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.

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.

Common course contents - its desirability in higher education

This article was published in the August 7, 2015 issue of the Millennium post  http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=144348 )
Uniformity and diversity are not synonyms to black and white. Talking of uniformity can't be always considered as wrong in any absolute sense. Whereas a desirability to enforce uniforms for school-students is well accepted, similar enforcement in colleges is also considered as avoidable. Recently a move of UGC to enforce a common syllabus in the entire country has generated intense discussions in academics. Traditionally, higher education in India has been following a trend of denouncing any such proposals. One of the prime argument offered in its favour is that nowhere in the world, where institutions are known for their excellence, such uniformity has been imposed. Ironically, while carrying out these comparisons, these arguments conveniently choose to ignore the glaring inequalities between the performances of those institutions with ours. It is no secret that our education sector currently needs to expand its age-old narrow and pure-academic outlook to include many other important and extremely useful aspects of modern education. In addition to this it is also advisable to never overlook the enormity of the exercise that we need to carry out in India in terms of numbers. One also must not forget that nowhere else, countries have been working with these many number of potential students and relatively fewer institutions. In my view, in the context of India, the absence of a common structure and syllabus has been encouraging anarchy and chaos in the mass education sector instead of providing any glimpse of excellence.

                In the name of autonomy, inexplicable and most often undesirable sense of diversity has been encouraged in the higher education. Identical degrees issued by two universities of this country can't ensure anyone that there syllabus would also have some level of commonality. It is strange also because the 'eligibility' to become a teacher in an institution gets decided not by the course contents covered by the applicants but only by the nomenclature of their degrees. I fail to understand that why can't we ensure that if the name of the degrees are identical then at least sixty-seventy percent of the course contents will also be same. On the other hand, if two course-contents do not have sixty-seventy percent common then why shouldn't they be identified by two different names. Further, it is also an undeniable fact that in the name of autonomy and diversity, some institutions are known to have taken its advantage in introducing some anti-national and anti-society studies in some typically designed courses. Is it not a fact that a common test called NET has successfully worked to an acceptable extent in ensuring a minimum standard of the quality of teachers.

                When one has a task of regulating the academic standards of more than many institutions, common structure always helps in fixing a hard lower bound on the academic standards of the educational institutions. In the absence of such a common structure it often becomes impossible to stop the falling standards of a deteriorating institution. Enforcing a common structure and course helps in carrying all the institutions along and also helps in putting brakes on their downslide. An autonomous institution, showing signs of failure, is undeniably designed for a free fall in such a scenario. Autonomy is undoubtedly beneficial but only for those who are showing signs of improvement since a uniform structure would ultimately limit their rise. In a typical Delhi University scenario, we all would agree that if all the colleges of this prestigious University are made autonomous, more than many would fail to survive beyond a decade. We argue therefore in favour of having a common course, a common degree, a common structure for all the colleges of Delhi University to stop those institutions from getting exposed. I also believe that some of the very good performing colleges of Delhi University is well poised to give an incredible show if they are allowed to become autonomous. But it must not be favoured only because the autonomy of these few would force more than many other institutions of the University to follow a downslide. Since we are aiming at mass education, we must not think of doing that too. IITs and IIMs have better performing institutions and therefore any move to implement a common syllabus over there would limit their rise. On a deeper analysis, since the tags of 'IIT' and 'IIM' have recently been extended to additional institutions, this fact may add a new dimension into this discussion as even these entities are now being dragged into mass education. Let us not ignore the glaring fact that a common syllabus of CBSE has helped in maintaining a nationwide minimum standard in the school education sector.

                So the strategy of the regulatory authorities is crucial in these circumstances. They should be able to assess the timing when to provide greater autonomy to an institution. But all those central and state universities who are serving for mass education must be asked to adhere to some level of commonality in the course structure and contents to ensure a minimum standard in education.

LET THE SENSE PREVAIL

When all the University will have similar syllabus and courses then why on earth there will be a need for the seamless movement of the students from one institution to another? Having provision for such a movement is therefore simply erroneous and stupid. I would only conclude that the credit-scheme that are being lauded as a feature that will facilitate movements across the institutions are not meant for this at all but it is only to allow students to give extended time to accumulate credits to qualify for a degree. It seems, it is meant only to help failing students to complete the requirement for the degree at their own convenience, pace and duration. If it means that Universities should have a liberal policy towards the concept of strict 'span periods', I would gladly advocate in favour of this.

Secondly, even if the question of desirability is set aside for a while, all those features that are being sought to be introduced in the higher education through CBCS, I can challenge, will work in a far more meaningful manner if the format is kept annual in the context of Delhi University where there are more than handful colleges running such courses. Isn't it stupid to allow students to hop in and out from any course twice in a year and five times in a three year-course?

