[The below text by Prof Arun Kumar appeared as a chapter in a 2023 book edited by RR Sharma]
JNU Potential and Performance: Need to Introspect
Retd.
Professor CESP,
SSS, JNU.
In
R R
Sharma (Ed.)
2023. `Nehru’s
Luminous Legacy,
The Jawaharlal
Nehru University:
Fifty Years
and Thereafter’. With a Foreword by Prof. Y K
Alagh. Delhi: 2024.
Introduction
JNU is
where my thought processes evolved over 31 years as a faculty member
and prior to that four and a half years as a Ph.D. student.
Naturally, I have the fondest memories about my time spent in the
institution and the biggest disappointment at what it has become
since 2016. In this article, rather than simply being nostalgic about
its past glory, I have tried to be objective about JNU’s highs and
lows. I have situated my experiences in the changing context of JNU
and higher education in India since the 1970s.
The question arises how JNU could change so rapidly after 2016? It
bears little resemblance to what it was even a year earlier. Were the
seeds of this change sown much earlier? A Rector, in 2008, asked how
JNU could be different from `Munirka’? That is, how different can a
university be from the nation’s prevailing ethos?
Is
nostalgia making us believe that our time was better than the present
one? What yardstick can be used to judge whether changes have been
for the better or worse? Can the university’s rating by NAAC, an
accreditation agency, or its rank in the world rankings of
universities be used?
JNU has done reasonably well in them. But, these measures focus on
quantitative rather than the crucial qualitative aspects which are
hard to capture.
The objective measures should be the quality, socially relevant
knowledge generation and learning. All this requires
inter-disciplinarity, and is that happening? Quality depends on the
teacher and taught relationship and the academic environment in the
departments and in the hostels. The relationship between the
administration and the academic community is another crucial factor.
All these need to be considered to objectively assess an institution.
Initial
Vision
of
JNU
JNU was
modelled on the pattern of a liberal British university since in the
1960s Cambridge and Oxford were considered ideal universities. It was
even said that JNU should aim to be like these universities. Since
there were few world class institutions of higher learning then, the
country’s leadership wanted to create one such institution.
The idea
was to set up a research university to produce socially relevant
knowledge for a poor country. This required a long-term independent
vision of society and freedom to the faculty to pursue this goal. So,
promising young faculty were recruited and provided autonomy to
pursue their research interests. Inter-disciplinarity was built into
the institution’s structure so that a critique of existing
knowledge could be developed. The university was set up to do basic
research with a strong focus on social sciences.
Greater
autonomy also implied a different approach to learning and
relationship with the students. A residential university was part of
the design. Hostels and faculty residences were interspersed to
promote informal interaction among faculty and students.
More importantly, students had to be treated as mature people and
given greater freedom to take decisions. So, the design included a
self-governing student body. This worked well and became a model for
other universities. Students are a part of the academic bodies such
as, the Academic Council. This has acted as an early warning and
feedback mechanism so that the situation does not go out of hand due
to emerging problems. In brief, there has been a less paternalistic
attitude towards students. The Lyngdoh Committee report in 2006 and
the Supreme Court’s intervention dented this arrangement. But, the
JNU model is still a unique one.
Greater
autonomy to faculty and treating students as mature has required less
bureaucratic administration of the University. It also required more
resources. Initially there was no shortage of resources. A large
piece of land was given to JNU for its campus. But when the Janata
government came to power in 1977, it thought of JNU as a bastion of
the Left and cut back its funding and for long JNU functioned from
what was called the down campus.
JNU
quickly learnt that a public university is at the mercy of the state
for resources and its autonomy can be truncated if the state so
desires.
Many
institutions of higher learning came up in the 1960s and 1970s but
few reached the heights which JNU managed to achieve in the 1980s and
90s. This was largely the result of the initial vision of the
university. JNU did not try to become Oxford or Harvard and just as
well - that would have been a contradiction in terms since
originality cannot be copied.
It also needs to be remembered that the milieu in which JNU exists is
vastly different from that of the top Western universities. So, JNU
can never be like them. In fact, JNU’s achievements are a result of
its being its own unique self.
