Attendance in JNU and Skype Vivas: Excuse to Shut down a
functioning University
It would seem to the lay public, that a handful of students
and teachers, are standing up against the RSS run administration. It is the
constantly illegal amendment of the statutes of JNU, by the current Vice
Chancellor, Prof Jagadesh Kumar, which is causing daily anxiety and
consternation. The protests against his Machiavellian policies have been going
on for two years now. The reason is simple: JNU was a laboratory for learning,
and students and teachers have a long history of treating one another as
citizens of a free country. The alumni have dispersed to follow the traditions
of scholarship both in our own country, as well as abroad.
The might of the JNU rests in its happy memories. Since
February 2016, there has been a change in the way the institution is run.
Immediately noticeable to the general public are the strikes, the
demonstrations and the dharnas which have
continued almost with out stop. Exhausted by this long and continuous battle,
JNU scholars spent the vacations catching up on their reading and writing, and
returned to even more draconian circulars. These suggested that flamboyant and
coercive measures were in place to curtail academic freedom on campus and had been
passed by the AC and EC. The minutes of each, according to reports of teachers
who had attended these meetings as Deans and Chairpersons, did not approximate
what had actually happened in these meetings.
The problem with truth is that it cannot be hidden…it always
reveals itself. Writing a new history, or amending the statutes is a very
visible process.
Take for instance the question of class room attendance in
M.A. The students come from hinterland universities, and have worked hard to
enter an institution which received A++ from
the NAAC in November 2017. The labour that goes into M.A teaching rests
essentially in keeping young adults alert, occupied and interested. Students
read before coming to class, are encouraged to be vocal and be presenters of
papers on a continuous bases. While heads are not counted, the energy that is
always swirling in the class room is the best reward for a teacher. The
students who do not come to class are handled in Centre for the Study of Social
Systems, JNU in extra classes, which are taught by doctoral students, who are
already eligible to be teachers themselves in the 77 affiliated colleges of
Delhi University. Many of these doctoral candidates are hired by D.U colleges,
while writing their dissertations. Imagine, getting up in the morning at
catching the 7 a.m special and teaching in D.U, and returning by the 3.30 p.m
special to write the dissertation and prepare for the next day’s lectures!
Impossible to sign in at the office of the School, which opens around 10 a.m. The
classes held by the Teaching Assistants are so interesting, because of group
activities and discussions, that the students who regularly attend the primary classes, slotted
on the time table, also turn up for Remedial classes, as they are called. Peer
group support is huge, and over two years, those who felt they were not
included in the regular classroom, become stars merely by dint of hard work.
Phd Students are the hardest working of the JNU community of
scholars, spending grueling summers and freezing winters on campus, which has
austere provisions and water problems, as like the rest of Delhi, it is
dependent on water from Haryana. The life of the Phd student is not at all
easy, and while much time is spent collecting data, analyzing and writing up
the data is also extremely hard work.. Signing in every morning at the office,
to prove one’s presence is virtually to undercut the efforts every doctoral
candidate makes to prove that his/her work is original contribution to the
discipline. The scholar is most likely in the archives, or in the field, or
laboratory collecting data. During the digital age, it seem archaic to have to
prove one’s presence physically. If the scholar is in touch with the
Supervisor, there is ample belief that he or she is up to date with work. The
relationship is based on mutual trust, and the Colleagues in any given Centre
in JNU provide collective support to research scholars regardless of the topic
of research. Seminars are held annually to compare progress of individual
scholars, and every six months, the Chairperson receives a report from the Phd
scholars before registration forms are signed. The demand by the VC that the
viva voce in consultation with experts be neturalised and skype vivas in the
presence of the Dean be the norm is also quaint. The statistic of vivas is so
large, that the Dean would never be able to be present in all, and delegation
would be necessary.
Skype vivas in JNU
campus where the internet is continuously dysfunctional or hacked, as every
faculty member will inform you, is another joke. Since the Phd dissertations
are evaluated by examiners from all the Central Universities in India, the
alarming question of whether small towns have non stop electricity and internet
access in also important. What is becoming very clear to JNU students and
teachers is that the VC, who receives his orders from RSS office, Jhandewalan
is set on destroying a fifty year old legacy. As no dialogue is possible with
RSS functionaries, who do not believe in the legacies of institutions which
have been safeguarded by statutes, the damage day by day causes incalculable
mental suffering to both young and old. Privatisation of Education as ushered
in by the Congress was a death knell, but the erosion of JNU by RSS think
tank (because it had a Nehruvian legacy
as an institution, with Marxist intellectuals in some centres,) is destroying the optimism that rural youth
had that the “intelligentsia of the people” were respected and protected in
JNU.
