Academics Condemn ‘Anti-Muslim’ JNU Seminar on Illegal Migration, Denounce Study

The JNUTA criticised the ideological misuse of academic spaces and slammed Vice-Chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit for getting involved in the seminar.

New Delhi: The Jawaharlal Nehru University’s teachers’ association (JNUTA) has strongly condemned the university’s decision to host a seminar on “illegal immigrants to Mumbai,” calling it a blatant misuse of academic spaces for ideological purposes. The seminar, held on November 11, analysed the socio-economic and political consequences of illegal immigration. The JNUTA alleged that it was an attempt to legitimise anti-Muslim prejudices ahead of the Maharashtra assembly elections.

The JNUTA criticised vice-chancellor Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit’s involvement in the seminar, pointing out that she had attended the report’s release at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) on November 5.

The association accused the report of labelling all migrants in Mumbai as “illegal,” despite evidence showing that only a small proportion are international migrants. This incident is part of a larger pattern of suppressing academic freedom, the JNUTA claimed.

“The release of this incomplete and heavily biased interim report of an unethical ‘study’, coinciding strategically with Maharashtra assembly elections, is not an academic exercise but a calculated act of political interference,” a group of academics said in a statement.

The group added: “It is a deliberate attempt to polarise the electorate, vilify marginalised communities, and incite violence against migrants in Mumbai. Such conduct from academics is a betrayal of the foundational ethics of teaching and scholarship. By reducing their role in knowledge production to being tools of divisive ideologies, the academics associated with this ‘study’ have brought shame to the teachers and academics.”

Also read: How Does India See Its Muslim Population?

Further, the MFC pointed out that the study uses “highly inappropriate and inconsistent data visualisation” and call it “a prime example of right-wing demographic alarmism and communal bias”.

“The study’s methodological and ethical flaws are egregious. Based on a sample of just 300 participants out of a planned 3,000, it offers sweeping conclusions about entire communities particularly Muslim migrants in Mumbai, who are framed as Bangladeshi and Rohingya. In this ‘study’ these groups are then targeted, dehumanised, and criminalised, portrayed as threats to national security, social stability, and economic well-being. Without providing any credible evidence, the report links these migrants to terrorism, smuggling, and organised crime, further embedding dangerous stereotypes that fuel hatred. Such a framing is not only methodologically unsound but constitutes a direct assault on the dignity and rights of vulnerable populations,” the MFC noted.

Notably, JNU’s School of International Studies has recently cancelled a seminar featuring the Iranian ambassador, and two other seminars with ambassadors from Palestine and Lebanon have been put on hold. Gurugram University also cancelled a seminar on the Palestinian struggle featuring former JNU faculty member Zoya Hasan.

Note: In an earlier version of this story, the statement by doctors, academics and scholars was wrongly attributed to Medico Friends Circle. The error is regretted.

Bengal’s ‘Tab Scam’ Exposes Significant Vulnerabilities in Data Storage

Money that was supposed to be sent to school students was siphoned off to other accounts through sophisticated techniques.

Kolkata: West Bengal’s ambitious ‘Taruner Swapna’ scheme, which translates to ‘dreams of the youth,’ was designed to provide Rs 10,000 to Class 10 and 12 students for digital devices. Now, it has been marred by a significant cyber fraud.

Over 2,000 students have been affected in what has been an effort by cybercriminals to exploit system vulnerabilities to siphon off funds. These actors, many from outside the state, have used sophisticated techniques to change information on various data records, making sure that the money which was to be given to the students went to other accounts instead. In the process, students’ records were also accessed.

Bratya Basu, the state’s education minister, told The Wire that the National Informatics Centre has also been asked to investigate the matter thoroughly. “The government has taken note of the issue where a section of higher secondary students across the state have not received their tablet funds,” he added.


While the full extent of the crime is still being learnt, West Bengal Police have already registered 93 first information reports and arrested 11 individuals in connection with the fraud. The scam has impacted students across multiple districts, particularly in South 24 Parganas, where the highest number of cases have been reported.

‘Inadequate’ security measures

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has promised students who have lost money of a “refund”. Addressing reporters last week, she stated, “The group responsible for this scam has been identified. Our administration is rough and tough. A Special Investigation Team has been formed and people have already been arrested. Let the administration do its job.”

A cybercrime expert investigating the case, who requested to not be named, told The Wire that there were clear lapses in the system. “The security measures were inadequate, and there was a lack of oversight. It seems that many schools kept theirs students’ name lists, bank account numbers and IFSC codes.”

The investigation into the tab scam has revealed a dense network of individuals, including farmers, tea garden workers, lottery ticket sellers, and even home tutors, who operated through cyber cafes. They allegedly exploited their access to school login credentials to change bank account numbers and IFSC codes to divert the funds meant for the students. In some cases, malware and rented bank accounts were used to facilitate the transfers. Investigators have unearthed a network involving cybercafé owners, contract-based school staff, and also insiders who manipulated government portals to divert the money.

Cyber experts have pointed to glaring vulnerabilities in the scheme’s implementation. “Discrepancies in data linking, outdated computers, and irregular portal maintenance may have facilitated the fraud. While professional hackers might have exploited malware or system loopholes, the pattern here suggests errors in data entry and verification. While the government sends funds directly to recipients’ accounts, the fact that so many are affected indicates systemic issues that require thorough investigation and clarification.,” said cyber law expert Rajarshi Roy Chowdhury.

Headmasters blamed

The tab scam initially surfaced with complaints lodged at two police stations in Kolkata. Subsequently, district school inspectors got non-bailable cases registered against the headmasters of several affected schools. However, some of the accused headmasters claim they were falsely implicated for being among the first to report the issue.

“The government is framing the headmasters. We believe the scam occurred due to flaws or weaknesses in the government portal. A criminal gang was altering the IFSC codes uploaded from the schools,” said Sukumar Pain, the secretary of the state teachers’ association, ABTA.

Many of those arrested in connection with the fraud have direct ties to the ruling party Trinamool Congress, including the son of a prominent local leader in Malda, raising uncomfortable questions about insider involvement.

Slamming the state government, BJP Rajya Sabha MP Samik Bhattacharya said, “Rice is being stolen from mid-day meals, lentils are being stolen from ration supplies, river sand and mountain stones are being looted – it’s no surprise that even the funds for tablets are being stolen here. To establish the rule of law in this state, 50 new jails need to be built quickly!”

Translated from the Bengali original by Aparna Bhattacharya.

The Learning Crisis No One Talks About: Full Rosters, Empty Benches 

The educational bureaucracy is in urgent need of sensitivity towards Adivasi, Dalit and OBC students — who are often the ones at the highest risk of dropping out.