Personal
Experiences
The 35
years spent in JNU have been personally productive and that built the
base for me to continue being productive in the years since
retirement. My research has been highly relevant for the critical
recent issues. For instance, demonetization and the black economy,
GST and public finance, challenges of higher education and
globalization and marginalization which has got highlighted due to
the spread of Coronavirus.
As a
student, I was impressed with the atmosphere of learning and
engagement in JNU when I compared it with Delhi University where I
had done my Masters in Physics. The degree of maturity of students
was much higher and the trust and responsibility reposed on them was
orders of magnitude greater. There was no ragging and no goondagardi
during elections which was the norm in most Indian universities in
the 1970s. Politics was clean and the level of debate among
candidates was high.
I joined JNU in 1977 soon after the Emergency had been lifted, a new
government had taken over, and the students were demanding the
resignation of the `guilty 4’ who had collaborated
with the
authorities during the Emergency. Classes began but soon there was a
long strike. The students captured the library and ran it for months
so that studies could continue.
The functioning of the Student Faculty Committee (SFC) was an eye
opener – students could actually participate in the admission
process by keeping track of what was going on, etc. In CESP, we
created a student discussion group which met once a month and
discussed pre assigned topics. Prof Krishna Bharadwaj offered her
residence for us to get together. Later this became a formal group in
the Centre.
As
faculty, one had the autonomy to teach courses the way one wanted to,
within a broad rubric. So, the courses based on one’s understanding
were unique. There was autonomy in conducting examinations. I not
only gave term papers as a part of the internal evaluation but also
asked the students to present their written work to the entire class
to test their understanding of the topic. The students greatly
appreciated it and other faculty members also followed this practice.
I gave open book examinations to test the understanding of the
subject. The students found it difficult to cope with, since they
said they were not used to thinking in an exam. I sympathized with
them because their entire training was to learn by rote and
mechanically reproduce it in exams. Knowing this, I was liberal with
grades and also marked the students using a normal curve. Every
semester, I took a written feedback from students and it was a real
help.
I
started a coffee club in the Centre where at 11 am the faculty and
the Ph.D. students could come for a cup of coffee and informal
interaction. After a couple of years it became a faculty- only coffee
club twice a day. This promoted much interaction among faculty. But,
in the 1990s when everyone got a computer in their room, colleagues
wanted the coffee in their rooms and interaction declined. The first
computer in the Centre arrived in 1987 and a 24x7 computer center
became operational in the 1990s.
As Chairperson of the Centre, I initiated major changes. One of them
was the regular preparation of minutes of the faculty meetings and
their circulation via email to faculty, including those on leave.
This not only brought about greater transparency and accountability
but everyone felt more included. This was adopted in other Centres
where this was not a practice.
I
constantly pressed the administration to simplify processes like, the
cumbersome registration process which required students to run around
various offices. This was eventually done in my second term as
Chairperson. I pressed for digitization of work and official
communication. I also pressed for modification of Ph.D. ordinances so
that a category of minor revision could be introduced and this was
accepted later.
I
proposed in the various bodies of the University since 2002, the
setting up of a JNU Archives but to little avail. The issue is
important for documenting JNU’s evolution and its contributions.
For instance, JNU’s role during the various social movements in the
country or the documenting of important decisions taken in JNU. As
faculty members retire, much of this knowledge which was individual
is getting lost to the wider community and JNU itself.
Traffic in JNU exploded in the 2000s with more and more vehicles on
the roads as well as in the parking outside buildings and hostels. I
was appointed the Chairperson of The Traffic Planning Committee to
make suggestions. We quickly realized that a holistic view regarding
traffic was necessary. So, based on widespread consultations our
Report made recommendations on various
aspects, such as, equity, the special problems of the challenged and
the elderly, environmental aspects and encouraging of non-motorized
transportation. Much later, cycle banks were introduced on campus.
I was associated actively with the JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA)
since the mid-1990s as a member of its EC several times and as its
President in 2014. It gave us the opportunity to not only fight for
our rights but also strengthen the intellectual environment of JNU by
organizing seminars and talks. Like, on the Ministry’s and UGC’s
proposals on education, university’s proposals for the various
Plans, lessons of the Bhuj earthquake and Nobel Prizes.
