The Current Scenario
It is now clear that, either borrowed or of its own or a mixture of these, the University seems to have some vision of what it would like to become in a few years' time. At the same time however, it also appears to be having no clues of how to realize the same. Let us, in the present discourse, postpone any discussion on the utility, need and reason behind the continuous experimentation that are being conducted during the last few years in Delhi University and focus only on the logistics part of their attempt to implement those new ideas. Can we ignore that when the University decided to semesterize the undergraduate courses that required us to conduct examinations twice a year, the examination department was actually finding it difficult to make the ends meet while conducting annual examinations. Didn't we witness that when they decided to centralize sports admissions, they did not have any clue on how to handle it. We also noticed that when they decided to implement FYUP they did not have a clear road-map of its various stages of implementation, initially they forgot to bother about how time-tables would be prepared for the newly structured courses. As a matter of fact when they came up with the idea of having Foundation Courses, they did not have any idea of how these courses would actually run in a college; who would teach these courses; how would these teachers be appointed. What all infrastructure related difficulties would arise when teachers would be required to use internet while teaching a Foundation Course; how many teachers of a single department would be required for such courses that was aimed at teaching the entire first year, seems to be no one's problem at all. When they decided to get each of the answer sheet evaluated by three examiners, they did not think about the absurdities that may arise out of this decision. When they decided to get the attendance uploaded each month in the colleges they did not think how it would be done. When they decided to offer first preference of DC-II courses to the FYUP students, they did not foresee the near-impossibility of its implementation. When they decided to have Foundation courses, they never realized there were few teachers who had any idea of how to utilize the periods allocated for these generic papers. IMBH is still only an ornamental paper for a huge majority of teachers. When they decided to ask teachers to teach through laptops and projectors, they did not count how many teachers were actually good enough to make use of these modern equipments and gadgets. To add to this list is of difficult-to-implement tasks is that when it was decided to call only those applicants for teaching posts who would score more than a particular threshold marks, nobody thought that a topper of under-graduation and post-graduation will be left behind even if he/she has qualified the NET/JRF test.
The real Problem
It is now clear that, either borrowed or of its own or a mixture of these, the University seems to have some vision of what it would like to become in a few years' time. At the same time however, it also appears to be having no clues of how to realize the same. Let us, in the present discourse, postpone any discussion on the utility, need and reason behind the continuous experimentation that are being conducted during the last few years in Delhi University and focus only on the logistics part of their attempt to implement those new ideas. Can we ignore that when the University decided to semesterize the undergraduate courses that required us to conduct examinations twice a year, the examination department was actually finding it difficult to make the ends meet while conducting annual examinations. Didn't we witness that when they decided to centralize sports admissions, they did not have any clue on how to handle it. We also noticed that when they decided to implement FYUP they did not have a clear road-map of its various stages of implementation, initially they forgot to bother about how time-tables would be prepared for the newly structured courses. As a matter of fact when they came up with the idea of having Foundation Courses, they did not have any idea of how these courses would actually run in a college; who would teach these courses; how would these teachers be appointed. What all infrastructure related difficulties would arise when teachers would be required to use internet while teaching a Foundation Course; how many teachers of a single department would be required for such courses that was aimed at teaching the entire first year, seems to be no one's problem at all. When they decided to get each of the answer sheet evaluated by three examiners, they did not think about the absurdities that may arise out of this decision. When they decided to get the attendance uploaded each month in the colleges they did not think how it would be done. When they decided to offer first preference of DC-II courses to the FYUP students, they did not foresee the near-impossibility of its implementation. When they decided to have Foundation courses, they never realized there were few teachers who had any idea of how to utilize the periods allocated for these generic papers. IMBH is still only an ornamental paper for a huge majority of teachers. When they decided to ask teachers to teach through laptops and projectors, they did not count how many teachers were actually good enough to make use of these modern equipments and gadgets. To add to this list is of difficult-to-implement tasks is that when it was decided to call only those applicants for teaching posts who would score more than a particular threshold marks, nobody thought that a topper of under-graduation and post-graduation will be left behind even if he/she has qualified the NET/JRF test.
