We Disagree, Minister Tharoor

by Amitabh Chakraborti

The Minister of State for HRD, Shashi Tharoor, has come up with an article on the introduction of the FYUP in Delhi University. No, if you have to go by what our Minister says in the write-up published in The Hindu on June 1, 2013, he did not speak as the Minister, he wasn’t even interested to, it would seem, speak as the Minister. He, as a proud graduate of Delhi University, has “found†himself “caught up in the controversy†. And what was he actually caught up with? “A number of friends from academia†had spoken to him directly, several of them made their disapproval public in the media, and, finally, one of them even published an “open letter†in a newspaper. And the Minister had to ponder over what he should say “in return†. What would strike anyone at the onset itself is the way our Minister makes his article a reply to his “friends†, as if to exclude others who might have any interest in the debate on the Four Year Undergraduate Programme. While writing on one the most important changes in our higher education system, the Minister, in the very beginning, reduces others to the position of spectators, spectators of a debate amongst “friends†.

But we do not agree to remain silent spectators to this debate amongst “friends†as what they debate on is not whether they should plan a picnic or not; the debate is on a new structure of undergraduate education which will have far-reaching impact on the future course of the higher education system of our nation. We do not agree to remain silent spectators as the author is not just an ex-Stephenian Shashi Tharoor, but the HRD Minister Shashi Tharoor, who has been entrusted with the responsibility and power of steering the higher education of our country. And, though not ex-Stephenian necessarily, we want the Minister to hear us as well.

The Minister not only tries to reduce us to spectators to this debate, he also tries to argue that he has “deliberately stayed out of the controversy so far†. Really? Hasn’t Mr Tharoor, in his capacity as the Minister, informed the Rajya Sabha in April itself that the Delhi University “is fully prepared to launch the four-year undergraduate programme†? Was not that a clear position taken by the Ministry and Minister? Even during the end of last month, Shashi Tharoor came out in support of the Delhi University administration in his capacity as the Minister. We won’t question here the logic of claiming that Delhi University is “fully prepared to launch†the FYUP while there has not been any initiative to broaden the academic and physical infrastructure of colleges to carry the burden of an additional year of teaching, while a huge number of teaching positions are lying vacant; while the expansion required due to the OBC expansion remains half-done. Neither would we point out that the Minister was, for reasons better known to him, supporting the FYUP as a “dual major†course, whereas the Delhi University’s FYUP remained a single major course. The more relevant question here is: even after giving these statements, how can the Minister claim of staying out of the “controversy†?

And this position, a blind support of whatever the Delhi University VC, a batch-mate of the Minister, is doing, informs the rest of his article. The Minister describes the “tone†that the opposition to the FYUP has taken as “unfortunate†. We knew that the Delhi University administration would find the academic arguments forwarded by those who had opposed the FYUP as “unfortunate†. But we simply fail to under-stand why the Minister should find it “unfortunate†as well. The Minister has found, with dismay, that “to read some of the critics, it would seem that the introduction of the four-year course by the Delhi University is the end of the world as we know it†. Rather than addressing the arguments of those who have written against the FYUP, the Minister chooses to express his astonishment at the tone and sense of urgency of those who have expressed their views. As if these critics should save all their arguments for a leisurely evening talk, albeit with friends, even as the Delhi University administration goes ahead with its plan. May we ask: what has made the Minister believe that the changes being carried out by the Delhi University are not destroying the academic sensibility of the Delhi University “as we know it†?

Is it a mere coincidence that the Delhi University administration also prefers to attack the “ideology†, “academic credentials†, “tone†of the critics rather than addressing the arguments of these very critics? Is it a coincidence that the Minister does not find anything wrong with the Delhi University’s response to the critics of the FYUP? Rather than engaging with the arguments forwarded by its critics, the University has branded their arguments as “the shenanigans of a handful of members of the teaching community that belong to a particular ideology†. After academicians and columnists like Yash Pal, U.R. Ananthamurthy, Ramchandra Guha, Pratap Bhanu Mehta argued for a more considerate discussion on the FYUP, the University has marked the critics as “self-appointed intellectuals and armchair columnists†whose “track record in the realm of academia and institution-building speaks volumes of their true credentials†. Such comments were released on the official pad of the Delhi University Registrar and have been put on the University website. We are shocked that the Minister decided not to take note of such comments. Rather, his comments on the critics seem to follow the same mindset.

 The Minister, and the Ministry, brings in the solemn principle of autonomy as the pretext for not intervening in the matter. One wonders, where is this sense of autonomy when the Ministry rejects the UGC Committee’s recommendations on the point-system, or, when the UGC makes accreditation mandatory? When the National Policy on Higher Education is adopted, or affirmative policies are adopted, can these be described as attacks on the autonomy? No. The Minister chooses not to take into consideration that while so many educationists raise their voice and request the Ministry’s intervention, something must have gone wrong in the decision-making process of the institution; the Minister chooses to ignore the fact that the Ministry’s intervention was sought with the argument that a shift from a three-year to a four-year degree course will have ramifications at spheres not limited to the Delhi University.