In 2014 on the eve of the national elections we organised a debate
among the leaders of different national parties. In 2003, we
organized a seminar to discuss the Challenges faced by Indian
Universities. The proceedings were brought out as an edited volume –
the first publication of JNUTA. In the summer of 2014, when a large
number of teachers’ associations were under siege, we organized a
national seminar on Higher Education attended by teachers’ leaders
from across the country. It was decided to form a coordination
committee of teacher’s associations in Delhi (CCTAD).
I became
the founding President of CCTAD and we revived FEDCUTA which had
become defunct for the past many years so that all the Central
Universities could come together on issues. All these steps helped
strengthen the teachers’ movements but the challenge had
increased with the new government coming to power in 2014.
In 1997, I chaired a committee set up by JNUTA to look into
alternative structures of Higher Education. Our report proposed
greater democratization of the structures of the universities and
greater autonomy to faculty. Our suggestion of a cess on corporate
profits to raise funds for education was implemented by the
government. That year we also suggested raising the faculty
retirement age to 65 and if possible to 70 years. The first part was
accepted.
JNU’s
Liberal
Ethos
It is
JNU’s liberal ethos and the autonomy afforded to faculty that
enabled me to research esoteric topics such as, black economy,
alternative development paradigm and Alternative Budgets as vehicles
of alternative policies. I could therefore make original contribution
on these topics and these became important issues decades later.
JNU’s
liberal ethos enabled me to get direct admission to the Ph.D.
programme in 1977 even though I did not have a masters in the
subject. I only needed to pass a written exam and give an interview.
Crucially, JNU was supposed to be inter-disciplinary and admitting
students from other streams was a part of this mandate.
Inter-disciplinarity
in
JNU
It was recognized that new socially relevant knowledge would emerge
out of inter-disciplinarity. Schools and departments were named
accordingly so that they could focus on a broader theme rather than
the narrow traditional disciplines.
With few exceptions, the experiment was not a success. Most faculty
worked in their area of specialization. In the 1970s, there was some
experimentation with this idea but it declined as the pressures to
publish or perish grew. In the 1970s and the early 1980s the
atmosphere in the university was also more relaxed and faculty had
the time to experiment, but slowly all this declined in the 1990s as
pressures for immediate results grew.
Knowledge
has been exploding leading to greater specialization and narrower
focus. In Economics, there is often little conversation between
faculty members belonging to different specializations within the
discipline. With people working in silos, interaction with faculty
members in say History or Political Science became even more
difficult.
A view
that militated against inter-disciplinarity was that one has to be
good in one’s own area of specialization before foraying across
disciplines. No doubt one has to be good at what one is doing, but
this is a slippery slope. Once on it, it is difficult to get off it
and start interacting with those from other specializations.
Focus on
international rankings and accreditation has worsened the situation
by forcing academics to indulge in paper chase. The luxury to
experiment with broader ideas is gone - for the sake of the career
one has to quickly do what one can. After practicing this for more
than a decade to become a Professor, there is only a slim chance that
someone will change course. The career path takes over and the luxury
to experiment recedes.
Achieving
Standards
via
Standardization
The New Economic Polices launched in 1991 aggravated these
tendencies. Marketization took hold and commercialization grew
(Kumar, 2013). Resources for pure
research decreased.
Universities
were told to generate resources and become more market oriented. This
forced on them accreditation and ranking, which truncated the
autonomy of academics.
This set off a vicious cycle of
decline in academia and to check that, more bureaucratic solutions
based on greater control over academics and their research emerged.
The academic bureaucracy took it upon itself to discipline the
academics. It was propagated that teachers play truant and do not
teach or do research. Regulations introduced to check these
tendencies could be mechanically fulfilled. The bureaucratized
academics who have been members of various Pay Commissions since 1986
have created and pushed such proposals believing that in higher
education, `standards can be achieved by standardization’.
