The Non-Collegiate Women’s Education Board (NCWEB) Centre of the University of Delhi, where I teach, was the examination centre for SOL students. The NCWEB Centres, which are run at many colleges of the University of Delhi, provide education to women students and give graduate degrees to the successful candidates. Although the NCWEB follows the Delhi University syllabus, the classes for the NCWEB students are held on Sundays, Saturdays and holidays. When regular classes are not held because of holidays, NCWEB students get little opportunity to study.

The courses are run for a short period at the NCWEB Centres. The big syllabus is expected to be completed within a short period of two to three months. The number of classes for a course is far less than required. But over the years, they have been further reduced. As a result, both students and teachers of NCWEB Centres are under huge pressure to finish the course in a short while. Let me accept the fact that on many occasions, both teachers and students fail in their pursuit.

Worse still, the students and the teachers of NCWEB are not allowed to consult the college library and borrow books as regular students and teachers of the college do. In a graded system of education, NCWEB students and teachers face discrimination at the hands of college authorities. They are treated far below that of permanent teachers and regular students. The NCWEB teachers, who teach the same course as the regular teachers, do not get a monthly salary. Their gross income in a year would be around 1.5 lakh, which means less than Rs. 13,000 per month. What could be a worse case of labour law violation than this by looking at the fact that the payment is made to teachers several months after the end of the teaching job. Against this tough condition, hundreds of teachers including myself, teach at NCWEB Centres.

Both teachers and students are the victims of the exploitative system. While students do not get an opportunity to study at a regular college, despite having scored high marks in the previous exams, the permanent teaching jobs, which are getting few under privatisation, go to those who have strong political connections. Those who are critical and have independent thinking are likely to face exclusion. Among such excluded lot, a large number of them work as teachers in informal sectors. NCWEB teachers are treated as worse than the casual workers by Delhi University.

The ground reality of the “prestigious” Delhi University should be kept in mind to observe how the education system has become exploitative and fallen into the propaganda machine for the ruling party.

While entering the college, I went to my classroom to find that it had been turned into an examination hall. Soon after we went to another building to hold our classes. While walking to the classroom, I was thinking about the abysmal educational infrastructure in our country. Several questions came to mind: why do our youths not get proper opportunity to study? If a democratic state fails to provide a quality education to its citizens, does it deserve to be called a democratic? Such a question haunted my mind.

When the class was over, I was returning to the main gate to exit from the college.

Suddenly, my eyes fell on a “selfie point”. A blow-up of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was visible there. Later, I came to learn about the fact that the selfie point had been constructed by the college authority. Recently the UGC issued guidelines to the university to erect a selfie point at a prominent place so that students could take pictures and they could develop a “collective pride” over “India’s achievements in various fields”, reported the web portal Wire. When the UGC policy to promote the “cult building” of Modi was widely criticized, the UGC withdrew its direction. The authorities in my college seem to be hesitant to take note of such a withdrawal notice.

It has been experienced that the college authority often does not act promptly in case a request is made to provide students with basic facilities. But in the case of erecting selfie points, it has acted at lightning speed. This points to the location of the priority of the administration.

This is one of the classical examples of how our public educational institutions are fast turning into the propaganda machinery for the establishment, while at the same time failing to give basic facilities to students, teachers and non-teaching staff. It appears that Delhi University is using public money to self-promote the image of a particular leader. Earlier, the same job was being done by the mainstream media. It does not miss any opportunity to indulge in hero-worship and give all credit to Prime Minister Modi for every success. But when failures occur, the same media makes the opposition parties a scapegoat. For example, if the BJP won elections in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, it was because of Modi’s magic. But when the same party lost elections in Karnataka and West Bengal sometime back, the mainstream media blamed other than Modi for the defeat. The University administration appears to be falling into the roles of Godi journalists.

The Selfie point with Modi’s image has not been put up for the first time at my college. From book fairs to trade fairs, such selfie points with Modi’s photo were erected earlier. The new development is that the educational centres have also been brought within the ambit of propaganda machinery.

These developments are manifestations of the rot in our educational institutions system. The acts of hero-worship and self-promotion of a particular leader pose a serious threat to our democracy. If such a trend is not counter deed, our democratic system will become more authoritarian. They signal an abject absence of autonomy.