On a dirt road off the Latehar-Daltonganj highway, students cheerfully set up their classrooms. Despite an acute teacher shortage, the principal Ganesh Singh has found innovative ways to involve children in the school proceedings.

What stands out in this school is the consistently high student attendance, which is a clear consequence of the engaging lessons and the availability of resources, including clean classrooms, sturdy infrastructure, functional toilets, and a working kitchen. 

“Despite constraints, we do our best,” Ganesh confidently asserts, “that is why our children come every day. Tab hi toh sabko seekhne ka mauka milega na? (Only then will everyone get a chance to learn, no?)” Sadly, this government school is an outlier. 

Nearby, dark clouds loom over another school, where a mere 40% student attendance tells a sad story. Amid shambolic infrastructure, the single-teacher’s presence is inconsistent, at best. Children sit through the day because they must, not because they want to. Schools like this one are the norm in the under-served rural hinterlands of Jharkhand and Bihar.

Despite strides in enrolment in Indian primary schools, the student retention trend is worrying. Systemic apathy towards vulnerable populations has resulted in a crisis of depleting enrolment. As Figure 1 depicts, the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) dwindles rapidly towards higher classes. 

Figure 1: Gross Enrolment Ratio in Jharkhand and Bihar. Source: UDISE+, Department of School Education and Literacy, Ministry of Education

A grimmer picture emerges when enrolment is compared to actual attendees. In Jharkhand, observed attendance is a mere 68% for primary and 58% for middle schools. The figures are even lower for Bihar at an appalling 20% and 23%. Through our first-hand observations in Bihar and Jharkhand, we found that several schools, with exemplary enrollment and attendance on paper, were half-empty spaces with no purposeful day-to-day operations.

What are the reasons for this alarming emptiness in schools?

While some of the popularly attributed reasons blame this on families’ lack of investments, we argue that the problems lie with the supply-side. A key one is the shortage of teachers and lack of teaching in government schools. A third of primary schools in Jharkhand are single-teacher schools whereas in Bihar, they amount to 10%. In other schools, the pupil-teacher ratio (PTR) is disruptively high, which increases the burden on the available teachers to do multi-grade teaching.

Our fieldwork tells us that many schoolteachers simply fail to teach daily. Not only do they not use new materials or pedagogies, but they rarely teach. Burgeoning administrative tasks, social biases towards marginalised children, low motivation, and ineffective training create an impasse. Even if a teacher is skilled and motivated, any teaching time they have is consumed with submitting reports, organising midday meals, and managing funds. Not surprisingly, children find nothing of value in schools and stop coming.

This absence of activity persists also because the monitoring system’s monthly visits by officials are often a mere formality. In Bihar, we saw a Block Education Officer (BEO) register listing ‘no issues’ for multiple visits in a month to a particular school. Our visits to the same school revealed a flooded straw-bamboo infrastructure, students sitting on gunny bags, rotten rice stocks for midday meals, and more importantly, a teacher who rarely stepped into class. But no such issues existed, at least on official records. 

Even school calendars fail to align with the lived realities of students. Most of them in rural Jharkhand and Bihar are often from Adivasi and Dalit families involved in seasonal migration, agricultural harvests, and collecting forest produce for sustenance. Unsurprisingly, attendance drops during these months of seasonal livelihood – which is misinterpreted by many as a disinterest towards education. 

The consistently low attendance in schools triggers a ‘learning crisis’ that pushes students to disenroll. To improve learning outcomes, the central government launched the NIPUN Bharat Mission in 2021. This has resulted in large-scale distribution of teaching resources and pedagogical training. Despite inefficiencies in implementation, these efforts have put the spotlight on low learning. Unfortunately, the beam fails to illuminate low attendance and depleting enrolment. 

Current attempts in Jharkhand and Bihar are discrete one-off programmes that focus on coercing children to go to school or take punitive actions. While these efforts might produce temporary spikes in attendance and enrollment, we need systemic changes to solve this issue. So, what will it take? 

Although the schooling system is not ideal, accessibility, infrastructure, teacher and student attendance have improved since the 1990s. But the job is not even half-done. 

Also read: Why There is an Urgent Need to Make Early Childhood Care and Education a Right of All Children

A political will to meet the Right to Education (RTE) norms on PTR is a starting point. With manageable classrooms and hopefully more time to teach, teachers might find their motivation with further help from better professional development. When children see there is something worth going to school for, they would want to be in school. 

However, in what circumstances can the role of the stakeholders improve? Teachers and parents are two crucial pieces of the puzzle and need to live up to their roles. A teacher’s will to teach needs to be stimulated to positively affect student attendance. This could be coded into the hiring process, connected to the promotion system, or provided through continuous teacher development. 

Empowerment of parents through an active orientation of the School Management Committees (SMC) is equally vital. Increasing representation of parents from marginalised backgrounds and transparent communication about attendance data will help. The RTE Act gives an agency to parents to play a role in the management and monitoring of the school, including keeping a watchful eye on the development funds. If parents use this agency, teaching and attendance will surely improve. 

Additionally, school calendars need to be sensitive to contextual social patterns. A decentralised academic calendar will take students along, instead of pushing them out of school.

And what about the inertia that plagues the administration? Systemic inefficiency is increased by the social distance between those who run the education system and those who are supposed to benefit from it. The educational bureaucracy is in urgent need of sensitivity towards Adivasi, Dalit and OBC students — who are often the ones at the highest risk of dropping out. Without an anti-caste stance and belief in social justice, we would be unable to provide quality education to our masses. While appreciating and advocating for a continued focus on improving learning outcomes, we call for urgent recognition of low attendance and depleting enrollment. If the system can be galvanised to attempt solving the learning crisis, the same can be done for attendance and enrolment. For schooling to achieve the goals it envisions, these must be simultaneous. 

Paran Amitava is an independent researcher studying the schooling system in Jharkhand. Abhinav Ghosh is a PhD candidate at Harvard University. 

Gurugram University Cancels Talk on Palestinian Struggle by JNU Professor Zoya Hasan

This is not the first incident where a talk on Palestine has been cancelled at an Indian institution. 

New Delhi: On November 12, Gurugram University’s department of political science and public policy was to host a talk on the agenda – ‘Palestinian Struggle for Equal Rights: India & Global Response’ by Zoya Hasan, professor emerita, centre for political studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

However, on November 10, Hasan received a call from that organisers that the talk had been cancelled without a date of postponement. 

Hasan was approached by the university faculty, which had initially shown interest to arrange a discussion on the kind of response there is towards the Palestinian struggle in India and across the world.

“I readily accepted the invitation to deliver the talk on Palestine though fully aware and apprehensive that it might actually not happen” Hasan told The Wire. That’s exactly what happened, she said. She added that had it been a talk on social policies etc, the talk would have still happened even if there were logistical issues. But for Palestine, it seems the Department suddenly became logistically unequipped.