And lastly, apart from 'suggesting' model syllabus and model courses at a centralized web-site, UGC can also provide an exhaustive list of all the courses being run in this country along with their detailed syllabus. Our education is already a victim of forced teaching - parents expect the teachers to forcibly teach students, students themselves chose courses that are forced by their peers and societal pressures and these are often get decided by the marks only, that they eventually achieve in their qualifying exams. 

When there is an urgent need for this country to switch on to interest-driven mode of study, these forced strategies are going to yield undesirable results that will never help India to become a developed nation. It's time that we remove all hurdles of age and financial requirements for all those who are really interested in learning specific skills, a particular subject or show interest to become independent professionals.

Indian Education - a fresh approach

The present education system – an assessment

The present Indian education is designed to produce persons with

• Good mathematical skills.
• Good instruction-following capacities.
• Average analytical skills.
• Not so inspiring writing abilities.
• Poor reading habits.
• Hopeless self learning attitudes.
• Poor citizen habits.
• Missing national pride.
• Individualistic outlook.
• Missing concern for the society.
• Flawed attitude towards opposite sex.
• No idea of the law of land.
• No idea of financial discipline.

The system is apparently fighting to survive the pressure of dealing with unmanageable number of candidates right from the beginning. Our education system has become an instrument primarily to provide some mechanical way to shortlist candidates. To select candidates for any avenue, students are therefore judged more on their reproducing abilities and less on their understanding capabilities. Interest in a discipline and passion towards a skill are often sacrificed and the candidates are expected to discover and even generate these qualities within themselves after they get selected.

This has forced our education system to get built up apparently on a flawed premise that an academician or a researcher is suited best for any kind of profession. With this basic premise our education attempts to produce only academicians. And only during this process students keep on shifting to other avenues at some stage or the other out of frustration from the mainstream education to learn skills that are required to earn a living.

Examination side-effects

The education system has got evolved in such a manner that understanding a problem, innovative thinking and failed attempts go hopelessly unevaluated and hence get discouraged in the present system. On the other hand, mere having Information about solutions or an attitude for mindlessly following a beaten path and only successful attempts most often get rewarded in the present system.

That one will be able to get a profession of one's own interest depends completely on the reproducing ability of a person. And the system thus encourages students to fool others through rote-learning. Only rote learners are sure of getting 'success' in this system. In our society, 'Success' is a name given to the event of getting into your choice of profession. Ironically in our country it is another bitter truth that the 'choice' is always guided by the expected financial returns from the profession and not driven by any passion for that profession.

Our education system fails to realize that if someone has understood a topic/concept then that never means that the same person will also be able to reproduce the same. To be able to reproduce the same one needs to waste valuable time in revisiting the same again and again. Unfortunately even those who have not understood can reproduce the same through rote learning. Too much importance on examination-results forces even innovative thinkers and visionaries to waste their time in preparing them for useless reproduction.

Misplaced sense of achievement

Another serious fall out of the present system is that a degree is invariably mistaken as an ultimate achievement and a final license to get (not earn) money. To get into a system that would fetch them a 'financially relevant and socially respectable' job, students often get exhausted while handling the cut-throat competitions and consider their job as already over once they get placed in a desired environment. They then expect the government to start paying him/her for this 'false' sense of achievement.

Our society has an enviable (unreasonably skewed) liking for only a few types of professions. These professions come with a deadly combination of high returns with astonishingly lesser challenges. Beginning from the colonial era these jobs have continued to evolve as offering more and more of these attractive features. People find those select jobs so glamorous and paying that the entire society runs after only those selected few professions. We acquire degrees and percentages only to get hold of one of these jobs. However the anti-climax is that we consider acquiring degrees as the end of the purpose to get education and a government officer's job ('corruption' renders the returns entirely de-linked from any pressure to perform) epitomizes the sense of getting rewarded in return of education.

The main problem of our education system is therefore that our society considers only a handful of the 'jobs' as 'financially relevant and socially respectable' options. This is exactly the reason that our society looks up to getting a job only as a doctor, engineer, manager, officer, administrator, academicians. There is an urgent need to expand this base. Jobs associated with several other kinds of skills should also be made financially relevant and hence socially respectable. In our society the difference between the social status of a pathological technicians, a nurse and a doctor is unreasonably enormous; difference between a construction worker, a labor contractor, a junior engineer and an engineer is unreasonably huge; difference between a car mechanic, a technician and an automobile engineer is too large to be justified; difference between an electrician and an electrical engineer is completely unjustified; difference between a University professor and a school teacher is not understandable; difference between the status of a plumber and a civil engineer is outrageously huge; difference between a hotel waiter and a hotel manager is inexplicably large. This brazen attitude stems from our age-old disrespect towards dignity of work. It is true that this change is not easy to affect but the absence of effort in this direction has already magnified the problem to an extent that an avoidable 'reservation race' has found its relevance in the system.

