Teachers poised to reclaim DUTA in 2021

The coming Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) elections are going to be very crucial. Historically, DUTA had come into reckoning after it got the second promotion of readership for the college teachers in eighties as a result of a long strike that continued for more than 80 days. This success also helped University teachers in getting promoted to the post of Professors on a large scale. Some 'conservative educationists' used to run these promoted Professors down by branding them as DUTA Professors. But DUTA has been claiming its glory since then as they could successfully facilitate indiscriminating promotions on a large scale, realized by both the University and College teachers. DUTA became known in the entire country on posting this particular achievement. DUTA activists drew recognition when they ensured that promotions were not denied to almost anyone. Even today, DUTA draws its strength from this anecdotal success story. In the last more than two decades however, DUTA movement could not repeat even a fraction of such a success.

Although DUTA has no such success story since then, it did try to repeat its glorious performance during the struggles against semesterization that ended in failure and FYUPization (Four Year Undergraduate Program) that culminated in a delayed success but this success was far from being as impressive. DUTA’s activism continued in the last two decades but the successes more often than not, used to be on a limited scale. Recently, to save itself from becoming irrelevant, DUTA have indulged into some issues that rarely bothered teachers of DU on a large scale and were more political in nature and substance. DUTA has also been playing around with priorities of issues for reasons driven more by politics than welfare of teachers. Hesitance in picking up the issues of continuing apathy of ad-hoc teachers and then against the insensitive attitude of Delhi Government in granting funds for salaries in their colleges has opened the eyes of the entire teaching community. When teachers were passing through the darkest phase of no promotions, no appointments and no salaries, DUTA kept itself increasingly engaged in other issues that demanded lesser attention than these. The size of such mistaken priorities grew in abundance especially since 2014. Intolerance towards the government that came at the center in 2014, never made DUTA believe in the UGC regulations 2018. DUTA kept on looking for only negatives of the document with a sense of disbelief and mistrust, although there were very few for their discomfort.

Come 2021, and the scenario changed for good this year. The success story of promotions witnessed by the teachers in the era of eighties has got repeated in 2021. In its earlier version, teachers got promoted to the post of Readers, and this time they got promoted to the posts of Associate Professors and Professors in a similar way. That DUTA is finding it difficult to claim this achievement, lies in the fact that they never let the teachers believe in the positive aspects of the UGC Regulations. NDTF (National Democratic Teachers Front), a right wing teachers organization, displayed exemplary confidence in the UGC Regulations 2018 and kept on projecting its unbelievable provisions as realizable when others claimed them to be unrealistic and unrealizable. This confidence of NDTF and its current presidential candidate Prof. A. K. Bhagi that led this dream come true has made them emerge as the real hero in this entire dream-like sequence that is running for almost a year till now. There may have been some failures, but the successes are so enormous that failures have been rendered as aberrations rather than rule. And this has changed the scenario. This has generated a lot of hope and positivity in the teaching community. With NDTF claiming to support ‘regularization’ of working adhoc teachers after running the success show on promotion story, their promises have ignited many hopes to realistic levels. Teachers seems to be in a clear mood to take a plunge, to give their hope a chance and thereby to reclaim the old glory of DUTA. Writing is on the wall and after more than two decades of absence, time is destined to give NDTF its well-deserved and well-earned chance to show its mettle and resolve in fulfilling their promises and hopes. 

Unresolved issues and Inappropriate Celebration

I am amazed at the celebration mode of some DUTA leaders on the news of change in ministry. This news was celebrated as if DUTA has been able to resolve any of the major issues that are concerning and bothering the teachers in general. It is more than clear now that ‘their’ disproportionate sense of achievement would get 'completed' only with the exit of NDA government. The scale and extent of celebration only proved what some of us have often been reiterating in our assessment that DUTA has been derailed from its primary focus. It is lately being used more as a platform for venting out their politically motivated desire and outbursts of opposing and defaming the government at the Centre.

The hard reality is that the present government was greeted by a list of long pending chronic problems that were started and then left unresolved by the UPA government. The problems of unmanageable number of adhoc teachers and the un-implementable nature of API-PBAS scheme both were inherited by this government from the earlier regime.

Yes, the MHRD failed to address these issues effectively and this could be one of the factors that could have led to the change in the ministry. However, it would dishonesty if the efforts made by the MHRD in getting these long-pending problems resolved, are not acknowledged. Although it is true that all the efforts in terms of 3rd, 4th amendments and further clarifications carried out to address the issue were quick like never before but in the final analysis those were proved only to aggravate the problems due to factors that the new minister will face as a challenge. I hope the new minister would be able to take control of the forces working within the system against the government.