This talk at the university was to be chaired by professor Dinesh Kumar, the vice chancellor of the varsity and also the chief patron.

This is not the first incident where a talk on Palestine has been cancelled at an Indian institution. 

In October, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) cancelled three seminars, to be addressed by the Iranian, Palestinian and Lebanese Ambassadors to India on separate occasions, citing “unavoidable circumstances”. The seminars were meant to address the ongoing violence in West Asian countries and had been organised by the Centre for West Asian Studies, housed under the university’s School of International Studies (SIS). Reportedly, senior faculty members had expressed concern over potential protests on campus due to the polarising nature of topics chosen for the seminars. 

In November 2023, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay cancelled a scheduled lecture titled ‘Israel-Palestine: The Historical Context’ by professor Achin Vanaik. The decision was taken in the wake of a growing controversy surrounding the professor’s alleged pro-Hamas and pro-Palestine stance.

Ever since Israel’s genocidal assault on Palestine on October 6, 2023, seven Indian states have filed criminal cases against pro-Palestine protesters. Article-14 reported about 17 FIRs – in which 51 people have been booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the newly introduced Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967 – for organising pro-Palestine rallies and for posting pro-Palestine content on social media.

This crackdown comes despite Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself pledging India’s “unwavering support” to the people of Palestine in September 2024, as he held talks with the President of Palestine Mahmoud Abbas during his visit to New York and the United Nations. India has abstained on a UN resolution calling on Israel to vacate the Occupied Palestinian Territories within the next 12 months.

Several Posts Lying Vacant in Commission That Regulates Medical Education, Practice

An RTI reply given in October to an activist said that the appointments to various posts at the National Medical Commission were under process.

New Delhi: Many key posts are lying vacant in the National Medical Commission (NMC) – the regulator of medical education and medical practice in India.

The New Indian Express, quoting a Right to Information reply, has reported that 10 out of 19 posts are not occupied. Two of them are in the Postgraduate Medical Education Board. This Board regulates PG medical courses and super-speciality courses for medical colleges. Similarly, three positions have not been occupied for the board regulation undergraduate medical courses

The Medical Assessment and Rating Board (MARB), a Board under the NMC, evaluates medical colleges – both private and public – on various parameters pertaining quality of education and the human resources. It carries out inspections to do the same; also grants permission to new medical colleges for becoming functional. Four positions at the MARB are also vacant.

Another key board at the NMC is the Ethics and Medical Registration Board (EMRB). The EMRB looks into cases of professional misconduct of the doctors. They also have to register at the EMRB to obtain a licence to practice – through various state medical councils. Three out of the five positions remain unoccupied. Even the post of the president of the board has been vacant for quite some time. 

The RTI reply given in October, given by the Union health ministry, said that the appointments to various posts at the NMC were under process. The NMC comes under the health ministry.

The Union government replaced the Medical Commission of India with NMC in 2020 with an aim of streamlining medical education and getting rid of problems within the MCI.  However, the NMC  has also been under the radar for various reasons in the past, including internal conflicts within its various boards, hesitance to release inspection reports of medical colleges in public domains and changing the official logo by introducing Dhanvantri – a Hindu deity – in it, in a move that many doctors questioned. 

How Poverty Is Perpetuating Trafficking In Assam’s Tea Gardens

Low wages keep tea garden workers in a cycle of poverty, which is pushing children out of school and leading to cases of trafficking and gender-based violence.

Guwahati, Assam: The tiny courtyard of tea-garden worker Bilchand Bawri’s house in Assam’s Koilamari tea estate turns into a makeshift school every day at 4 p.m. Around 15 children, aged between five and 13, sit on plastic sheets on the ground as Bawri’s daughter, Rinku, teaches them.

Twenty-one-year-old Rinku is a graduate student at a college in North Lakhimpur town. She commutes 15 km each way by bus to attend college. When she is short on cash, she misses her classes as she can’t afford to pay her commute charges.

“Nor can I afford to stay in a hostel close to my college,” Rinku, who belongs to the Adivasi community, says. “My parents are tea-garden labourers earning Rs 250 each every day. It is not enough to run a household of seven, including my four siblings.”

Rinku’s struggle to get an education reflects the abject poverty of the Adivasi community, the backbone of Assam’s biggest revenue-generating industry.

A bitter brew: No share of profits for the poor

Assam’s tea tribe or Adivasi community is an umbrella term for people belonging to Munda, Santhal, Gonds, Oraon, Bhumij and other tribes. They comprise around 7 million of the 31.2 million people in the northeastern state.

According to the Assam government’s Industries and Commerce Department, the state produces nearly 700 million kg of tea annually, accounting for around half of India’s overall tea production. Along with gaining global fame for its high-quality tea, Assam makes big bucks from the green leaves. India earned Rs 6,386 crore by exporting tea in 2022-23 and Assam contributed to a sizeable chunk of it.

The 200-year-old industry has been built on the labour of Adivasi labourers. While men are predominantly involved in the factories, women are the primary workers in the gardens. Be it sun or rain, they are on their feet for 8 to 12 hours carefully collecting the leaf sets that consist of two leaves and a bud. Typically, workers collect 20-60 kg a day depending on the season. The price of tea begins at Rs 180 per kilogram and can go up to Rs 10,000 for some varieties.

“Our community never got any share of the profit,” says Adivasi woman leader Neha Sagar from Tinsukia district’s Beesakopie tea estate. “We have always been living on the margins. It is a classic case of capitalism where the working class is exploited to the maximum for generations.”

How denial of education makes girls vulnerable to violence

Rinku has been teaching her students for free for four years now. She fears that if these children are not helped with their lessons, they will join the long list of school dropouts residing in more than 800 major and 100,000 small tea gardens across Assam.

The lack of neighbourhood schools is a major reason for the high dropout rate. An April 2017 study, by Ruksana Saikia, a research scholar at the Gauhati University, found that educational opportunities in tea garden areas are limited to lower primary levels.

Rinku Bawri, 21, from Assam’s Koilamari tea estate teaches Adivasi children free of cost at the tiny courtyard of her house. She fears that otherwise, these children will drop out of school. Photo: Maitreyee Boruah

Activists say the high dropout rate is behind the rising cases of child trafficking and child marriage of girls in tea garden areas. “This is how the cycle of violence against Adivasi girls starts,” says Nabin Chandra Keot, vice president of Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS), the largest trade union body of tea garden workers in Assam.

“It continues throughout their lives. Crimes against women and girls like domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual abuse and dowry deaths are prevalent in tea gardens,” Keot says. “Unfortunately, we don’t talk about them and there is hardly any reporting of these incidents.”

Over the decades, more and more Adivasi men have started migrating outside the plantations in search of better wages. This makes the women and girl children, who are left behind, vulnerable to abuse.

