Biometric humiliation - Axe of accountability

Yes, I will feel humiliated if asked to register my attendance on a biometric machine. It would make me feel like a criminal whose intentions of breaking rules are already established. It would feel like I am sentenced to a punishment for a crime that I have never committed. I will feel robbed off all my enthusiasm in going that extra mile to deliver to my students. I will be left with no eternal drive to help students in shaping their future after my ‘working hours’. It will dampen my spirit of treating the college administration as my own responsibility. Only execution and not success will be the aim for any assignment that I will then take up. As a consequence, I will be shaved off all motivations to own my institution. And yes, I will fail to inspire my students.

The Purpose

It hurts me more when I read my Vice-Chancellor admitting in a press statement that “Biometric system alone can’t make absentee teachers hold classes regularly. But that is no reason for not introducing it” (Mail Today September 29, 2012). To me, then the only motivation left for him in favour of implementing this system is to humiliate teachers like me and nothing else. Isn’t this then only to prove that teachers are mere slave in this education (University) system and I, including many others, am not entitled to possess my own views? Don’t we all know that those who bunk classes are either not competent enough to hold classes or have other ‘better things’ to do? Busy in avoiding their incapability getting exposed, these teachers never question the questionable and thus become favourites of authorities. These teachers care little for the University System or the very purpose of its existence and instead allow the authorities to use them to feed their ego. These teachers who are ever ready to put the entire education system at stake are those who constitute the core group of stakeholders whom the University authorities recognise these days. These people are often picked up to constitute a convenient group of policy makers in our University system. The University is well aware of the fact that it will achieve little by forcing these few individuals to take classes. I am convinced that aim of the University is not to force these bunking teachers to engage their classes but is actually meant to humiliate conscientious teachers who have mind of their own and often become hurdle and refuse to blindly follow the directions of the authorities. The University this time again has resolved to teach these ‘thinking’ teachers some hard lessons.

Earlier I had felt the same when teachers’ views were not given due importance while implementing semester system. Now I am convinced that even then the authorities were well aware of the negative consequences of the implementation of the system but went ahead with their designs only to show the exact place that is recently being created for the teachers in some ignorable corner of the University system.  As suspected by the teachers, having failed to deliver in the semester system the University is now passing on all the additional burden of the system on to the College administration besides shirking from taking the responsibility of their conventional work related to examinations that they were doing from ages. They just want to govern without accountability. All the dirty work created due to their ill conceived vision or due to their going overboard in pleasing their masters in the HRD ministry is now conveniently being forced upon to the undergraduate administration. Even the axe of showing accountability seems to be falling only on this side of the University.

Accountability

However now I wish not to provide any chance to anybody to project me as shirkers. More importantly I will now make conscious effort in not allowing any space behind me to create a hide-out for any shirker. I am open to evaluation by my own students. Instead of scaling me on mere punctuality let them assess my sincerity while I make serious efforts to complete the syllabus. Let them evaluate me on how successfully I communicated with them, on the thrust and depth that I provided to make them understand the content and how often, in their view, I had come prepared for a lecture. I will also like to allow them to give us suggestions for improvement. Of course, to reach to any meaningful conclusion only those, who attended at least 80 percent of the lecture that I delivered for them, should qualify to give their assessment. Let us make this evaluation compulsory for this set of selected students. Let me also suggest in favour of establishing a similar feedback system to receive valuable opinion of the passed out students on some recent experiments being done regularly by University authorities supposedly in the benefit of students at the cost of humiliating teachers.

I hope that I am in overwhelming majority in this Delhi University. Let us demand to be treated as teachers. But they will give me their ears only if they desire to prove me wrong.

Are we all corrupt?

Recently we have witnessed perfect examples of how anybody can be framed and proved to be corrupt using the laws tailor-made by those who have kept this handle purposely with them. Tell me why I should not have an option of travelling on cycle and ask for a payment for the luxury ride that I am entitled to if I wish to help a cancer patient to get some life-saving medicine with that money. Can anybody explain that what is wrong if I want to sacrifice my entitlement/luxury in favour of a good/noble cause. The only wrong is that the rules do not allow. But who has made these rules and more importantly why is such a rule made. The purpose of framing a rule in such cases is to stop a misuse of one’s entitlement for his/her greed. But is this greed? Shouldn’t we encourage such sacrifices?

There is another rule that states that if I avail a paid leave from an organisation where I am working then I should come back and serve the organisation for a specific duration linked to the period my absence. But why did we need such a rule? Isn’t it only because if someone becomes eligible for a higher remuneration due to the work that he has done during his/her paid absence then he should be discouraged from acceding to this temptation and in case if one does so then he/she should pay back the money that was received during the absence with an appropriate penalty? But is this rule not assuming that the person leaving the job after a paid leave must be doing so by falling for a greed for higher remuneration? Would you justify asking a person to pay back the money paid to him/her with penalty even if he/she decides to provide free consultancy in a remote village after acquiring an MD degree on a paid absence from a government hospital where he/she was working as an MBBS?

And what about him who has given hope to innumerable patients who do not have the money to avail costly allopathic treatments. Shall we allow a ‘profit’ to be considered as ‘income’ if it is not used for personal greed and luxury and is re-invested for a good cause?

And the worse is that they have been able to equate these noble deeds with the greed of Kalmadis, Rajas, Rahuls, Sonias, Dixits, Vadheras and many more. The response to Anna's recent call against corruption has emboldened these forces. However we should remember that unlike us who do not have the authority to make rules, all these people are corrupt in accordance with the rules that they themselves have the power to frame.