Breaking a Myth - Air-conditioning of Campus costs a fortune

It is ‘normally assumed’ that making an entire college building air-conditioned would burden the students with unreasonable increase in fees, but I am afraid – this is only a myth created by those who love to exploit this ‘common sense’ by offering such a justification for the huge fees that they charge from the students. As it might be shocking to know that making all the classrooms & Labs of a college air-conditioned would actually cost less than Rs. 500 per students annually!

I was driven to write this piece when I came two know about the recent turmoil that Hindu College observed when they decided to charge a hefty fees for their newly constructed Girls’ Hostel – many steps more than what Boys are being charged. The justification offered in support of this differential fee structure was that the new structure was proposed to be air-conditioned.

Surprisingly, generally speaking, it is a commonly established and accepted fact that an educational institution that has air-conditioned class rooms can sustain its infrastructure only by charging fees in lacs. I am here to break this myth. I would pick up the case of my college that has around 5000 fees-paying students, around 50 class rooms and approximately 20 labs. To start with, I can assure you that if I dump 150 air-conditioners in my college, the administration will face huge difficulty in finding a place to install all of them (given that the college already has some air-conditioners installed in the office and some computer labs). Now let me place some basic calculations here. It would be perfectly realistic to assume that purchase and installation (including cabling) will cost approximately 50 thousand per AC. Therefore the total cost of installation of these 150 ACs will be 150x50,000=75,00,000. And thus, the cost incurred per student will be a one-time contribution of 75,00,000/5000 = 1500 (Rs.). It is clear that we need only a single contribution of Rs. 1500 per student to ensure air-conditioning of the entire college building. Moreover, if our college decides to do this in a span of three years, we need a contribution of Rs. 500 per student to achieve our target in a time-bound 3-year time.

Now, another greater myth is on the running cost of these ACs. Let me try to break this myth too. On an average, our college can claim to have not more than 180-200 teaching days in a year. And discounting the winter days when ACs are not required, we may need these ACs in the class rooms only for about 150 days and that too from 9 AM to 5 PM (8 hours a day). This generous estimate makes these 150 ACs run for 150x150x8 = 1,80,000 hrs. On an average this would consume 2,70,000 units of energy costing Rs. 25 lac maximum. This, when distributed on the 5000 students would come to 25,00,000/5000 = Rs. 500 per student per annum! Given that colleges are already charging a minimum of Rs. 10 thousand per annum from the students, it is only a lack of vision that has pulled the college administration back from making the campus air-conditioned. On the contrary, colleges have often given an impression that air-conditioning the campus would cost them fortune. Myth have got built up by the incident like Hindu College that proposed to charge about Rs. 1,20,000 per student as compared to Rs. 80,000 per student primarily for air-conditioning. A whooping difference of Rs. 40,000 per students annually is not only ethically unjustified but that also help create the ‘Myth’ that I have pointed out here. When AC can be for all – it is conspiratorially being utilized with a motive to create and maintain a division between an Elitists’ and a supposedly Commoners’ institution.

Let us break this myth and encourage college administrations to think of ways to get the entire campus air-conditioned. One must never forget that air-conditioned class rooms not only can encourage attendance in the classrooms but it would also provide the students the much-required comfortable environment during their tense, hot and anxious examination days. 

Teachers’ struggle needs to stay at peak

During our semester struggle we witnessed massive turn outs of teachers in the DUTA programs and activities. All shades of teachers participated in the united struggle against the proposed system and its contradictions. But, what did we get in response to our activism? Even a supposedly ‘weak’ UPA government functioning at the mercy of left and their likes did not pay any heed to our concerns. The government turned deaf and dumb. The University authorities and the government started acting tougher. Even principals were targeted in order to teach teachers threat-lessons. A series of threatening letters were issued by the registrar of the university. And those threats were not in air as many teachers were served explanation calls. Authorities started spreading terror by issuing show cause notices to the agitating or otherwise teachers, individually. And to add to this, many of the activists even suffered wage cut for a few days. Later, buoyed at the absence of effective opposition to these repressive measures, the government and the university completely ignored teachers’ apathy when they decided to steamroll FYUP in DU. Teachers’ participation became thinner and thinner and reached the stage of mere tokenism.

During the ongoing united struggle of teachers however, the circumstances and events are all different. From the day one, a visible movement in the government was noticed to address our major concerns on Workload and API scores. Although the present government has far more stability in terms of the numbers, assurances started pouring soon after a combined struggle was launched by the teachers. Promises were being made addressing our real concerns. The government undoubtedly appeared responsive this time. What could be the difference? A simple analysis would convince you that this time not only the feedback mechanism was working better but even the opinions received by the government from the feedback sources were respected by them.