Look at the double speak of the Hindutva forces: while the BJP has often criticised student activists and activist intellectuals at the public university for politicising education, the same party is silent about the act of hero-worship in politics. Take the example of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). Since the Modi Government came to power in 2014, JNU was demonised as “the den of anti-national activities”. The Hindu Right propaganda spread the myth that JNU students do not study and only indulge in politics to waste their time and the resources of the country. While the Hindu Right feel challenged by the politically conscious youth raising people’s issues at the university and outside, it does not consider anything wrong with the act of cult-making of a particular leader in a democracy. Worse still, this hero-worship is being institutionalised at the university which should act as an autonomous body.

The youth wing of the RSS/the BJP is the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP). It claims to be the largest student body in the country. How many times has the mainstream media accused the ABVP leaders of doing politics at colleges and universities? Several leaders of the BJP, including Arun Jaitley, came from the ABVP, yet the saffron leaders are assumed to be “non-political” during their students’ days. Even the current Modi Government has two ministers from JNU: Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of Finance of India and S. Jaishankar, Minister of External Affairs. They are the product of the same JNU, which is being vilified as an “anti-national” university. These examples are given to underscore the fact that the Hindu Right never accepts the fact that it uses the university space to serve its petty agenda more than other political parties, yet it creates a myth that only the secular and left forces have politicized the university.

Hindutva forces have often argued that the university space has been misused by the secular/left forces but they never speak about how our education centres have been saffronised. From recruitment to the distribution of scholarships and projects, the political factor and one’s affiliation to the ruling party work more than the merit of the candidate and the strength of the work. Even the syllabus and courses have been modified to strain the country’s secular fabric. The falling of the educational institutes as a saffronised space could be better grasped by looking at the act of setting up selfie points ahead of the General Elections 2024.

The members of the ruling party may argue that there is nothing wrong in putting up the selfie point for the PM since he is the “0leader of the country”. If so is the case, then the image of the President, as the Head of State, may be a better option. In a Parliamentary system, the prime minister is first among the equals vis-à-vis his/her cabinet colleagues, then should not PM’s image along with all cabinet ministers also become part of the selfie point? Moreover, some may argue that Parliament is incomplete without the presence of strong opposition, should not the image of the opposition leaders be shown at the selfie point to give a message that Indian democracy has become quite mature? Is the ruling party ready to take up these questions?

Long back Babasaheb Dr. B. R. strongly criticised the culture of hero worship in politics. In 1943, he gave a lecture on “Ranade, Gandhi and Jinnah” and called hero-worship “dangerous to the country”. However, it appears that these negative trends have become stronger under the Modi Raj because even the autonomy of public education institutions has been eroded.

Those who do not see anything wrong in the selfie point with the image of Modi, are quite silent to see the formulation of the draconian policies by the JNU administration to curb student activism in JNU. Recently, the executive council of JNU passed a manual under which if a student is found protesting within the 100-metre radius of any administrative and academic building and around the residence of a member of the JNU community, he may be punished with a fine of Rs. 20,000 and rustication from the campus for two semesters.

Such a move is being justified in the name of depoliticising the educational spaces, yet how the university has come under threat under Modi Raj is being ignored by the mainstream media. The recent manual of the JNU administration goes against the fundamental rights of the Indian constitution to free speech and the right to dissent.

Look at the irony: while the self-promotion of Modi by the university administration is considered a “non-political act” by the mainstream media and the Hindu Right, the articulation of genuine grievance at university spaces by students is demonised as indulging in “dirty politics”. These examples show that our educational centres are fast becoming propaganda machinery for the ruling party and indulging in hero worship, while they are eroding spaces for the democratic voices. While public money is being misused for the cult-building Modi, the majority of the members of the education community, who work in informal sectors, suffer from the lack of basic facilities.

(Dr. Abhay Kumar is a Delhi-based journalist. He has taught political sciences at NCWEB Centres of Delhi University. Email: debatingissues@gmail.com)

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These questions were presented to Dr. Subhas Sarkar, who is currently serving as the Union Minister of State in the Ministry of Education. The response given by him is very shocking, to say the least, as it does not include the data on the status of EWS in the higher education sector. The only data given by him provides that a total of 19,190 vacancies have been filled in Central Higher Education Institutions up to November 30, 2023. Out of these, 11,847 are faculty positions which includes SC/ST/OBC/PWD and EWS candidates. As one can notice, the data has not been segregated to provide the actual number faculty positions occupied by the any of the sections. Hence, from the data provided by the Union, it is not possible to know the share of EWS faculty for Associate professors in the Central Universities.