Interestingly, even groups active under DUTA can not absolve of from their contribution in getting these two problems to this alarming stage. While AADityans can hardly save themselves from the blame of directly supporting the regimes that created this huge pool of adhoc and un-promoted teachers, DTF also can not wash their hands off from the fact that they did not launch any effective attack despite having DUTA’s functioning under their major control. NDTF, on the other hand, have no such history of helping factors that led towards building up of these problems.

I am a proud NDTF activist who can claim that NDTF, after the present government came into power, actually played a significant role in DUTA to ensure continuation of adhoc teachers in the last few semesters besides getting the permanent appointments started. And after the change of ministry, we will keep our efforts going with a greater hope of resolution of all our problems to the satisfaction of teachers.

Thanks to FYUP – Left is growing in DU while it is way out from India

Let me hold nothing back and admit here that due to inept handling of the FYUP implementation, the congress have reasonably lost its ground to the Left in Delhi University. It only made it worse as they also showed signs of engaging themselves in narrow caste considerations to help their failed cause. I must not shy away from what has been in a visible public domain that the right wing teachers' and students' fronts NDTF and ABVP, who were earlier hoping the Center to corner Left with their hammer of FYUP could not remain mute spectator when they witnessed them hammering even common stakeholders hard. I have nothing to prove in this connection as the alarming rise in the share of votes in favor of the Left both in the students as well as teachers elections left little room for us to analyze. It was only in the nick of the time that right wing took up the cause of common stakeholders to keep their relevance alive in DU.

The major drawbacks of FYUP that those opposing FYUP utilizes are

1. the fact that the students were required to pay for an additional year and invest an additional one-third of their time for getting the same degree was enough to create repulsion among students
2. that the DU was complete unprepared to handle the task and the University along with the college administration kept on failing to preempt logistic problems that started coming up on each fresh day after the implementation. They were further exposed hollow in handling in these problems as they started building up an army of DU officials mainly on narrow considerations.
3. that while seniors were slow and sometimes afraid of adapting to modern teaching tools, they were expected not only to learn these but become a master of these in no time.
4. that Foundation Courses were introduced without enough study materials and helpless teachers were asked to engage 'classrooms' in a manner that they were never used to - only helped the discontentment to grow.
   Even though I would not shy away from admitting my admiration for some aspects of this exercise, I would sum this up as a clear case of giving an years' dose of drugs to a TB patient in a single day. And we are left with an impossible looking task of saving the patient. Believe me, we were never required to sow the seeds of dissatisfaction among the stakeholders, we had only a task left to show our concern to the cause. Without even discussing the merits of this arguably ill-conceived but surely ill-timed reform I can say for sure that the primary mistake that the authority made was that before they themselves analyzed and got prepared for the new challenges they decided to handle them as they would encounter them during the process of implementation. This overconfidence that later resulted in an ego problem made it worse as they were left with no option but to look for narrow identity considerations to somehow make this effort appear as success.
   I am at a loss of words as I am not sure now whether one should prescribe a rollback or just a sincere review of FYUP that would not only address all major concerns of common stakeholders as listed above by me but more importantly keep us open for any fresh and sensible reforms.

Rollback of FYUP ....

For me, rollback of FYUP simply means flushing out the importance of Foundation Courses.

The main argument on which the need of this FYUP structure was based on, itself defeats the purpose of this much hyped exercise. Those few who support FYUP often say that the employing industries feel that students who used to pass out from the earlier Three Year graduation scheme were not found job-ready and they had to be trained for six months or an year to make them 'employable'. Although this statement is an exaggeration at least for those who used to choose academics and research as their career but leaving this point aside even if I agree to their contention, according to their own admission, the students were even earlier becoming job-ready after completing four years of registering for a graduation course. The 'employ-ability quotient' that earlier students were acquiring rightly at the expense of the employing industry is now being done by financial burdening the students. Not only this, but there is no guarantee even now that these students will not have to go through the mandatory 'trainee period' whenever they get a job in an industry. A logical conclusion of their understanding of the situation would have been that the students who were earlier either unable to clear their graduation exams or were able to do that could have been offered an additional year of optional courses at the college. For these students, who had intentionally chosen not to pursue a career in academics and research, this additional year could have been run in collaboration with the employing industries to provide them an opportunity to earn the desired 'employ-ability quotient' ending in their employment at the same place.

One can make the existing FYUP a TYUP just by adequately replacing the Foundation Courses with DC I/II papers. Not only that but all the positive features of the Foundation Courses can also be retained by asking students to work for a project that they would be required to submit by the end of their second year. And the nature of this project should be such that they include features as collection, analysis and interpretation of data by students in a group of around ten students preferably of different backgrounds. Besides this, it should also include writing about the project by each student and presentation of the same too on an individual basis. Encouraging gradually the use of laptops, computers, Internet (searches and social media) and projectors even in regular discipline courses should also be welcomed.