So, the `lazy’ faculty was required to attend orientation courses
for getting promotions. They had to pass a NET or SLET exam to be
able to get a teaching job. Next came the requirement of an M.Phil.
and after that the Ph.D. degree. Finally, there came the Annual
Performance Index (API). All these requirements can be mechanically
fulfilled without improving quality or the teacher- taught
relationship (which actually deteriorated).
These measures have proved counter-productive and led to a
deterioration in standards. Academics can beat the system since
higher education is about quality and not just quantity. The former
cannot be judged bureaucratically and mechanically. To beat the
system, fake and sub- standard journals and books, meaningless
conferences, etc., have proliferated. M.Phil. and Ph.D.
dissertation have been mass produced with little originality and
often plagiarized despite the software available to check it. All
this collects points for API. When only points need to be collected,
why challenge authorities and step on the toes of the powers that be
and create difficulties in promotions?
Dissent
is the essence of higher education where knowledge, as it exists, has
to be challenged to advance it. It spills over from academia to the
way in which the institution is run and this is not linked by the
bureaucratized systems which then marginalize the dissenters. Of
late, they are labeled as anti-nationals and their attention is
diverted from academic activities to defending themselves. Autonomy
to devise courses and do research has been circumscribed. This is the
surest way to kill originality in higher education and make it
vacuous and static.
The need is to recreate the academic ethos which has been dented by
growing bureaucratization and commercialization, which serve the
system’s short run interest but not society’s long term interest.
JNU has also been increasingly afflicted by these twin problems. As
JNUTA President in 2014, we tried to counter these tendencies in JNU
by proposing a `Citizens’ Charter’ to make administration
accountable and release the faculty from its tightening grip. The
administration cleverly stalled this and it was not followed up
subsequently.
Autonomy
in
JNU:
Key
to
Excellence
Autonomy
all down the line is key to excellence of a university (Kumar,
1987). It has to extend all the way down to individual faculty
members. Those opposed to it argue that it will result in academics
taking it easy. But, can a faculty member who is not motivated to
teach or do research be coerced to change? Lectures can be
mechanically delivered which kills the interest of the students and
research can be perfunctory, lacking originality.
Unfortunately, the bureaucracy does not recognize that
bureaucratization damages the education system more than it benefits
it. Motivation of the faculty is key to good teaching and research
and this is promoted by grant of autonomy to faculty. How a course is
taught and what should its content be is best left to the faculty
member. Teaching a standard course (like, in schools) which goes
against the understanding of the faculty members, based on their
research, will only lead to mechanical teaching.
Autonomy
has been flagged by all Committees on Higher Education but it is like
a slogan. How to operationalize it has hardly been spelt out. What is
proposed often militates against it. At best, autonomy has been used
to give the VC and the university bureaucracy greater control over
the faculty to discipline them. If some faculty are shirkers, it is
the appointments to blame, especially, when they are based on
considerations other than academic.
Academics have different ways of working since there is no one route
to creativity. Some may be good teachers but poor researchers and
vice versa. Some may like to write a research paper every 3 months
while there may be others who produce a seminal work in 10 years. So,
academics the freedom to follow the approach that best suits them and
this is what autonomy is. Forcing faculty to indulge in paper chase
will only result in their gaming the system but not improving it.
A corollary of autonomy is democratic functioning so that the voice
of individual faculty is heard in all the fora of the university. It
also requires democratic decision making on most aspects of
university’s functioning, like, admissions, examinations and leave
(See Kumar, 2021).
So, in the universities, dissent is to be celebrated as the essence,
not a malaise to be eliminated – it is a critical input for
academic functioning. This slows decision making but yields results.
JNU had largely followed this template of autonomy. Decision making
and functioning of various bodies of the university was democratic.
Its vision, small size and research orientation helped in this
process.
Excellence
and
Evolution
of
CESP
JNU
consists of Centres and they are parts of Schools. When Centres
excel, the university is said to excel and this has been the case in
its first three decades of JNU’s existence. It has been at the
forefront of public debate on policies and became a recognizable name
not just nationally but even internationally.
Of late,
there has been a decline for several reasons. One of them is the
change sweeping the world and Indian society. This can be illustrated
by the experience of the Economics Centre (CESP) of JNU which has
been acknowledged as one of the more renowned Centres of JNU. Its
courses and syllabus have been copied by other Centers in other
universities. Its students have become faculty members in various
universities in India and the world and one was awarded a Nobel
Prize. Generally they have done well in media, government, banks,
etc.