The complete answer can be read here: EWS faculty for Associate professors in Central Universities

The very next question raised in the Rajya Sabha was by Javed Ali Khan and Manoj Kumar Jha to Dr. Subhas Sarkar. Khan is a member of the Samajwadi party and a member of the Rajya Sabha, representing Uttar Pradesh. Jha currently serves as the national spokesperson of the Rashtriya Janata Dal. He is a member of the Rajya Sabha elected from Bihar.

The two ministers raised questions regarding the posts reserved for the EWS category for Associate Professors having remained vacant in Central Universities even after four years of its introduction by Government. Similar to the other question, Sarkar did not respond to the questions raised here too, and rather provided a vague data. In his answer, the union minister only mentioned that there are 930 sanctioned teaching positions in Central Universities under the purview of Ministry of Education in EWS category. The answer contained no details regarding the positions that have actually been filled by EWS candidates out of the said 930 positions.

The only relevant data provided for the EWS category was that out of the 6,080 positions filled under Mission Recruitment, 318 positions have been filled by EWS, signifying a 5.23% share. For the question regarding the failure of 31 universities to fill even a single position from the EWS category, the union minister provided no specific data or answer.

The responses given by Dr. Subhas Sarkar to queries raised by Sushil Kumar Modi, Javed Ali Khan, and Manoj Kumar Jha on the issue of representation of the EWS category amongst Associate Professors in Central Universities raise serious concerns. Despite pointed inquiries about the status of EWS representation in faculty positions, the answers provided lack the necessary specifics. The response also falls short in providing the crucial insights sought by the parliamentarians. The incomplete information hinders a comprehensive understanding of the actual representation and fulfilment of EWS quotas within the education sector, raising valid concerns about transparency and accountability in the system.

The complete answer can be read here: EWS Faculty Posts in Central Varsities

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Union data on faculty position in Central University: 14.3% SC, 7% ST, 23.4% OBC

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While the OBC reservation is 27%, the proportion of OBC professors at 45 central universities is just 4%! At the associate professors and assistant professors levels, the bleak scenario does not change much as their share increases slightly to 6% and 14%, respectively.

The information is based on the data presented in the Lok Sabha by Union Minister for Education (State) Subhas Sarkar. He recently replied to a question raised by Sanjeev Kumar Singari, a Member of Parliament (Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Party) from Kurnool constituency in Andhra Pradesh.

The OBC reservation for non-teaching staff has also not been fulfilled. According to the figures, only 12% of seats have gone to them at the central universities. At present, there are only five OBC vice-chancellors at 45 central universities.

After decades of struggle, the socially and educationally backward classes were able to get 27% reservations in the early 1990s. Three decades after the historic achievement and the assertion of the OBC politics, the situation at public universities has not changed much. They continue to be monopolized by a few privileged castes.

Look at the irony. Prime Minister Narendra Modi never misses a chance to highlight his OBC identity but even his nine-year rule has not ensured justice to the members of his own castes.

Apart from OBCs, Adivasis are highly under-represented. Among professors, the share of Adivasis is only 1.6%, while they are given 7.5% reservation. Similarly, at associate and assistant professors levels, they are able to get a mere 2% and 4%representation, respectively. With 7% (professors level), 8% (assistant professors level), and 11% (associate professors level) share, Dalits are better than Adivasis but these figures are far less than the 15% reservation given to them.

While the marginalised communities remain grossly under-represented, the privileged castes are ruling the roost at the educational centres. They serve their caste privileges by monopolizing almost all seats under the general or unreserved (UR) category. As per the law, the UR category is open to all but in practice, it has been kept out of the reach of marginalized castes. Since there is no legal binding on the selection committee to take candidates from the marginalized community, the privileged castes lobby employs several methods to exclude SC, ST and OBC candidates from the UR category.

