Present State of
affairs
At
present the DUTA (Delhi University Teachers' Association) movement is
clearly in the most challenging state ever. As the era of heroes has
gone, we have progressively witnessed our heroes becoming more and
more human whereas oppressors have become more and more inhuman. I
can myself genuinely point out many lapses of the DUTA leaderships
that have been instrumental in throwing us into this state of despair.
Here, I would consciously avoid blaming someone for the growing indifference among teachers towards
DUTA and pat myself for pinning down the other group for the
failure of the movement. Can we deny the fact that it is always
impossible to fight an insensitive administration with our age-old,
well-established and democratically acceptable methods. The use of
stings with electronic devices that initially helped common people to collect evidences to help them in raising voices against the
incidences of oppressions are now being utilized by the administration
to browbeat voices of discontent. All DUTA meetings/dharnas/speaches
are invariably captured on camera these days to put it at our
disadvantage. The administration has already started liberal use of
these devices to establish our presence and absence in such DUTA
gatherings and they have also resorted to threatening the teachers of
using other attendance recording devices (biometric) to enforce their
repressive designs. To add to our wounds there are some of us who
want us to realize that we can survive only at the mercy of those who
are close to the administration. The claim by some group of teachers
that they would not have “allowed” a salary cut or would have
successfully stopped other such regressive measures by the
administration only reinforces the fear among common teachers. After
facing a few salary cuts, common teachers now know that they are not
only helpless but not even in a position to bargain. It is easier to
blame a group for our collective failure but we all know from deep
inside our hearts that a road ahead will be visible only when we
collectively decide to wake up now.
Exploring a way
It would
be better for us if we can realize that the days are gone when we
could make the authority feel our collective pressure. In fact one of
the prerequisites to make them feel our pressure is that the
administration should be sensitive enough to respond to pressures.
All democratically acceptable measures of movements and agitations
are bound to fail as soon as an administration decides to become
completely insensitive. The strength is always collective but what
goes into our clear disadvantage is that in this new technologically
advanced world the administration can always find a way to single you
out. Now even mob has a face on a camera. Besides this, with the
increase in salaries and perks as well as the ever growing EMI
culture, the stakes have become so high that these factors are
actually helping the administration in singling out each one of us.
Is there
a way out or we will have to leave everything to our destiny? I can
see a ray of light. The AAP experiment, irrespective of our agreement
on its ultimate success or failure, has taught us some very precious
lessons. The AAP success-story in Delhi was surprisingly without
their indulgence into any kind of violence or their participation in
any visible law-breaking movement. On the other hand, the survival of
individuals like Subramaniam Swamy in the political horizon of India
can also provide us with a clue to move ahead.
Possible
strategy
The
lesson is clear and loud - we will have to depend on the social media
and the legal system to deliver in favour of teachers. Can't we think
of creating a legal cell to assist teachers in achieving our goals
but entirely in a legally acceptable manner? 8000 strong strength of
teachers can contribute more than 1 crore a month (average of Rs.
1200 per teacher or just 2% of our salaries) and that can be used to
fight for our rights. This amount of money would be good enough to
engage a battery of legal advisers to help us out with their
invaluable advises, they can also be used to serve legal notices and
finally to help us in filing a petition and fighting a case in a
court. The “Social Media” can further help DUTA in identifying
the cases that should be taken up by its legal cell. Of course, for
this, an educated group like us teachers can be expected to adopt the
social media in a big way. Any issue would then be decided in a
lesser time with even wider consultation than now and it can come
with unquestionable reliability. After all even during the British
colonial rule we were never averse to take up a legal route and we
have now seen how Kirori Mal teachers succeeded in the CPF/GPF case
that DUTA could never clinched through the traditional pressure tactics
spanning over many leaderships over more than a decade. I recall that
we were muted when at the time of semesterisation the court itself
had asked as as to why we did not move the court when so many rules
were being blatantly violated for imposing semesterisation. We could
have certainly won a case against our salary cut for taking a casual
leave.
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