The
Centre’s strength lay in its diversity – perhaps greater than
that of any other department of economics. Its courses covered
various schools of thought from the Left to the Right. The idea was
that students should get an exposure to various streams of thinking
in Economics and be able to choose for themselves. That required a
vast diversity in the faculty.
But this
led to the Centre falling between two stools. Either it could be good
like a standard economics department anywhere in the world or it
could develop a different understanding of society which could
influence wider social thinking and policy.
Over time, the Centre got deeply divided between these two ideas.
Some wanted it to be like other good economics departments –
teaching and researching mainstream economics. At the other pole were
the critics of establishment, largely from the left of center and
Marxist persuasion – they saw standard economics as status quoist.
The peaceful coexistence between the two groups in the beginning
slowly dissipated in the 1990s.
1991 saw
the launch of the New Economic Policies and that set into motion
powerful nationwide forces. The demise of the Soviet Union and the
earlier 180 degree turn taken by China in the
mid-1970s
had a deep ideological impact on society and the Left. The pendulum
swung towards the idea of a good standard economics department.
From the late 1980s it was clear that the economic policies being
pursued in the country needed to be reviewed since they were
resulting in a growing crisis. The Centre could have made a concerted
attempt to devise an alternative but did not. That left the ground
open for the adoption
of the New Economic Policies (NEP) as devised by the Washington
Consensus. The World Bank had an entire blueprint ready for India,
which it had communicated to the then Prime Minister.
This got
implemented in 1991 and it was said that there was no alternative
(TINA).
My work on the black economy since 1980 and on alternatives to the
policies being implemented in the 1980s made me realize that there is
no time to be lost. But my colleagues did not see it that way. I had
been arguing that the black economy leads to policy failure. But,
this was not picked up as a central idea by others.
Post
1991, I prepared the Alternative Budgets as a vehicle for alternative
policies. Some of us also produced the Alternative Economic Survey as
a way of presenting an alternative understanding of the economy based
on a reinterpretation of the official data. In 1994, a
Citizen’s
Parliament was organised and I presented the alternative budget. We
had the top leaders from political parties, trade unions, academia
and NGOs. But in the absence of unity of purpose, the effort did not
succeed. I argued then that for at least the next two decades it
would be difficult to reverse the direction of policies. But, they
would lead to a growing crisis in society. This has happened; crisis
is deepening but there is no alternative.
CESP has
had great individual teachers and researchers but as a whole it has
not made the difference it should have. It did not contribute to a
building of a different understanding of society which could have
influenced society and policy making – the potential was not
realized.
JNU
Leadership
Leadership in JNU should have understood the twin attack of
bureaucratization and commercialization and resisted it. Instead the
leadership accepted them as inevitable and did not provide the
leadership to other universities to resist these changes. Perhaps
this was inevitable given their reduced public standing and their
waning capacity to resist dictates due to their desire to please
those in power.
Many of the VCs have lacked the intellectual ability to give lead to
the academic community. Inevitably, to push their agenda, they needed
a coterie of supporters and this led to formation of cliques,
sycophancy and sectarianism. This impacted appointments which were
made with a view to strengthening their faction. This did not become
too one-sided due to the alertness of faculty. Cliques also got
further strengthened when faculty members realized that being a part
of a group speeded their upward mobility.
Groupism is inevitable since society and institutions are bound to
have a diversity of interests that are pushed by different groups.
Universities cannot be an exception. Ideological diversity and
differences in perception are bound to be present. But, these should
not be based on narrow individual interests and should rather be an
expression of wider societal differences. The senior most colleague
of our department used to often complain in the 1980s that faculty
members get together over a drink in the evening and make decisions –
she felt marginalized even though she was the senior most in the
Centre.
The
narrowing vision of JNU’s leadership is an important reason for the
weakening of the initial JNU ethos and vision. For instance, JNUTA
Presidents increasingly operated on the basis of
personal negotiations with the administration and thereby not only
weakened institutional
functioning
but played into the administration’s hands. In 2014 we tried to
change this way of functioning but there was no follow up after our
term.