Even if their applications are accepted, during the interview, SC, ST and OBC candidates appearing under the UR category, are discriminated against and humiliated. It has been reported that these candidates have been told by the authority “not to encroach on the UR seats”. During written exams and interviews, the candidates belonging to marginalized communities are given less marks to keep them out of the race. To harass them further, the selections under the SC, ST and OBC quotas are not easily made. NFS or Not-Fund Suitable is another weapon to reject all the candidates belonging to the marginalized community. However such practices are hardly seen under the UR category. Are meritorious and suitable candidates only born in a few privileged castes?

To reiterate the point, higher education in India is yet to be democratised. Since colonial times, the upper castes have entered the system and through their caste network, they have maintained their privileges. The preceding decades indeed saw the politicization of the lower castes at the grassroots levels and a large number of OBC leaders got close to the corridor of power, but they have not been able to ensure social justice at the educational and cultural institutes. From the university to media houses, from the cinema to religious bodies, the marginalized castes remain excluded.

This is one of the main reasons that the electoral victories of the lower caste political parties do not often succeed beyond a point in making social change. For example, even for the ideologies and programmes of their parties to be brought to the masses, the lower caste leaders are heavily dependent on the upper-caste-run corporate media. During the Mandal agitation in the 1990s, the upper caste-dominated mainstream media did not support the lower castes and it went all out to demonize the politics of social justice as “divisive” and working “against the development” of the country.

Since the coming of the Modi Government in 2014, the caste supremacist lobby has become quite strong. For example, the RSS has a direct say in the recruitment process at colleges and universities. The main criterion for the selection is often not the knowledge of the subject and the ability to teach and carry out the research but the candidate’s loyalty to Hindutva ideology. Even the prestigious universities in the national capital such as JNU, Delhi University and Jamia are in the total grip of the Hindutva forces.

The selection process has been so perverted by the Hindutva forces that it has become a drive for recruiting cadres. Those who have held their independent opinion and have refused to follow the divisive ideology of RSS are deliberately thrown out of the selection process. These have all contributed to the further marginalization of marginalized communities. The political leaders from marginalized communities are either helpless or visionless to understand the gravity of the situation.

Access to education, particularly in the Phule-Ambedkar tradition, is a road to liberation. As Phule argued in Slavery (1873), the privileged castes could maintain their dominant position only because they forcefully deprived the Shudras and Ati-Shudras of education. Babasaheb Ambedkar, similarly, gave a call to educate, organize and agitate. He cautioned that if people from marginalized sections were not given representation in the key sectors of a nation, the interests of weaker sections would be jeopardized. Isn’t the exclusion of marginalized communities from the central university a re-establishment of the old order based on exclusion and inequality?

(The author is an independent journalist. He has also taught political science at NCWEB Centres of Delhi University.) 

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New Delhi: Close to 33% posts for professors, associate professors and assistant professors are lying vacant in 45 Central universities, raising grave concerns about the state of higher education in the country.

A total of 6,180 posts for professors, associate professors and assistant professors are lying vacant in Central universities out of the total sanctioned posts of 18, 956, as on December 1, 2022, according to the government.

Of these, 1,529 vacant posts are for professors out of 2,553 total sanctioned strength, 2,304 for associate professors out of the total sanctioned 5,110 posts and 2,347 for assistant professors out of the total 11,293 sanctioned posts, Minister of Education Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply to a question.

On a question about the backlog in filling up vacancies for SCs, the minister said that of the total sanctioned posts of 2,284 for Scheduled Castes (SCs) in all three categories of professors, associate professors and assistant professor, there are 908 unfilled vacancies, while out of 1,142 sanctioned posts for Scheduled Tribes, 544 posts are lying vacant in central universities.

In the Other backward Classes (OBC) segment, the total number of sanctioned posts in all three categories is 3,451, out of which 1,559 are still lying unfilled.

In IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) , 4,502 faculty posts are lying vacant out of a sanctioned strength of 11,170 while in IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management), 493 teaching posts are lying vacant out of a sanctioned strength of 1,556.

Pradhan informed the House that his ministry had directed all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to fill up the vacancies in a Mission Mode.

“In addition to writing to all the HEIs to fill up the vacancies in a Mission Mode, the Ministry has set up a monthly monitoring mechanism. The Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers Cadre) Act, 2019 has been notified on 09.07.2019 to ensure preparation of the rosters by considering the university as a Unit,” he said in his reply.