Low wages perpetuate poverty, trafficking

“The tea garden workers have a giant problem – grinding poverty. Everything else gets eclipsed in front of deprivation,” says Keot in his Dibrugarh office. “It is also the cause of several problems including gender violence. Who will talk about nari nirjotona (gender-based violence) when your daily earning from a physically demanding job is between Rs 150-Rs 250?”

About 144 big tea gardens surround Dibrugarh. After a Rs 18 hike last year, Assam garden workers in Brahmaputra valley get Rs 250 a day and their counterparts in Barak valley get Rs 228. Some workers, in small tea gardens, get even less – between Rs 150 and Rs 180.

The ACMS has been demanding that the daily wage of tea workers be increased to Rs 350. In Kerala, another centre for tea cultivation, a plantation worker earns Rs 482 per day, the second highest in the country. Sikkim with only one tea garden named Temi Tea Garden pays Rs 500 per day, the highest in the country, to the workers.

Back in the Koilamari tea estate, 130 km from Dibrugarh, Milika Topno, a research scholar, says poverty and a high school dropout rate force girls to leave their homes to earn a livelihood.

“They are victims of human trafficking,” says Topno, who belongs to the tea tribe community. “The trafficked girls are employed in homes, factories and brothels. Some become child brides or organ donors. These girls are subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Many others join their mothers and grandmothers and work in tea gardens. Others get married before adulthood.”

The green view of a tea garden in Assam’s Jorhat district. Photo: Maitreyee Boruah

The Koilamari tea estate in Lakhimpur district is famous for its orthodox tea, which is processed using traditional methods. It is spread across 1,244 hectares. Around 3,000 Adivasi families stay within the estate, locals say. The verdant tea garden, on the north bank of the Brahmaputra river, has a beauty that is in striking contrast to the lives of tea garden workers and their families.

Sonali and Priyanka (name changed) are 19 years old. They are neighbours, and studied till grade VIII before they dropped out of school due to financial problems. Both girls were trafficked to Naharlagun, in neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh, in 2022.

Priyanka says an agent (trafficker) – whose name she did not want to reveal as she is scared of being targeted – took her to Naharlagun in September 2022.

“Our household finances have been bad for years,” Priyanka says. “I was sitting idle at home after leaving school. My parents’ earnings are too little for a family of six. I was told by the agent that I have to do household chores and will be paid Rs 8,000 monthly. I thought the money was good and I could send it to my parents.”

In Naharlagun, a suburb of Arunachal Pradesh’s capital Itanagar, Priyanka was made to work round the clock. “I did everything – from cleaning and cooking to attending to a baby,” Priyanka recalls. “I had no time to rest. I was verbally abused. It was a scary experience. I could not bear it and left the job in two months. Thankfully, my employers let me come home. But they did not pay me. They told me the agent took my two months’ salary (Rs 16,000). After I reached home, I tried to get in touch with the agent but he never answered my calls.”

Activists say trafficking has become industrialised in bagaans (plantations); the traffickers are often local people, and families trust them with their daughters to help them find a job.

“The trust is always broken, as many girls don’t return home and go missing or those who return have a sordid saga to narrate,” says Karisma Lakra, a community worker associated with Purva Bharati Educational Trust, an Assam-based NGO working for girls’ education in tea gardens. “These agents either run away if anyone confronts them, or threaten the girls and their parents to keep quiet. The agents sell these girls to faraway places like Delhi, Rajasthan, Mumbai and Gujarat.”

Sonali had left, with another female friend, for Naharalagun in February 2022 to work as a domestic help. “My friend worked in the house of a politician in Naharlagun. A relative of the politician hired me. I worked there for almost two years. As I started to miss my parents, I decided to come back home,” said Sonali.

Her neighbours say the teenager has probably developed some form of addiction during her stay in Naharlagun. “I have seen her consuming packet after packet of gutka (a tobacco-based substance),” says a neighbour, who did not want to be identified.

“Most of the time she sleeps,” Sonali’s mother says. “She hardly speaks to us. I fear she had some bad experience. But she insists she was treated well and paid Rs 4,000 a month. She also sent us some money for a few months.”

As the Koilamari tea estate is close to Itanagar (around 70 km), several girls from the plantation are trafficked to the neighbouring state where they work as domestic help. Across Arunachal Pradesh, Adivasi girls of Assam are employed as domestic workers. They are called “bhonti”, an Assamese term for younger sister. But in Arunachal Pradesh, it refers to a female domestic worker, almost always an Adivasi minor.

Data show the tip of the iceberg

Data shared with IndiaSpend by the Office of the Director General of Police, Itanagar, show that 14 cases of human trafficking were registered in Arunachal Pradesh from 2019 to September 2023.

The first information reports (FIRs) filed in these cases resulted in the rescue of 22 victims and the arrest of 21 traffickers. Most victims belong to the Adivasi community of Assam.

In March 2023, the Assam government told the legislative assembly that at least 481 children – 185 boys and 574 girls – were trafficked between 2017 and 2022 to different parts of the country. Moreover, 759 children have gone missing since 2017. At least 666 of them were subsequently rescued.

The latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau stated there were 204 victims in 108 cases of human trafficking registered in 2022 in Assam. In 2021, there were 379 victims of human trafficking as compared to 151 victims in 2020. Human trafficking is prohibited under Article 23(1) of the Indian Constitution.

Officials working to combat trafficking in Assam, who did not want to be named, say the state is “vulnerable because of its geographical location (it shares a porous 267.5-km border with Bangladesh), inaccessible terrain, decades of political turmoil and violence, poverty, displacement due to floods and lack of infrastructure, health facilities and educational institutions”.

IndiaSpend has reached out to the state’s department of women and child development for comment on the initiatives being undertaken to address the issue of trafficking, to improve reporting of cases, and the support being given to survivors of trafficking and gender-based violence. We will update this story when we receive a response.

Tea gardens turn trafficking hubs

“The tea gardens have become trafficking hubs because they have several vulnerability indicators. The practice has been going on forever,” says Assam-based activist Digambar Narzary, who works for the rescue and rehabilitation of trafficking victims. Narzary runs a shelter home, Nedan Foundation, for victims of trafficking in Kokrajhar.

There are 35 girls in the shelter home. More than half are Adivasi girls. “The Adivasi girls were trafficked across the country on the pretext of giving them ‘decent jobs’. Most have experienced sexual violence including rape. They are all given counselling,” adds Narzary.

Kokrajhar, one of the four districts of Assam’s Bodoland Territorial Region, has 30 major tea gardens. The region witnessed decades of Bodo militancy.

Adivasi woman leader Sagar, 25, is a first-generation graduate from her family. She stays with her parents, both tea garden workers. “We have been staying in the same house since the time of my grandparents. We don’t have any legal rights over it, as tea garden managements provide housing facilities to workers.