All these selective arguments have a reason, and that reason becomes clear when one reads more of what the Minister has to say. He believes that “we as a nation need to completely overhaul our educational system†. The Minister is worried as “the investments that we do make in our educational sector...do not yield satisfactory returns†; the Minister is worried as “teaching and research at all levels of the academic spectrum....have become another sarkari naukri that offers a job for life replete with perks and benefits but with little incentive for performance or disincentives for non-performance†; the Minister is worried as “relative to the national per capita income, our teachers enjoy a salary structure that is one of the most favourable in the world. And yet by any measure of performance, as repeatedly shown in a number of professional surveys and global ranking of universities, we are languishing at modest to mediocre levels of educational achievement.†Again, the Minister blissfully forgets to mention that most of the Indian Universities suffer from lack of infrastructure, research grant etc. The teacher-student ratio is abysmal; most of the college teachers never get any travel grant to attend seminars. It would be wise for the Minister to compare between the physical infrastructure, teacher-student ratio, workload, research grant, publication grant, professional bodies member-ship grant available to Indian teachers and researchers with those institutions that top the global ranking before making such claims about the “perks†enjoyed by the teachers and researchers. Talking of world ranking in a country where the government even cannot provide sitting spaces to its teachers in most of its educational institutes is a sham.

However, one would wonder how all these are linked to the four-year structure. But the answer comes in the next paragraph itself. The Minister feels that “the academic community has repeatedly responded to these concerns by arguing that academic institutions and processes need to be freed from the clutches of government functionaries and their overbearing interference†. Hence, the government’s policy of not interfering in the matter at hand, the FYUP. Hence, the Minister urges upon the VC and the critics to engage with each other. Readers must be feeling the urge to congratulate the Minister for taking such high moral stand of non-intervention. But wait, this mask of non-intervention drops in no time. In the very next line, the Minister intervenes, takes a stand, and declares: “This is not to question the policy itself, but the academic rigour with which it is carried out.†Hasn’t the VC been saying the same thing? The Minister’s support for the FYUP cannot be more palpable. For the Minister, the teachers can only speak on “course design, syllabi making and patterns of instruction†. The ‘policy’ remains out of their reach. For our Minister, questions surrounding the policy of FYUP do not belong to the ‘legitimate areas’ of teachers.

Thus, finally, the Minister takes his stand. Though, like his batch-mate, he also would not answer the concerns voiced by the critics of the FYUP. The Minister himself noted: “Whether it is the quality of its faculty, the diversity and brilliance of its students, or the wide-ranging achievements of its alumni, the (Delhi) university ranks at the forefront of all these parameters and is rightly regarded as the fountainhead of our nation’s intellectual capital.†However, the Minister, just like the VC, would not put in writing what went wrong with the structure that could make Delhi University the “premier university in the country†that they had to go for such an overhaul. What study has been undertaken to assess the problems with the three-year? What are the problems identified? What are the possible solutions? Who has studied the comparative desirability and feasibility of the FYUP over the three-year? Has there been a study of the undergraduate structure of various countries? If four-year is the solution, then why the European Union has adopted a three-year degree course? Which study has proved that colleges with faculty-crunch and limitation of physical infrastructure are ready to take the burden of an additional year? Is it pedagogically valid to restructure the under-graduate courses without giving a clear idea about the possible postgraduate structure? Has there been any study on the impact of this one year addition on the marginalised sections of society? Why the paper detailing the FYUP in the much lauded “Academic Congress†did not address these questions, did not refer to a single existing study to justify the introduction of a totally new structure? Why the “Academic Congress†papers aimed at providing quantified “survey†of student-teachers’ view on under-graduate education did not provide information on the sample quantity and sample characters? Don’t ask these questions. The Minister has already decided, and declared, that the engagement of the VC with the critics “is not to question the policy itself†. And this is what you should accept as the non-interference by our Minister. It is not without any reason that in the Academic Council meeting itself the Delhi University administration has dared to threaten its professors of dire consequences for voicing their concerns in the media or putting in writing the uneasiness departments felt while preparing the syllabus under the FYUP. The Minister himself has put the FYUP beyond question for teachers of the Delhi University.

The Minister closes his write-up with a paternalist pose in favour of the Delhi University administration. He doesn’t even claim that the four-year is inherently superior to the three-year degree. However, the Delhi University must be granted freedom. This freedom is “the freedom to experiment, to innovate and perhaps even to fail...†. The Minister will not take into account that this “freedom...even to fail†will also mean the freedom to fail a large number of our youth who come to the Delhi University from all over India. He will not take into account that this freedom means imposing a structure without required academic debate, without answering the pertinent questions put forward. No one is questioning the Delhi University’s autonomy, the question is: does this autonomy mean the autonomy of playing with the future of our youth, our higher education system, and the marginalised sections of our society?

The author is an Associate Professor, Bengali, Department of Modern Indian Languages, University of Delhi.