JNU was
set up in the 1960s perhaps with the view to give a platform to the
left of center in national politics. Leading young academics from
that stream of thinking were appointed and given a fairly free hand
to make appointments. Some have seen this as a cooption of the
critics.
The
Emergency intervened and JNU’s independence was seen as
problematic. The Janata government that followed was anti-Left and
pressures built up on JNU. Funds dried up and JNU’s development
stalled. The library was to be a repository of all Indian
publications but due to lack of storage space that had to be given
up. Construction of its own campus got delayed.
It became clear that autonomy of the university is relative to the
ruling establishment and is not absolute. This has been a recurring
theme for JNU and more so in the period after 2016. As
already argued, NEP not only eroded JNU’s autonomy but also
intensified cliquishness and
aggravated divisions. All this further dented JNU’s leadership
position and reinforced the feeling that the university cannot be a
leader in society and therefore cannot be `different from Munirka’.
The door for intrusion from outside opened wider and the erosion of
autonomy accelerated.
Students’
Related
Aspects
of
JNU’s
Evolution
The
Rector who argued that JNU could not be different from Munirka was
being practical and reflected the evolving mind set in the
university. The statement was made in the context of student
activism. A student group teaching the children of construction
workers on campus found that the contractors were fudging muster
rolls and paying the workers about half of the minimum wage. They
demanded action. Instead of applauding the students, they were
advised to focus on their studies and not be involved in such
activities. This is a status quoist argument and misses the point
that universities need to be leaders in thought and harbingers of
change.
JNU students have had a tradition of activism since the 1970s and the
1980s. It has persisted till now even if it has weakened due to
societal changes and the changing structures in JNU.
Unlike elsewhere in India, students hold their own elections to the
Student’s Union by appointing an Election Commission. In the
Centres, there are Student Faculty Committees (SFC) to take care of
issues faced by students in the Centre. Elected students are members
of academic bodies, like the Academic Council (AC). This enables
students to place their concerns on various matters in the decision
making bodies of the university. In this respect, JNU has been
unique.
To
promote inter-disciplinarity, students are allowed to attend classes
in other Centres. Formally, one eighth of their credits in the
Master’s programme can be from other Centres. With few exceptions
this did not quite deliver.
In CESP, due to market related pressures, students wanted to have
Econometrics on their transcript to improve their job prospects. So,
even students weak in statistics took the course and did poorly. To
improve their grades they took courses in other Centres in which
grading was
liberal. Some, of the interesting courses that used to be popular in
the 1970s and 1980s were not even taught in the 1990s since students
did not want to show them on their transcript.
The
market orientation of students increased after 1991 as corporate
salaries soared. I remember some of our students teaching in prime
colleges of Delhi telling us that their students thought of them to
be fools to be in the teaching profession. They were told by the
students that their starting salary would be higher than what the
teacher would retire at. Such a milieu dissuaded many of the young
from doing research and teaching.
As the Chairperson of the Centre, at the start of the semester, I
used to talk to each student for a few minutes to ask about how they
had done and whether they were facing difficulties. Each student was
allotted an Advisor not just for research but also for the MA course.
Unfortunately, this arrangement did not work since most students felt
intimidated and faculty members were indifferent. Most students came
from institutions where teachers were unapproachable and this was
ingrained in them.
The student-teacher relationship weakened over time as faculty became
increasingly busy collecting points for promotion. Interaction with
the students earned them no points. The contact hours fixed for
students to resolve their difficulties were hardly used and
especially by the weaker students, who needed them the most.
JNU’s
admission policy was designed to promote diversity by allotting
points for different kinds of deprivations. This policy was diluted
after the 1983 fiasco. Anyhow, the student body consisted of many
from rural and backward areas who found it tough to adjust to JNU.
But the student body was helpful from the beginning. The new students
were wooed by the various student fronts through provision of all
manner of assistance.