“Either my siblings or I have to take up my father or mother’s job after their retirement or we will lose our home. Many graduates have been forced to take up their parents’ jobs to keep a roof over their heads,” adds Sagar.

The workers stay in settlements called Lines within the tea plantations in the upper region and northern Brahmaputra belt of Assam.

Most of these settlements have a similar pattern. There are rows of pucca (concrete structures with tin roofs, mostly built during the 1950s and 1960s) and kutcha (made of clay, bamboo and straw) houses, without electricity and drinking water supply. These homes don’t have access to motorable roads or hospitals.

A view of a tea garden settlement called Lines in Kokrajhar district. Most of these settlements have rows of pucca and kutcha houses, without electricity and drinking water supply. These homes don’t have access to motorable roads or hospitals. Photo: Maitreyee Boruah

Raju Sahu, former legislator and an Adivasi leader from Tinsukia, home to around 120 big tea estates, says the tea garden workers are landless labourers.

“Less than 10% of them have land in their names,” Sahu points out. “They don’t have purchasing power. So we have been conducting protests in various tea estates seeking land rights documents (pattas) for people of the tea community.”

The situation would have been different had the community been included in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) list. It is a long-pending demand awaiting approval from the state government.

The Adivasi community falls under the Other Backward Classes or OBC in Assam, unlike their counterparts in different parts of the country who are STs.

The STs and Other Traditional Dwellers have the right to hold and live on forest land under individual or collective ownership for habitation. ST status for the Adivasis of Assam would offer them rights-based legal benefits like reservations, political representation and socio-economic subsidies.

Dowry demand, domestic violence among landless people

Women rights activists say denial of land and housing rights has led to the rise in dowry demand cases. “This in turn has increased incidences of domestic violence,” says women’s rights activist Bulbuli Gorh from Jorhat. “In a patriarchal society, women are the easiest target. When a community is denied social, political and economic rights, the burden automatically falls on women. That does not absolve Adivasi men from their greed to become rich by harassing their wives.

“We often come across incidents where Adivasi men ask for cash, houses and two-wheelers from their brides,” adds Gorh, who belongs to the tea tribe community. “When the wives can’t fulfil the material demands in their in-laws’ places, they are subjected to physical and mental torture.”

Domestic violence is widespread in tea garden settlements. “Often men come home drunk and beat their wives, mothers and daughters. The men take out their frustrations on women,” said Manisha Tanti, a social activist who works in the tea gardens of Tinsukia. “Sometimes, the victims end up in hospital. But talking about domestic violence is considered a taboo. People have become immune to such violence. They think it is a family matter and should not be discussed in public.”

Despite this, there appears to be growing awareness of the need to see domestic violence as a crime. In their academic paper published in 2022, researchers Swarna Rajagopalan and Natasha Singh Raghuvanshi note that between 2000 and 2020, reporting of violence against women has increased in Assam.

The number of cases of violence within the household and family – under the Dowry Prohibition Act, dowry deaths, cruelty by husband and relatives, and domestic violence – in 2000 was 1,057, they found. This number increased to 12,025 in 2020. Similarly, child marriage cases saw an increase from four in 2014 to 138 in 2020. Rape cases went up from 762 in 2000 to 1,639 in 2020.

Domestic violence: Shattering Adivasi women’s lives

Kanchi Gowala from Letekoojan Tea Estate in Jorhat’s Titabor got married in 2018. Within a year of her marriage, the 31-year-old gave birth to a son. “I had an arranged marriage. Before our wedding, I had told my husband I had studied till grade II. He is a graduate. At that time he was fine with it. He came across as a well-behaved person. After our marriage, he completely changed. He started verbally abusing me. He called me an illiterate ugly woman. He started beating me every day after getting drunk,” says Gowala.

Her husband started demanding money from her family. “My father died when I was a child. I did not want to burden my mother and elder brother with dowry demands. My refusal to bring money angered him more.

“Sometimes, the beatings turned very violent and left me with injuries. One day, when my son was four months old, I left my in-laws’ place and came to my mother’s house,” she says. Now, Gowala is raising her five-year-old son by working in a tea plantation.

Sonia Tanti, a social activist, accompanied Gowala to the Titabor Police Station to file a complaint against her husband. “We went to the police station four times, but nobody listened to us,” she says. “The police dissuaded us from pursuing any legal step against the husband despite the victim sustaining grave injuries.

“Finally, Mariani (another town near Titabor) police station filed an FIR under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (for harassment and dowry demands). But he got anticipatory bail.”

The sub-divisional magistrate of Titabor directed Gowala’s husband to pay his wife monthly compensation under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.

Sonia Tanti says it is rare for victims of domestic violence in tea gardens to take legal action against their husbands or in-laws.

Sonia Tanti, a social activist, works with Adivasi women labourers who are victims of violence. Photo: Maitreyee Boruah

“There are many reasons,” she says. “First, the community does not support victims taking a stand against their spouses. Second, the police are unhelpful. Most importantly, victims don’t have the finances to pursue cases. Some can’t even afford the bus fare to visit a nearby police station.”

Unlike Gowala, Sureka Ekka, 40, from Mornai Tea Estate in Kokrajhar, did not have anyone to help her approach the police after she left her husband’s house 15 years ago.

“I got married when I was 20,” Ekka said. “My five years of marriage was hell. My husband beat me black and blue frequently. One day, I decided to stand up for myself and left his house. I had no parental support. Luckily, I got work in the tea garden. Now, I stay alone. I don’t have any children.”

Who will give justice to victims of rape?

In May this year, when I visited Heeleakah Tea Estate, around 15 km from Letekoojan Tea Estate, it was cloudy. Ruma (name changed) works in the estate’s factory. The 29-year-old took a day off from work because, she told me, she wanted to gather her thoughts before speaking about “the worst day of her life”.

“I am telling my story to get justice,” Ruma said. “The incident happened on December 25, 2021. I was alone at home. My parents and siblings went out to celebrate Christmas. It was around 9 p.m. and I went to the washroom built outside the house. My attackers were waiting near the washroom. I did not notice them as it was dark.

“When I came out of the washroom, three men sexually assaulted me. I started screaming for help and then they beat me and tried to strangulate me. An aunt from the neighbourhood heard my screams and she came running. The men ran away seeing her.”

The assault left her with severe injuries in her legs and stomach. “On the same night, I was taken to the Jorhat Medical College and Hospital for treatment. I stayed there for three days,” she says.

The Mariani police station registered a case against the three accused under Section 307 (attempt to murder) and Section 354 (for assault). They were arrested and stayed behind bars for three months, but all three are out on bail now. Ruma’s family was pressured by the families of the accused to withdraw the case against them.

