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.

Fire All of Them Summarily

The Arun Nigvekar committee was constituted with a purpose. We are witness to the fact that Delhi University has failed to devise a logical way to implement the promotional scheme proposed and recommended in the sixth pay revision. Teachers of this university have been stranded without promotions for almost the last decade. When it was felt that the provisions of sixth pay recommendations with regard to promotions are primarily encouraging pseudo-research and promoting mushrooming of fake publications, the UGC decided to constitute this committee. When it was established beyond all doubts that the API-PBAS scheme is spelling disaster in the field of higher education, this committee was constituted to suggest ways to arrest the declining standards in research activities as a result of this faulty promotional scheme. When teachers began to feel that in order to secure promotions, they needed to give less importance to their teaching assignments and more to the activities that can lead to score API points, they were forced to engaged in all such activities that promised them to somehow accumulate these points. And the committee came into existence only when it became more than clear that for whatever purpose the API-PBAS system was invented, it had got completely defeated.

The Nigvekar Committee was given the assignment of addressing a specific issue but for some reasons it seems to have lost its direction and purpose completely. Instead of its report opening a debate on the new system of scoring points for promotions, teachers are now being compelled to agitate on the inexplicable increase in their workload as a result of recommendations of this very committee. While proposing the new scheme of scoring points, the Arun Nigvekar Committee appears to have attached an appendix to the document and a few explanations therein that are found to be completely unacceptable from all point of views. The increase in the workload as indicated in the UGC Gazette Notification 2016 is a prescription of disaster for the higher education. No government in its right senses can think of increasing workload almost by fifty percent! With one stroke, no government would have dared to leave almost half of the teaching strength with no choice but to come on the streets. How couldn’t they speculate the damage done by such a notification that is bound to leave teachers with nothing more to lose further? Don’t they understand that sudden loss of job for a sizable lot of teachers will be the direct result of implementation of this draconian notification?          
           Wasn’t that stupid to assume that such a massive increase of workload would not stir up the teaching community? Was that difficult to speculate the unrest that it has caused in the university system? Anyone could have predicted complete unanimity among teachers on issues of bread and butter. Who, on earth, has found the complete boycott of evaluation work as surprising? How could one assume that even after all the adhoc teachers are left with no other option but to agitate, they would keep quite? Was that sane to expect teachers to offer their neck when the gazette exposes the shining sword to axe their livelihood? Tell me who can extract any positive from this third amendment without seeing the writing on the wall?     

         I can smell a rat in this. There is something that is hidden more than what appears exposed in the open. I would refuse to reject the possibility of a game of mischief played by political players to suit their politics. Those who were trying hard to find an issue to mobilize against this government have been awarded the same with this UGC Gazette notification.In fact asking complete withdrawal of this notification would be an incomplete demand to accept even from the government’s perspective. To save the government from further such unnecessary embarrassments, they must investigate how it came to this stage in the first place. There is no alternative – instead of firing half of the teaching community – they must fix up responsibility of this obvious and unpardonable lapse immediately and fire all of them summarily.