JNU was
seen by many students as a place that prepared them for the
competitive examinations. This was in sharp contrast with x d the
situation in the 1970s when students did not reveal that they were
preparing for the civil services. The number of students aspiring to
join the civil services grew rapidly. This dented the research degree
programmes and the atmosphere for learning. For instance, at the
dining table in the hostels, often the discussion was limited to the
questions that may be asked in the examinations. This milieu on
campus diluted the research orientation.
The
result was that progress on the dissertation was slow, especially in
the first two years of the Ph.D. programme and the first six months
of the M.Phil. programme. Many students expected to write their
M.Phil. dissertation in a few months’ time. This necessitated short
cuts and led to plagiarism. Those teachers who did not accept such
short cuts were seen as the difficult ones.
Consequently, there were supervisors who had 15 to 20 active students
enrolled under them while the more demanding ones had hardly 3 or 4
students. This damaged the Ph.D. programme no end. However, it must
be said that many external examiners complemented us saying that
usually an M.Phil. dissertation from JNU was better than the Ph.D.
dissertation from most other universities. One was happy to be
`Andhon mein kana raja'.
I met my research students regularly but often I repeated what I had
said earlier because the students had made little progress. Some
students who had taken up teaching jobs came during their vacations,
once every 4 months and had lost momentum on the thesis. So, I used
to tape the conversation with the students and email the file to them
so that they could come prepared. But even this met with only partial
success.
Taking a
research student seriously meant a lot of time away from one’s own
work. Ideas had to be generated, drafts corrected repeatedly and so
on. Most of the students lacked proficiency in English and therefore
struggled with research and writing. Even after all this effort very
few of my students continued to do research on their own after they
got their degree. Perhaps, most of them enrolled for Ph.D. because it
was required for their promotions. A consequence of trying to achieve
standards via standardization.
Weakening
of
JNU
Ethos
in
the
2000s
As argued earlier, New Economic Policies (NEP) launched in 1991 had a
deep impact on education in India and on JNU in particular.
Universities were required to become market oriented and raise own
resources through projects and by starting paying courses.
JNU
resisted that. Many new standalone programmes were started in the
2000s which later became Centres. Several Science Centres also came
up. There was a gradual shift in the balance in the university
towards the Science Schools. All this led to a diversion of new posts
and resources to the new Centres at the expense of the existing
Centres.
The OBC
reservations and expansion by 57% further impacted the teaching
programmes with class size becoming unmanageable and inadequate
classroom capacity to accommodate the additional students. The number
of students in the research programmes also increased. But, the
faculty positions that were meant for the main teaching programmes
were diverted to the new Centres. That dented teaching and research
in the older Centres.
There was a lack of an overall vision of where the university was
headed. Each new VC came up with her/his vision document. How can the
vision change every three to four years? The result was ad-hocism and
these documents had little connect with what happened in the
university.
NEP set
into motion the truncation of autonomy everywhere and also in JNU.
This led to further decline in standards in the universities in the
1990s and a response to that was to go for standardization. For
instance, UGC set up committees to design syllabi for each of the
disciplines. These were sought to be imposed on the university
departments. This was followed by the imposition of the disastrous
API system for assessing faculty which ended up promoting mediocrity.
The result was that `Munirka’ became the norm in universities.
Instead of standing up to the dictates of the UGC, VCs enforced them
in spite of opposition from the faculty. I was a member of a
committee to review UGC’s proposals in 2008 since there was strong
opposition from the faculty. The Report presented a critique of the
proposals as well as made suggestions for alternatives. But this
report was not acted upon.
The result was that junior faculty was forced to scrounge around for
points for their promotion. This greatly undermined their autonomy
and weakened the teacher-taught relationship. All this also weakened
the Associations of students and teachers. The administration could
deal with individual teachers and bestow favours and did not have to
deal with the Teachers Association as a whole. There was a toughening
of the approach towards the student’s demands and they were viewed
as trouble makers rather than partners in the development of the
university.
JNU’s
Transformation
2016
Onward
It is in this background of a weakening of the democratic spirit and
curtailment of the autonomy of faculty that the post-2016 events need
to be situated. The dissipation of the initial vision of JNU had
started at least since 1991. What was gradual became a phase change.
