Mukul Mangalik - ‘NO! THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE’ SAY DELHI UNIVERSITY TEACHERS
A bombshell dropped by the University
Grants Commission (UGC) on May 10th – the Gazette Notification
2016–has triggered a massive teachers’ rebellion at Delhi University (DU). When
the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) leadership gave a call for a
boycott of the evaluation process, May 24th onwards, teachers
responded with uncommon readiness and near unanimity. Evaluation centres remain
deserted. Thousands of teachers thronged the Sriram College of Commerce (SRCC)
auditorium and jammed the Ring Road and the streets of DU in the mid-day heat of
May 28th. Close to 5,000 teachers marched from Mandi House to
Parliament Street this afternoon, May 30th.
The shock, anger and
will to fight are palpable, the message from teachers unequivocally Marcusian: ‘No!
This is not acceptable’: the Notification must be given an immediate burial
because if it survives it shall turn the field of Higher Education in India
into a graveyard, transforming universities into machines, massacring jobs
instead of making appointments permanent, turning students, and those who
remain employed, into nuts, bolts and morons with gloomy futures, hurting us
all, especially SCs, STs, OBCs and women, hurting friends and families, hurting
society.
Among the key
provisions in the Notification is the alarming stipulation increasing teaching
workload by roughly 50%. This new norm, insanely high and impossible to
achieve by any credible standards, would stun academics and damn the
quality of Higher Education anywhere. One immediate implication will be a
commensurate downsizing of the teaching workforce. Coming, as this Notification
does, in the wake of a drastic 55% reduction in the budget allocation for the
UGC, the spectre of retrenchment on an unprecedented scale is frightening and
real. In DU itself, over 4000 vacancies might be decimated, the worst to be hit
being colleagues who have been working as ‘ad-hoc’ or ‘guest’ faculty.
Further, the mandatory
use of the new workload norms for calculating the number of points collected by
teachers under the widely criticised Academic Performance Indicator (API)
system that has come to govern promotions, will only intensify wasteful wars
over scores even as promotions become in fact, increasingly unattainable for
teachers. The requirement that research articles must be exclusively published
in a list of UGC-approved journals, or in books published by UGC-approved
publishers for them to be considered for API purposes, will simply worsen the
situation. All of this, together with the provision for an ill conceived
student feedback process with grave implications for teachers and teaching,
shall be enough to shatter people’s lives and public-funded Higher Education in
India.
This Notification must go,
but many of us have come together to say something else as well, to
tell all those who have usurped control over our lives, that we are fed
up of being vilified and abused, insulted and humiliated, excluded and
terrorized, ‘ad-hoc’ and ‘guest’, monitored, alienated, traumatized, insecure,
anxious, stressed out and depressed, slaves to unknown masters, to
arbitrariness, unreason and academic callousness.
We have come
together to say that we are sick and tired of being knocked about, pushed around and forced to
take Semester for breakfast, Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) for
lunch, Three Year Undergraduate Programme (TYUP) for a snack, Choice Based
Credit System (CBCS) for supper and Gazette Notification as nightcap; sick
and tired of being told to do this today and that tomorrow, left fumbling,
lost, confused, not knowing whether we are coming or going or what needs to be
done; sick and tired of being forced to dance to the ruckus being made in the
name of ‘academic reform’ by people who should have nothing to do with
academics because all they can really do is to demean the
intellect and disgrace the life of the mind, to degrade and hitch public
institutions of Higher Learning to the logic of commodification, and, in the
current conjuncture, to that of Hindu communalism as well, with appeals to
patriotism and Indian nationalism providing cover to both.
Year in and year out,
without a break since 2009-10, we have not been allowed to do what we are meant
to do: we have not been allowed to work. Work that is our
livelihood and duty, work that allows for sociability and is, very often, sheer
joy and passion, work that can humanize and give meaning to our lives even as
each lecture or discussion takes everything out of us, has been relentlessly
disturbed.
Interrupted by the
hurried and thoughtless imposition of change after structural change - semester- isation
in 2010-11, the FYUP in 2013, the TYUP in 2014 and mother of them all, the CBCS
in 2015, our work has been robbed again and again of meaning and substance; our
disciplines have been attacked, syllabi distorted; essays have been exiled and books
continue being trashed as ‘sentiment’ trumps truth and academic worth; the
general terms and conditions of our work have been under siege, casualisation
rampant, promotions obstructed by the introduction of the insidious API, our
places of work and workplace relations disrupted and ruptured.
We have seen our
democratic rights and our union attacked, traditions of debate, discussion and
participatory decision making consciously undermined, colleges and our
university blanketed with fear and turned into prisons, our classrooms,
corridors, streets and open spaces which draw light and life from fearless
collective control and common use, sought to be stolen from us and twisted out
of recognition.
It is truly remarkable
that in spite of this sustained onslaught, and in the face of continuing crimes
against Higher Education, we are still employed or hopeful of
being employed, that teaching, in its true sense, is still possible,
that our colleges are still colleges, and Delhi University is not
yet a machine.
It is equally, if not
even more remarkable that the main reason for this incredible survival is
the ‘Great Refusal’ by large numbers of teachers and
students of Delhi University to conform and become mere cogs in a wheel; their
determination to keep issues concerning budget cuts, employment relations and
service conditions alive; their determination to remain, in small ways and big,
scholars and intellectuals committed to academic rigour and integrity in the
pursuit of knowledge and truth; their determination to read, write, think and
speak about matters of consequence without fear of community, ‘hurt
sentiments’ and Gods; their determination in the face of extreme adversity,
to try and function as equals in controlling their work and running their
workplaces democratically; their desire finally, to treat human beings as
‘minds… made up of stardust’, to teach as many people as possible to think
freely, critically, analytically and independently, encouraging them to
critique received wisdom, prejudice and irrationality, the world as it
is, in the hope of creating a future in which liberty and human
freedoms might be grounded in citizenship based on substantive equality.
It is for us now,
friends and comrades of Delhi University, to draw inspiration from this‘Great
Refusal’, from histories of past struggles, from the ongoing
student-teacher struggle at JNU as also from struggles on other university
campuses, and turn this moment of severe crisis into an opportunity. Let us, as
we move to bury Gazette Notification 2016, also build radical solidarities with
many more struggles for rights and justice, take back our universities,
democratize them, ensure secure employment, promotions and dignified service
conditions for all, and in as many other ways as possible, ‘demand the
impossible’.
If the current
spontaneous rebelliousness among teachers is anything to go by, demanding the
impossible and reaching for the sky at this moment, far from being
far-fetched, might in fact signify the true ‘realist’ in each one of us!