Don’t even dare to conclude that teachers could have achieved this response without our united show of strength. We must not make the blunder of feeling complacent about the developments. Instead, I want this analysis to give us the hope, energy and strength this time (that was entirely missing during our earlier struggles) to fight this battle and conclude it on a victorious note. There is a clear chance that our struggle will end on a satisfactory note for the first time after more than a decade of our combined sufferings. We continued to suffer denial of promotional avenues during the entire sixth pay period, we were snatched off the opportunity for holding selection committees for permanent appointments and to top them all even our pension schemes were turned into unnecessary controversies. We were forced to accept the original draconian UGC notification and its two successive amendments earlier. But this time, buoyed by the positive responses from the right quarters, we could think of demanding withdrawal of not merely the third amendment but the original notification itself that can hopefully pave the way to help all sixth pay beneficiaries to get the benefit of promotion scheme that existed during the popular fifth pay scales. However, the analysis will not be complete if I will fail to point out that during our earlier struggles what probably was disheartening to notice was that those who were supposed to convey our concerns to the government were either seen as helpless bunch of teachers or were seen coming out in blatant support of ‘their’ government. Undoubtedly, teachers are visibly hopeful this time only because besides the honest unity in our united struggle even these factors seem to be working in our favour this time.

Let us fight together as always, but let us fight with real hope of victory this time. Because the only way that we can fail now is that if our leadership fails to remain honest and committed to the welfare of the teachers and succumb to their otherwise compelling urge to indulge into unnecessary and divisive political games.

Let us put an end on further exploitation of Adhoc Teachers

It is difficult to remain unmoved and disconnected at the apathy that our adhoc teachers have been facing for the last decade or so. They were ‘used’ to bring about Semesterization in the university; they were later ‘misused’ to steamroll FYUP over here and were ‘abused’ and ‘forced’ to come out in support of FYUP when it was being rolled back; and finally they were completely ‘ignored’ at the time of introducing CBCS. But this is only one side of the story. The darker side of this story is that they were being abused and exploited not only by the immediate college and university authorities but even by those leaders who were supposed to protect them from their misery and agony. Only after the Centre saw the popular Modi government coming into power, some appointments could take place, although the numbers are far from reporting to any satisfactory level. Now it is widely acceptable that there were enough reasons for the then government and their allies to keep these teachers as adhoc teachers just to fulfill their conspiratorially desires and designs.

The recent UGC notification, in a single stroke, quite shockingly has swept the entire floor under their feet. For these ‘technically’ adhoc but arguably more hardworking and sincere teachers, the draconian UGC notification came as more than any shock; it was more than disturbing; much more heartless, unbelievingly mindless and absolutely ruthless. It was shocking too as the government that can easily take credit for getting the permanent appointments started after almost a decade and was instrumental in issuing directives after directives to the universities to fill up all their vacancies sooner than possible time was seen as pushing them off the hook into a deep valley. Till now the adhoc teachers were always somehow lured/forced into avoiding siding with DUTA’s call, but that was not to be true this time. The erroneous workload calculations as given in the draconian UGC gazette notification have left them with no choice but to join DUTA’s call. Unlike earlier DUTA’s calls, adhoc teachers joined us this time and as a consequence we could boycott the evaluation work completely. With the 4500 strong adhoc teachers joining us having no choice, the participation of teachers in the GBM was seen as unprecedented.  Riding on the wave of the panicked adhoc teachers the spontaneous show on the street also recorded a huge turnout of teachers when DUTA gave a call this time. The primary reason for this resounding success of DUTA’s call was the scale at which our adhoc teachers participated in these events as it was clear that with this notification, they were left with nothing more to lose.

But I can sense some insensitive leaders trying again to cook their food on the activism of these young teachers. I am afraid as they might like to keep their cooking pans on the burning emotions of these adhoc teachers to find strength in order to fight their narrow political battles. A section of teachers has already started mixing this problem with other issues that happened in Hyderabad, IIFA, JNU or in Ram Lal Anand college. Some others have started finding fire in the cold smoke that was left after the present government decisively burnt their dynastical aspirations in the last elections. These leaders are probably suffering from selected amnesia as they have failed to admit that the root cause of all these problems have been inherited by the present NDA government and are not their own creation. Conspiring to build up a movement against the central government by keeping the ‘fear’ alive among our young friends would be a complete dishonesty on our part. Let us not push our adhoc teachers again into another blind well after they came out of the one in which they were compelled to stay for a good 7-8 years.

Let us put the issue of Permanent Appointments on the highest priority.  We must not compromise on the issue of workload estimates and procedures. We, who are riding on the wave of an unprecedented spurge in the DUTA activism, must utilize this mandate to completely do away with this politics of exploitation against these teachers. Since the MHRD has been more than clear in her message that the existing workload will not be disturbed at all costs, let us engage her in a meaningful dialogue to stop this politics of exploitation in Delhi University. Instead of deriving strength from the fear of these teachers to build up a movement against the government let us put an end to their exploitation as they have no one but to look at DUTA for this. Yes, API-PBAS is promoting negativity, spurious research and fake publications and we must fight to get a scientific, acceptable and fresh way of promoting hardwork, sincerity and excellence among teachers – but not at the cost of prolonging the apathy of adhoc teachers.