After the incident, Ruma developed mental health issues. “The doctors told us she had severe depression and needed to shift her base to feel better,” says her mother. “So she went to Tamil Nadu’s Tirupur to work as a garment factory worker. She was working as a tailor there. But in a few months, she came back home. We are happy she is with us.”

In the same tea garden, I met a minor rape victim. Her mother is dead, and her father has remarried. The minor was raped multiple times by her stepmother’s brother. A woman community worker who is taking care of the minor says the case was tried under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act of 2012. The accused is in jail.

After several counselling sessions, the survivor is back in school. “She wants to continue her studies by staying in a hostel. We are waiting for the government to compensate her,” says the community worker.

These are not isolated incidents – as one travels from one tea garden to another, it becomes evident that the issues of trafficking, domestic violence, and rape, are present everywhere and official figures do not capture many of them.

In a tea garden, I watch women workers hunched over between rows and rows of tea bushes, their deft fingers plucking the tender leaves and buds and tossing them into the basket strapped behind their backs.

What strikes me is the silence. The workers hardly ever talk to each other – they are not allowed to speak, as conversation might slow down the quick movements of their hands. To me, that sight served as a metaphor for the lives of Assam’s tea garden workers – they work, and they suffer, in silence.

This article was originally published on IndiaSpend, a data-driven public-interest journalism non-profit.

AMU’s Minority Status Not Lost Simply Because It Was Incorporated With a Statute: Supreme Court

The majority opinion was read by CJI Chandrachud, on what is his last working day. In addition to him, Justices Sanjiv Khanna, J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra were part of the 4:3 majority.

New Delhi: A seven-judge bench of the Supreme Court in a 4:3 majority ruling has held that the Aligarh Muslim University’s minority status is not lost simply because it was incorporated through a statute. This judgment could pave the way for a regular bench of the court to declare AMU a minority institution.

The judgement overrules the 1967 judgment of the apex court in the case S. Azeez Basha vs. Union Of India, which held that an institution incorporated by a statute cannot claim to be a minority institution.

AMU was established through an imperial legislation – the Aligarh Muslim University Act – in 1920.

The constitution bench that delivered the verdict today had Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud, Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Surya Kant, J.B. Pardiwala, Dipankar Datta, Manoj Misra and S.C. Sharma.

In 2006, the Allahabad high court had held that AMU was not a minority institution. The apex court heard a reference arising out of this verdict, earlier this year and reserved judgement.

The majority opinion was read by CJI Chandrachud, on what is his last working day. In addition to him, Justices Sanjiv Khanna, J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra were part of the majority opinion.

LiveLaw has reported that the majority held that the court must examine who established the University and who was the “brain” behind it. “If that enquiry is pointing towards minority community, then the institution can claim minority status as per Article 30. For this factual determination, the constitution bench relegated the matter to a regular bench,” the report said.

AMU will be able to provide reservation of up to 50% for Muslim students if it is deemed a minority institution.

The court considered the question of what can be the basis of treating an educational institution as a minority educational institution – whether its founder or administrators’ religious or linguistic identity is to be considered.

Merely because the AMU was incorporated by an imperial legislation would not mean that it was not ‘established’ by a minority, the majority opinion held.

‘Throwing the Baby Out With the Bathwater’: What the SC Said on the HC’s Verdict on the UP Madarsa Act

The Allahabad high court had in March struck down the Madarsa Act on a petition filed by a lawyer, Anshuman Singh Rathore, who had submitted that the legislation violated secularism.

New Delhi: The Supreme Court today, November 5, upheld the constitutional validity of the Uttar Pradesh Madarsa Act, 2004, the legislation through which madarsas are governed in the state. The apex court set aside a judgment of the Allahabad high court which had earlier this year declared the Act as unconstitutional, ruling that it violated the principle of secularism.

The high court had struck down the entirety of the Act, which regulated the standard of education, qualifications for teachers and conduct of examinations in madarsas.

A bench of Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud and Justices J.B. Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, while setting aside the high court ruling, said the Madarsa Act was “consistent with the positive obligation of the State to ensure that students studying in recognized Madarsas attain a level of competency which will allow them to effectively participate in society and earn a living.”

The Supreme Court decided against striking down the entire legislation even though it found that certain provisions in the Madarsa Act, which pertain to the regulation of higher education and the conferment of such degrees, were unconstitutional on the ground of lack of legislative competence.

“Thus, the question that arises is whether the entire legislation must be struck down on this ground. In our view, it is in failing to adequately address this question of severability that the High Court falls into error and ends up throwing the baby out with the bathwater,” the court said in its 70-page-judgment.

The Uttar Pradesh government, headed by chief minister Adityanath, informed the court that around 12.35 lakh students were studying in 13,364 madarsas across the state.

Of these, as many as 1.92 lakh students were enrolled in in 560 state funded madrasas; 4.37 lakh students were receiving education in 3,834 non-state funded permanently recognised madarsas and 6.04 lakh students were studying in 8,970 non-state funded temporarily recognised madarsas.

‘State cannot hide behind the lame excuse…’

The Allahabad high court had in March struck down the Madarsa Act on a petition filed by a lawyer, Anshuman Singh Rathore, who had submitted that the legislation violated secularism and failed to provide quality compulsory education up to the age of 14 years or class 8, as was mandatorily required to be provided under Article 21-A of the constitution. The high court bench, while ruling the Act as unconstitutional, had observed that the ““denial” of modern education and quality of education in madarsas violated constitutional norms mandating free and compulsory education of all children in the age group of six to 14.

“While the students of all other religions are getting educated in all modern subject denial of the same quality by the Madrasa Board amounts to violation of both Article 21-A as well as Article 21 of the constitution of India. The State cannot hide behind the lame excuse that it is fulfilling its duty by providing traditional education on nominal fee,” the HC said.

The high court had ruled that the Madarsa Act was “violative of the principle of Secularism, which is a part of the basic structure” of the constitution. The Act was violative of Articles 14, 21 and 21-A of the constitution and Section 22 of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, the court said.

The high court’s decision was challenged in the Supreme Court by various stakeholders including madarsa associations. The Supreme Court concluded that the Madarsa Act regulates the standard of education in Madarsas recognised by the Board for imparting Madarsa education.

‘State government can enact regulations’

The apex court also said that Article 21-A, which mandates free and compulsory education of all children in the age group of six to 14, and the Right to Education, have to be read consistently with the right of religious and linguistic minorities to establish and administer educational institutions of their choice. “The Board with the approval of the State government can enact regulations to ensure that religious minority institutions impart secular education of a requisite standard without destroying their minority character,” the Supreme Court said.