The way ahead

Let us try to move inch by inch towards a state wherein financial considerations will take a back seat in favor of an inherent interest in a profession. When a student can take up a profession out of his own personal interest in the same and not because the skill can provide an unreasonably better financial status and a respectable lifestyle – then only we will be somewhere near to our destination.

As long as these differences would stay in our society the mad rush to get into those few professions would continue. And as long as the rush would continue the method of examination to shortlist the unmanageably long list of candidates in a blind and mechanical manner will find no alternative. And as long as this examination system will exist no innovation can be nurtured or encouraged in this process.

Education should aim at producing persons with

• Good reading, writing, analyzing and debating abilities.
• Necessary sensibilities.
• Some job fetching skills/attitudes.
• Attitude of a self-learner.
• Concern towards society.
• Knowledge of law of the land.
• Temperament of observing rules.
• Courage to point out deficiency and injustice.
• Having national pride.
• Vision of an innovator.

Conclusion

Education means development and it must be provided to all without exception.

Primary education should aim primarily on building values and personality development,

Secondary education should be utilized to help students identify their interest/inclination and

Higher education should be aimed at building those skills.

To achieve this we need to dump two avoidable misconceptions that obstruct our march towards achieving this:

• We must be realistic and never think of de-linking Higher education from jobs/profession.
• And secondly, we also must stop daydreaming that the government will be able to provide Higher education to all without the help of private investment.

The government should focus on framing policies to encourage private players to help in enlarging the set of 'financially relevant and socially respected' professions by modernizing more and more job-providing avenues/skills.

Scope and Hope

The numbers are so large that there is no other way but to depend heavily on internet-based education. Uploading of skill-training demonstrations by real professionals should be encouraged and must be given utmost priority. Computers and automation by machines should be encouraged in those skills that are hitherto not financially paying to make them financially attractive. Use of automatic machines in furniture industries, washing and cleaning industries, repairing industries, construction industries and waste-management industries can do wonders in making them of some financial worth. Use of computerized approach in hair-designing, jewellery designing and fashion designing can make them attractive too. Besides these, imparting the attitude required on the issues of Sexual Harassment, Gender sensitization, Driving rules, Anti-drug laws, developing a balanced understanding on the other sex, issues of national pride, national concerns on population, poverty and environment should also find desired attention in the nursery and primary education curricula.

FYUP episode and its after-effects

First the haste with which FYUP was implemented and then the even hastier manner in which it was unceremoniously abandoned has made the teaching community and the students believe that probably this is also a way 'reforms' can be brought about in the University. I am witnessing that a group of well meaning teachers and sincere students have been fooling themselves with a hope that reforms can be rolled out with the 'rollback'. They seem to have got too much used to the bulldozing way of affecting reforms. We must understand that 'rollback' is only an effect of the 'FYUP attempt' that was made in the name of 'reforms'. It is high time we realize that 'reforms' can neither be a clandestine agenda designed by an elite group of individuals to bring about changes to suit their interests nor they are freebies that can be distributed to those who are asking for it. The dumped FYUP may have some features that can be recommended while asking for reforms in the Indian education sector but just for that it should never be mistaken by anything as 'reforms'. FYUP was a mercurial change that was destined only to experience such a reactionary response. The way it came into being, FYUP itself had asked for this end.
Let us not misread the 'rollback' as a reform. Rollback was at best only meant for a temporary relief and in no way can show a new strategy to be adopted for bringing about reforms. It seems we have spoiled our understanding of 'reforms' so much that we think that 'patience' is not required to be observed for affecting reforms. We must now realize that 'reforms in education' is a serious issue and requires some time to reach a stage at which a gradual attempt can be made to affect changes. A genuine feedback mechanism with a grievance redressing system need to be put in place to serve this cause that has awaited a meaningful attention for so long a period. Widespread consultations and a suggestions drawing exercise need to adopted to overhaul the Indian education beginning from primary education to the higher education for addressing the issue in a comprehensive manner. Let us not forget that 'steroids' (with unavoidable side effects) are used only as life saving drug and now since 'rollback' has been able to save the academic-life of this University, let us not get used to taking it. Let us work together to make meaningful changes in an acceptable way.