JNU’s reputation was sought to be destroyed. The unfortunate
incident of February 2016, deliberately created or otherwise, came in
handy to brand JNU as anti-national. JNUites were labelled as `tukde
tukde’ gang and anti-nationals. Cases were launched against JNU
students but for years these have gotten nowhere for lack of
evidence.
The
democratic practices and norms of JNU have been overturned to promote
favourites. Dialogue between students and faculty and the
administration has declined. A coterie of supporters has been created
and it dominates the academic bodies. This became possible because of
complete support from the powers that be. For much less protest, the
earlier JNU VCs would have set matters right.
Dissenters have been harassed – for instance, leave was denied for
attending conferences and pension of retiring faculty was held up
till the courts intervened. Some old files were dusted and
investigation launched against dissenters. Discussion in academic
bodies became perfunctory.
Dissent
was not recorded. The result is that Court cases against JNU have
grown exponentially.
There is long term damage to JNU due to the kind of appointments
being made and denial of promotion to deserving faculty. Selection
committees often consist of experts from outside the list of experts
approved by the faculty and where experts have dissented, they have
been overruled. The damage is incalculable and will be visible over
time.
Consequently,
JNU of 2016 is the polar opposite of what it was in the 1970s and
1980s and which brought it recognition for all the right reasons.
Conclusion
The
article traces the ups and downs of JNU since the 1970s. Personally,
it has been a satisfying journey for me since it enabled me to
develop many new research ideas and afforded the freedom to teach
courses the way I wanted to. Autonomy was a hallmark of JNU
functioning even though it started to erode after 1991.
JNU could
not make a bigger mark in the world of ideas due to its inability to
fulfill its mandate of inter-disciplinarity. JNU leadership has to
accept much of the blame for this since it could not set the agenda.
Over time the leadership weakened and accepted the dictates from MHRD
and UGC which eroded the autonomy so necessary to achieve the larger
goal.
The various phases of evolution of JNU and the weakening of
leadership are spelt out. The first change came in 1977 when the
Janata government came to power with its right of center agenda and
JNU did not fit into that. Then came the incident of 1983 which led
to the curtailment of the students’ rights and changes in admission
policy. The biggest setback, the launch of the New Economic Po licies
(NEP) in 1991 had a deep impact on education in India and JNU could
not escape its adverse effects. The Pay Commissions in 1996 and 2007
further accentuated these effects through setting into motion major
changes in the structures of higher education and leading to grater
bureaucratization of the universities. The final phase started in
2016 which largely demolished autonomy and damaged JNU’s ethos
irreversibly.
All this
demonstrates the power of the state in matters relating to the public
universities. If the state lacks the wider and long term vision of
nurturing universities as centres of new knowledge generation, it can
destroy them quickly. For universities to flourish, the state has to
be liberal and accept their role of holding the mirror to those in
power. Only then will dissent be celebrated rather than be treated as
a malaise to be eliminated which is what is happening now.
This is a challenge to the entire higher education community in
India. Universities need to reach out to the public and convince them
of their role as guardians of society’s long term interest.
Neither
the corporates nor the politicians nor other institutions can play
this role. Lacking such a vision, society has allowed one of its
premier institutions to rapidly slide into a morass from which it
would be difficult to pull it up. Clearly, JNU illustrates that it is
difficult to create great institutions but easy to demolish them if
the powers that be are bent on doing so.
References
Kumar, A.
(1987). “Accountability
and Autonomy
in Higher
Education Needed
Internal Democracy”.
Economic and Political Weekly.
October 31.
Kumar, A.
(2013). Indian
Economy since
Independence:
Persisting
Colonial
Disruption.
N Delhi:
Vision Books.
Kumar, A.
(2021). “Academic
Autonomy: Needed
a Holistic
Societal Perspective”.
Mainstream,
Vol. LIX,
No 18. 16 April. http://mainstreamweekly.net/article10753.html.
Accessed 17 April 2021.
But
neither of these should have mattered since the MCA21 data base goes
back a long time and earlier employment figures could have been used as
has been often done. The real reason appeared to be political. Namely,
to show higher GDP growth during the NDA period compared to the UPA
period.