The apex court ruled that the Madarsa Act was within the “legislative competence” of the State legislature and traceable to Entry 25 of List III. However, the provisions of the Madarsa Act which seek to regulate higher-education degrees, such as Fazil and Kamil are unconstitutional as they are in conflict with the UGC Act, which has been enacted under Entry 66 of List I, the apex court said.

A few madarsa award certificates of Kamil (undergraduate degree) and Fazil (post-graduate degree), which the state declared were not recognised by it as alternatives to graduate and post-graduate degrees respectively. “These courses have not been given equivalence by the Government of Uttar Pradesh/Government of India/any university established by law, nor has the education of these courses been recognised as an alternative to the graduation/post-graduation degree of a university established by law for employment at the level of Uttar Pradesh Government or Government of India,” the UP government informed the court.

‘New Disease Among Children’: Dhankhar’s Lame(nt) Excuses

The tendency to demonise those who leave India for education diverts attention from the troubling state of Indian higher education under the BJP.

Last week, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar lamented a “new disease among children – that of going abroad”. Dhankhar believed this constituted a massive brain drain and “forex drain” for India, apart from the loss of a “bright future” students would have enjoyed had they chosen to stay behind in India itself.

This is not the first criticism of foreign education by the BJP-led Union government. In 2017, Prime Minister Narendra Modi infamously claimed that “hard work is more powerful than Harvard”. The jibe was targeted at Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen for his criticism of demonetisation. However, the sentimentality of decrying experts and foreign universities was clear.

The tendency to demonise those who leave India for education – not necessarily to abandon the country – diverts attention from the troubling state of Indian higher education under the BJP.

In a snapshot, the BJP’s tenure in government has seen a spiralling increase in graduate unemployment, with the government’s own survey pointing out that one in two Indian graduates are unemployable right out of college. Student suicides have been growing at an alarming rate of 4% annually, surpassing overall suicide trends and even population growth rates.

In repeated global education rankings of educational institutions, Indian universities fail to make a mark. The government slashed funding for the University Grants Commission by 61% in the last budget.

Apart from this litany of failures, two issues loom large: the curbing of academic freedom and the growing commercialisation of education.

In the past ten years and counting, academic freedom and the independence of academia have been under severe threat. The first major attack and onslaught was on the purported bastion of anti-India activity, the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).

In 2020, as the country stood firmly against the communal and Islamophobic reality of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, JNU was attacked by right-wing goons. This direct onslaught on a centrally funded institution known for its academic excellence was conducted under the gross negligence and, some would argue, tacit support, of police forces.

Centrally funded and controlled universities like JNU have had influences of right-wing control creep in, with questionable and biased appointments to influential positions. For instance, the appointment of M. Jagadesh Kumar as JNU’s vice chancellor in 2016 began a series of controversial and concerning changes. He had once suggested installing an army tank in campus “so that students can be reminded of the sacrifices and valour of the soldiers”.

JNU is only an example of the systematic and continuous onslaught on public universities under the BJP. Every other week, there are reports of universities being starved of funds or of attempts to destabilise the environment through the BJP’s extended network of organisations like the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad.

Private universities haven’t been left far behind either. My alma mater, Ashoka University, in 2021 became the target of the government, with indirect attempts to stifle the freedom and independence of faculty.

Also read: Never in Independent India Has the Teacher’s Role Been More Difficult – Or Necessary

During my time there as an undergraduate, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, who continues to be an influential and often critical voice against the BJP, was forcibly made to resign. He admitted that the university’s founders felt he was becoming a “political liability” to the university. There were also reports of the government’s pressure on the university with threats of jeopardising its expansion plans.

Recently, the reputed Tata Institute of Social Sciences, which relies heavily on government funding as well, had planned to terminate several members of its faculty – this was later rescinded.

The argument of Indian students looking abroad for education isn’t a result of the threatening state of academic freedom in India alone. It is also a symptom of the desperation of the millions of students who fail to secure a place in Indian universities.

The centralised method of entrance examinations institutes a rat race for few seats in universities. From law to engineering to medicine, access to most affordable public education or government-funded seats in private universities is subject to performance in various competitive examinations.

Under this government, these exams have been severely compromised by several allegations of paper leaks and mass cheating. The ‘leakage sarkar’ has made these scarce seats even more inaccessible for the average Indian.

Further, private universities with criminally high admission and tuition fees have only grown under this government. The growth in private universities has far outstripped that in public ones. The All India Survey on Higher Education reported that while 58 state universities came up between 2016-2021, there were an astonishing 132 new private state universities created.

Further, the survey also reportedly indicated that the overall enrolment in private universities surged between 2014 and 2022 by 108.7%, contributing 39.6% to the increase in aggregate enrolment.

With unreliable and impossible-to-crack examinations and expensive private education, students have been forced to seek out foreign education in unfamiliar and unexpected territory.

For instance, consider Indian students pursuing medicine in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The costs are significantly lesser here than in Indian private education. Education opportunities in these countries are less than ideal, with mediocre quality and limited opportunities for future employment. Students are forced to acclimatise themselves to unfamiliar territory to be able to secure a degree.

The romanticisation and demonisation of those who choose to study abroad takes away from the reality of what students abroad face. Several surveys and personal anecdotes attest to the mental health burden of stress, depression and anxiety faced by students studying abroad.

It would certainly serve the vice president and the Indian administration to focus on fixing the broken Indian higher education system and recognise its series of ailments. Rather than chiding students, it is time to focus on their valid concerns, and actually work to make their future brighter.

Amaan Asim is the national chairperson for the research department of the National Students’ Union of India and is a student at Oxford University.

Autonomy, A++ Rating Fail to Mask the Crisis Facing Madras University

The institution’s legacy has been overshadowed by a funding crises, outdated academics and rising student discontent.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) has granted the University of Madras, a public state university, full autonomy. The move comes after the university achieved A++ accreditation from the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) last year, obtaining a category-1 status.

To an outsider, the high rankings would indicate that the university has performed well on all assessment parameters. But the ground reality could not be more different. Despite achieving these benchmarks, the university has taken a hit on all fronts –  inadequate funding, lack of proper infrastructure, academic discrepancies and an unconducive learning environment.

Financial crisis 

Caught in the disaccord between the state and Union governments, the university has suffered tremendously due to insufficient funds. The IT department froze its bank accounts over non-payment of Rs 424 crore tax dues, resulting in non-teaching staff going without salaries for several months. The university managed to scramble funds to pay the staff only after they organised a strike.

The university has also not received funds from the Tamil Nadu government for the past seven years, citing audit objections. Even after a year of obtaining category-1 status, which made the university eligible to receive additional funds from the Union government, the university remains fund-starved. The standoff between the state and the Union government has also left the university without a Vice Chancellor for over a year now,  exacerbating the issues faced by the institution.