The real Problem
Where
are we going wrong? It is obviously in planning and preparation.
There is a clear case of missing out on the logistic details from the
point of view of at least the implementation of their own ideas. All
these decisions that were taken without working out a well researched
strategy, threatened to create one crisis after the other. Having no
idea of how to solve these continuing crisis they seem to have invented a method to tackle the unmanageable imbroglios. The
University is passing all such problems to the colleges
assuming that the colleges would somehow manage the crisis. They think
their task is now only to keep on insisting the colleges to somehow
show a scenario of successful implementation. The colleges are in
such a difficult situation wherein they are not even expected to
discuss the difficulties in the implementation when letter after
letters are being dispatched with deadlines of various kinds of
implementation. The delivery mechanism is not on anyone's agenda.
They think that after empowering the Principals they are left only
with a task to catch hold of them for not being able to deliver
according to their wishes.
Just to
have some idea about the difficulties being faced by the colleges,
let me explain this with some real examples. Just imagine if only
someone had attempted to force the implementation of providing daily
balance-sheets/inventory-reports in a large mall or a bank without computerization then what would have happened? If someone had wanted
a daily update of all rail/air tickets booked from all over the
country for all trains/planes without a computerized reservation
system in place, what would it have led to? If stock market shares inventory-reports are to be provided on a daily basis without
computers then what would be the scenario? Any of these demands would
have thrown the system in a complete disarray. It is not impossible
to understand that nobody could have provided the desired reports manually even if the concerned management was empowered to employ as
many persons as required and even if they were given a go ahead to
hire and fire all those who were not able to deliver.
Tackling Strategy
Tackling Strategy
In this
age of computerization, when one could actually simulate a working
model before asking for the implementation of any idea, our
University seems to have been ignoring this vital aspect of
management. Asking a college to scan and upload attendance is one
thing but nobody seems to have bothered to work out the time of
scanning of around 1000 pages submitted by 200 odd teachers in a
particular college that would be required if one has an idea of how
much time an average scanner takes per page. Not only this, but the
fact that a scanned page is generally of a few MBs (and not of a few
KBs as it happens for a WORD-page) only adds to the difficulty in
scanning and the time consumption in uploading the same. Nobody seems
to be interested in these calculations. How many persons would be
required to issue, re-issue, accept and keep the returned laptops
for around 1000 students seems to be of nobody's baby in the
University. How would a college be able to manage double the intake
capacity of admission without the sanction of second tranche of
teaching posts seems to be bothering no one in this University. One
could have seen smooth implementation of many of these ideas if only
a centralized software (just as the Exam software is now at some
helpful stage of implementation) would have been installed. Once a
software for creating time-tables and also of keeping students'
attendance/internal marks is put in place, then only one can think of
asking the teachers to enter the data supposed to be provided by
him/her. The software could have then been used to generate room-wise
and/or other such useful reports. If the Foundation Courses were
introduced only after uploading sufficient material for assisting
teachers teaching these courses, the situation would not have been so
bad. Similarly, instead of just scolding colleges for managing admissions if the University could have developed an online admission process then the process would have got smoothly executed without any hick-ups and much to the satisfaction of the admission seekers. I see it as a complete failure on the part of the University officials that we do not have a comprehensive admission software which could have reduced the interaction of colleges with the admission seekers to almost nil. The failure is all the more evident as we do admissions only mechanically on the basis of the merit - a perfect recipe to qualify for computerization.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Not that
everything was perfect in pre-FYUP or for that matter pre-Semester
era but at least we all had a fair idea of what was expected from
each one of us then. Coming year may see a smoother functioning but an initial bad-show normally causes a greater damage of reputation and makes is really difficult to revert. I would conclude this discussion with a final
remark that one can go on inflating the size/number of the University
officials but with no strategy of proper governance in place, the
crisis is destined only to deepen.
This is
a clear case of Maximum Government and Minimum Governance – just
opposite to the Modi's mantra.
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