On reservations, he said: “According to the Act, reservation is applicable in all the Higher Educational Institutions except the institutions listed in the schedule and few other exceptions as stated in the Act. Further, as per this Act, reservation is provided for all posts in direct recruitment in Teacher’s cadre in Central Educational Institutions. After enactment of this Act, no reserved post is to be de-reserved.”

Courtesy: Newsclick

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The Union Ministry of Education told the Parliament on August 2 that 41% of posts reserved for Scheduled Castes (SC) at central universities and research institutions continue to remain vacant. Dharmendar Pradhan, the Education Minister was responding to a query raised by Lok Sabha MP Dharmendra Pradhan on the total number of sanctioned and vacant posts for Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and other Backward Classes (OBCs) in all Central Universities and research institutions, and why the same have remained vacant.

The response was provided in the form of data as follows:

This indicates that 41% of posts reserved for SC teachers are vacant while 39.7% posts reserved for ST teachers are vacant. As for OBC, 55.94% of posts of teachers are still vacant.

Central Educational Institutions (Reservation in Teachers’ Cadre) Act, 2019 provides for reservation of posts in direct recruitment in teachers’ cadre in Central Educational Institutions by considering the University as a Unit.

The response may be read here:

Reservation scenario in centre-run universities

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) across the country have resisted offering reservation quota in their teaching positions and a committee appointed by the Ministry in April 2020 suggested that the 23 IITs should be exempted from reservations altogether should be added to the list of “Institutions of Excellence” mentioned in the Schedule of the Act. Section 4 of the Act exempts “institutions of excellence, research institutions, institutions of national and strategic importance” and minority institutions from providing reservation. The Schedule currently includes Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), North-Eastern Indira Gandhi Regional Institute of Health and Medical Science, Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Physical Research Laboratory, Space Physics Laboratory, Indian Institute of Remote Sensing and Homi Bhabha National Institute and all its 10 constituent units. Many have criticised these provisions for promoting upper caste superiority and for being violative of the right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution.

Even the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) made a similar demand to the Ministry, in January 2020.

The 23 IITs reserve posts while recruiting faculty at the entry-level of Assistant Professor and not at senior faculty posts such as Associate Professor and Professor. In June 2021, a response to a Right to Information (RTI) application revealed that at IIT-B, only six (0.9%) of the 684 faculty positions are from SC community, one (0.1%) is from ST and 10 (1.5) from OBC category. At IIT-Madras, of the 596 faculty members, 16 (2.7%) are SC candidates, three (0.5%) are ST, while 62 (10.4%) are OBC, reported Hindustan Times. The data in the response revealed that none of the 22 IITs (information from IIT Mandi was unavailable) have more than six teachers belonging to the Scheduled Tribes (ST) community, while 18 of them have 10 or less candidates from the Scheduled Castes (SC) category on their faculty rolls.

Pawan Goenka, chairperson of the board of governors of IIT-Bombay and IIT-Madras, told HT, “Currently IITs have a fairly large number of vacancies which they are trying to fill but sufficient high-quality candidates have not been available across all categories. IITs need candidates with PhD, high-quality research papers, and good teaching ability. These have to largely come from within the top engineering colleges in India or good universities abroad. The number of PhD students graduating from the IITs, specially the older ones, has been increasing significantly in the past four years as a result of the increase in intake post 2011. I believe this will help to address the issue in the coming years.”

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The ordinance may be read here.

In response to the social media storm around the #5MarchBharat Bandh, earlier this  week, Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said the centre was committed to restoring the reservation roster in educational institutions following a series of protests over the issue by various students’ and teachers’ organisations. They had been urging the government to bring an ordinance to restore the 200-point roster taking college or university as a unit for reservation in teaching posts.

Ironically the issue began with a shift in policy within the Modi regime itself. The University Grants Commission had announced in March last year that an individual department should be considered as the base unit to calculate the number of teaching posts to be reserved for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes candidates, following an order by the Allahabad High Court in April 2017. The Supreme Court had upheld an Allahabad High Court order over reservation of SC/STs in the appointment of faculty members in universities in January.

The Supreme Court had last month dismissed a review petition filed by the Human Resource Development Ministry after its special leave petition against the court order was rejected by the top court. Mr Javadekar had said in the Lok Sabha on February 11 that the government can “bring an ordinance if its review petition filed in the top court is rejected“.
 

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