The University of Madras is dubbed as  the ‘mother of all South Indian universities’ as several colleges in Tamil Nadu come under its ambit. The institution is highly sought after by many students, particularly from nearby districts, with a significant number being first-generation learners.

University of Madras in Chennai. Photo: Wikimedia commons.

One of the main reasons students from smaller districts flock to this institution is its low fees for postgraduate courses and PhDs, along with the hope that the university will live up to its reputation. The institution also offers scholarships and other fee waivers.

While an autonomous status offers financial independence, it also raises concerns about potential fee hikes. Last year, the varsity hiked the PhD fees which received significant backlash from students. The Students Federation of India (SFI) launched a protest to revert to the old fee structure, but without much success.

The decision to increase the PhD fee was not formally announced, allege students. The university website still shows the old fee structure, but some PhD students who spoke to this author said that they had been informed about the fee hike while submitting their thesis and paid an amount of Rs 18,000 instead of the Rs 8,000 on the varsity site.

Stifling student voices

The University of Madras boasts of illustrious alumni from various disciplines, including Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, V.V. Giri, Neelam Sanjeeva Reddy, R. Venkataraman and Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam. Ironically, the varsity has left no room for student leaders to emerge on campus and the administration has curbed any attempts at forming a student body for years. 

Even a student’s attempt to ask questions around campus is seen as hostile. Absence of a formal student body has resulted in students being unable to speak up about the shortfalls and injustices in the university, stunting their growth as well-rounded, politically aware citizens.

While SFI students occasionally manage to organise peaceful protests, they face severe backlash from the administration. The Sociology department at the Chepauk campus went as far as issuing a declaration, to be signed by students and parents, stating that students shouldn’t participate in protests and that they could be dismissed if found doing so.

Mirdhula, SFI Chennai Central District Secretary, a former student of the University of Madras, who continues to work at the grassroots level of student activism, said, “The students should have a democratic space within the university to voice their opinions. The sole purpose of the institution is to provide students a platform to explore their potentials. It is saddening to see that the university has not taken steps to establish a student body. There is a senate and a syndicate that takes all the academic decisions for the institution; there is no student representation or consultation from students before taking decisions that impact students. There is no scope for the students to voice out their needs and, as a result, there is a lack of student-centric policies.”

University of Madras in Chennai. Photo: Wikimedia commons.

She also said that universities have a dynamic environment where people from various ideologies and socio-economic backgrounds come to study. It should be a place that fosters enriching intellectual discussions and helps people voice out their opinions and be considerate toward others’ views. “Jawaharlal Nehru University [in Delhi] has been the hotspot for student activism; our university has the potential too. It is disheartening to see students come to a place like Madras University and walk out of it without experiencing such discourse.”

In 2015, Madras University students had staged protests demanding a student union, after a French National of Sri Lankan Tamil origin was manhandled by the university staff for asking questions about flood relief operations in a seminar. However, not much has changed.

Dr. Ramu Manivannan, former head of department of Politics and Public Administration, at the University of Madras, said, “Neither the university administration nor the State Government encouraged or wanted to establish a student body. University of Madras being the flagship of universities in Tamil Nadu, they knew the potential of the students movement and the students’ politics and never wanted it to turn into a political movement.” He had continuously raised voices against discrepancies in the university and had supported students who voiced out their opinions.

“It has become a system which is accountable to no one, either to the government or to the students or to the public. In the process everything got affected, the quality of teaching recruitment of teachers and students enrollment, there is nobody to question the situation. The university bureaucracy is worse than the government bureaucracy. Wherever there is such a decay there is an oppression of students, because if you ask questions, you’ll either be failed or you’ll be dragged with low marks in internal assessment. The university system is disempowering  for students and this has been the trend in the university for a long time.” Manivannan added.

‘Lack of digitalisation has led to exploitation’

Lack of transparency in maintaining students’ attendance records is another problem plaguing the university. 

At a time when several universities have adopted online portals, allowing students to keep a track of their attendance and their academic profiles, the University of Madras has no such provision. The alleged non compliance with attendance rules under the Choice Based Credit System (CBCS) poses a significant challenge for students, who claim professors manipulate the rules to their liking. 

Allegations of faculty high-handedness and improper communication endure with a post graduate student, Tamil Kumaran, claiming, “The faculty barred me from appearing for a core subject exam for three semesters, citing shortage of attendance. They did not specify the required percentages for redoing courses, condonation or reappearing for exams. Additionally, they only disclosed attendance percentages a few days before the exams, after the hall tickets had been distributed, leaving me with no time to address my situation. When I consulted the CBCS, all it gave was negligent responses. Now, I am left to redo the semester for that single subject, which has derailed my academic progress. This has happened not just with me, but several other students, it has become routine to withhold students from getting their degrees. The university should leverage technology to enhance transparency and fairness for all students.”

Outdated syllabus

In addition to battling a broken attendance system, students are also putting up with outdated syllabus being taught in a few departments.

Another tiresome task is having to visit each department to apply for electives, only to find that many of the options listed in the university prospectus aren’t actually available.

While most colleges offer online portals for elective applications, students here must go from department to department in search of available options. Some even travel to other campuses to find suitable electives. A few departments do consider these challenges and make extra efforts by admitting more students into their electives.

“As a student from another state, I had a hard time finding electives as some were taught in Tamil. There were only a handful of electives that I could choose from, though the university prospectus on the website showed many options that I could choose from. Some departments didn’t offer electives to students from other departments. We weren’t allowed to take Swayam courses as well, but the prospectus does have a mandate to take those courses. It was a tiresome task to find  suitable electives,” said Sona Binu, former post graduate student.

Lack of proper infrastructure 

The ill-maintained infrastructure and scarce restrooms have also added to the students’ problems. What is striking then is the fact that the university managed to secure A++ accreditation. This too came at the cost of students cleaning their own classrooms, as the administration left no stone unturned to impress the visiting officials. Students were allegedly strictly instructed not to provide any negative feedback to the NAAC committee.

The university made sure that the campus was thoroughly cleaned to mask their failure in maintaining it all year-round. This, when the university was criticised last year for resorting to manual scavenging to make sure that the campus was in shape before a presidential visit.

An asbestos sheet and minimal seating is what constitutes a canteen at the university, serving unhygienic food to students. The impressive, British-built university now hosts dilapidated classrooms and an apathetic administration. The only solace for students is the view of the Marina beach from the university, the Indo-Saracenic architecture and the library that provides a quiet place to study.

The heritage of the 166-year-old university has been its primary asset, keeping the institution afloat. While autonomy would help relieve its financial burdens, the institution is in dire need of reformative measures to create a conducive learning environment for students. It must prioritise digitalisation, infrastructural growth, revamping of academics, transparency in administration, student wellbeing and careful introspection. 

R. Amanda Miriam Fernandez is a journalist and has recently completed her post graduation from the University of Madras.