mere branding tools in glossy brochures, while the goal of
administering the university becomes one of producing homogenous robots with
sophisticated skillsets who perform pre-programmed scripts. The neoliberal
buzzword, innovation, stands in for corporate-driven technical products, i.e.
students disciplined into submission.
Neoliberal turn, cultural
education and India
Recent neoliberal
transformations of education in India have been marked by a parochial emphasis
on skills training to complement the authoritarian impulse of a right-wing
Hindu government that wants to turn universities into sites of Hindu
propaganda. The trans-formation of Indian universities in the blueprint laid out
by the BJP is handmaiden to the “Make in India” campaign. The goal: to produce
efficient workers who can “Make in India”.
The technical emphasis
is combined with a cultural revivalism targeting the humanities and social
sciences, seeking to transform these disciplines along the lines of
chauvinistic propaganda. Discovering Sanskrit texts, reading Hinduised
histories, examining Vedic science and learning about Hindu culture
have been framed as the key agendas of a humanities and social science
education, pushing forth a narrow non-history of India that is devoid of
evidence and closer to mythology.
The neoliberal agenda
has been remixed with the Hinduised agenda to offer a cocktail that promises to
bring back India to its lost glory as an Asian leader in higher learning,
manufacturing human capital that is Indian in spirit and global in skills.
BJP-led
appointments on university campuses
That the BJP-led
government has been hell bent on shaping education in the model of BJP-RSS
propaganda is visible across the various leadership appointments being made in
universities across the country. Administrators closely aligned with the party
line, often without adequate qualifications, are being pushed onto universities
across India. These university administrators are the eyes and tools of the
BJP, dancing to their master’s tunes while implementing a saffron agenda in
higher education.
In achieving its
agenda of creating universities as Hindu propaganda houses, the BJP-led
government has simultaneously launched a concerted attack on critical thought
and dissent. Protesting students have been attacked by goons of the Akhil
Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), while the state machinery has launched its
attack on students through police force.
In this backdrop of
the rise of the neoliberal university reinvented for cultural propaganda, the
surge of student protests across India against the authoritarian policies of
puppet administrators is a sign of much hope. These protests speak to the
resolve of the students to protect universities as sites of learning, debate,
and free expression.
Contrary to how the
protests have been projected as deviant, these forms of student protests have
been fundamentally about safeguarding the university as a site of thought and
critical engagement. The voices of the students across campuses in India, their
resolve, and their participation depict a spirit that is committed to
protecting the university as a site of learning and critical dialogue.
Quite ironically then,
the BJP-appointed administrators at these universities, it would seem, are
insistent on breaking down this very spirit of learning and dialogue. The
targeted campaign to silence dissent is not driven by reason, rather by
preconfigured agendas. Moreover, there isn’t even a performance of transparency
and objectivity in how decisions are carried out.
In the most recent
example of the decision of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) administration
to punish students at JNU, who were allegedly involved in a
range of supposedly disruptive activities including arranging a purportedly
“anti-India” event where “anti-India” slogans were raised, based on the High
Level Enquiry Committee (HLEC) report, reasoned argumentation and evidence-based
deliberation have been displaced with preconfigured judgments and BJP
propaganda.
The students needed to be punished, this was already decided by a
biased HLEC. The HLEC then performed a charade of inquiry to arrive at the
decision of imposing a range of punishments from fines to rustication for
varying periods. The processes through which the HLEC was formed were opaque,
raising questions about the objectivity and fairness of the processes, and
rendering them closed to the views of the students. The very notion regarding
the supposed anti-nationalism of an event interrogating the hanging of Afzal
Guru was left unquestioned, a sign of authoritarian times.
The punishment meted
out to the students at JNU are similar in pattern to the punishment handed out to Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student
leader at the University of Hyderabad, who committed suicide after having been
unjustly punished by the university administration. Rohith was a member of the
Ambedkar Students Association, a Dalit student group that drew attention to
various forms of injustices in Indian society, and was protesting the hanging
of Yakub Memon. At the event, a confrontation had broken out with activists of
the ABVP. Because of alleged intervention of the BJP leader from the region,
Bandaru Dattatreya and the pressure exerted by the BJP government, Rohith’s
fellowship was withdrawn and he was expelled from the hostel, which ultimately
led to his suicide.
Over 10,000 students marched to the capital on February 23 to protest
Rohith’s death. In their protest, the students draw attention to the
disenfranchisements of Dalits in a Brahminical education system and the attacks
on Rohith that was systematically orchestrated by BJP-ABVP. The protest of the
students is a protest against the chilling climate of control being exercised
by BJP on university campuses in India. Similarly, the HLEC
decision at JNU is being protested by students not only at JNU but across
campuses in India.
Administrator class
and silencing dissent
As students at JNU
protest the decision with an indefinite hunger strike, the administration has
been silent, depicting its colors as an administrator class of the Hindu Right. The BJP-appointed
vice-chancellor of JNU responded with a notice that the hunger strike was
illegal, without really opening up a space for conversation. Rather than
showing gestures of care (which one would expect the VC to demonstrate as a
teacher), his recourse was to instruments of disciplining. Rather than being
open to listening to the student voices and committing to a fair process, the
VC was predisposed toward performing out his assigned role through opaque
processes.
What strikes me about
the VC’s position is his inability to demonstrate an ethic of care towards the
students of a campus that he is supposed to lead. This perhaps is the image of
the neoliberal university administrator, unable to be moved by the pain of
students, unable to find a heart for compassion.
On the ninth day of
the strike, I read on Umar Khalid’s Facebook wall “JNUSU President Com. Kanhaiya
in an extremely serious condition. Vomiting for the past few hours and in a
semi-unconscious state. He has been rushed to the hospital. Health of the rest
of the students also deteriorating fast” accompanied by images of Kanhaiya
Kumar on a stretcher. Umar then goes on to reiterate the resolve of the
students: “The hunger strike is not going to be withdrawn till all punishments
are taken back. Onwards to the academic council meeting on May 10, let us
intensify the movement. Let once again thousands pour out on the streets of
JNU.”
Possibilities of
hope
What stands as a ray
of hope in these dark times, amid this deliberate attempt to transform JNU, is
the resolve of the students and their teachers to imagine a politics of hope.
The JNU Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) has stood by steadfastly as students have
taken on the authoritarian impulses of the state, with teachers lending their
bodies in solidarity and in demonstrations of an ethic of care. It is perhaps this
very ethic of care that is the antidote to the neoliberal tide of
saffronisation India is witnessing.
When a heartless
administration has turned its face away from the students in an authoritarian
judgment delivered through opaque performances, the teachers offer a glimmer of
hope. In these neoliberal
times, these students and teachers stand in as harbingers for what universities
used to be and for what they could once again be: as spaces of learning,
critical thought and authentic commitment.
As JNU teaches us, to
retain the character of universities as sites of learning however, is an
everyday struggle for educators, a struggle I hope we are willing to take up
with courage and commitment. Amid the large-scale
onslaught of corporatised agendas that seek to turn universities into
instrumental workshops, the resolve of JNU students and protesting students
across India offer the hope for another imagination, grounded in an ethics of
care.
