Tag: Vice Chancellor

Admin, Infrastructure, Operational Woes Mount as JU Completes Month 8 Without a Permanent V-C

‘The future of students is in question due to the ongoing conflict between the state and the governor.’

Kolkata: For over seven months now, Jadavpur University, one of the premier educational institutions in India, has been in a state of flux due to the absence of a permanent vice-chancellor.

The last permanent vice-chancellor, Suranjan Das, retired after his nine-year stint on May 31, 2023. West Bengal Governor C.V. Ananda Bose, the chancellor of state universities, did not extend his tenure. Since then, the university has had two officiating V-Cs, both appointed and then dismissed by the Governor.

Officiating V-C Buddhadeb Sau was appointed by Raj Bhavan on August 17 last year. However, Governor Bose removed him on disciplinary grounds on the eve of the university’s annual convocation on December 23 last year. The state education department, at perpetual loggerheads with the governor, reinstated Sau the following day, but the convocation took place without the Chancellor – Governor Bose. Since then, Sau has been on leave, leading to a suspension of critical academic and administrative matters at the institution. 

The following was posted on X by Bengal education minister Bratya Basu.

Among problems created in the absence of a permanent V-C is that the working committee and executive council could not meet for months. Signing off on grants and approvals for crucial research work are also stalled. Recently, the university’s teachers’ association held a sit-in demonstration as part of the ‘Save JU’ campaign.

“Financial transactions are on hold without the approval of the vice-chancellor, putting payments to temporary staff in jeopardy. The budget of the university could not be sent to the state government this time. The government did not allow a council meeting. As a result, there will be more serious problems in the future. In the face of this impasse, one section of officials are illegally giving work orders to their preferred organisations. These irregularities will continue until a permanent vice-chancellor takes charge,” alleged Partha Pratim Biswas, general secretary of the Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association (JUTA). 

Governor Bose’s controversial decision to appoint interim V-Cs in 31 state universities, including Jadavpur and Calcutta University, without consulting the higher education department, has triggered a seemingly unending conflict between the two and left these universities without permanent V-Cs. The state has challenged this move in the Supreme Court, resulting in a further delay in the appointment of permanent V-Cs.

Meanwhile, state-aided universities in West Bengal are under scrutiny for using their funds to defend Governor Bose in the legal battle with the state government over V-C appointments. According to a report by The Telegraph, Calcutta University and Jadavpur University have reportedly spent over Rs 10 lakh and Rs 60,000 respectively on legal matters, as confirmed by university officials.

The revelation has prompted the higher education department to set up a committee to investigate the “justification of legal expenditure” by these institutions.

“We want a search committee to be formed and a renowned academician to be appointed as V-C. The future of students is in question due to the ongoing conflict between the state and the governor. The governor has termed the convocation as illegal. Now, if he cancels the certificates signed by the last interim V-C Buddhadeb Sau, we will be in trouble. The state government is strangely maintaining silence on the impasse,” said Afreen, a student of the University. 

Echoing Afreen’s concern, Anustup Chakraborty, a PhD student, said several other services were held up. “The absence of a permanent V-C is causing administrative problems for researchers and students. The allocation of research funds is stuck. The hostels are not being repaired. The infrastructure is crumbling.” 

It is no secret that the university is facing severe financial distress. It has only a third of the funds it needs from the state. Thus maintaining infrastructure, providing adequate resources, and even basic functionality is hanging by a thread.

The suspension of student elections in recent years has also posed operational challenges for the campus anti-ragging cell, which comprises the V-C and elected student representatives.

Last August, a student’s unnatural death in the university hostel, allegedly due to ragging, had sent shockwaves across the state. Twelve current and former students of the university are currently in judicial custody in the charge of abetment to suicide of a minor.

“After all the fuss about ragging, which damaged the reputation of the university, what will happen to the safety of the students? Can only CCTV solve the problem if there is one to lead the university?” asked Rupam Basu, a student of the university. 

Translated from the Bengali original by Aparna Bhattacharya.

Mamata Govt Cites Modi’s 2013 Gujarat Move To Remove Guv as Chancellor of State Varsities

The government also cited the recommendations of the Punchhi Commission, saying governors should not be burdened with positions and powers which are not envisaged by the constitution.

Kolkata: Five months after West Bengal governor Jagdeep Dhankhar alleged that the state government has appointed vice-chancellors in 25 state-run universities without his approval, despite the governor being the acharya or chancellor of the state-run universities, the Mamata Banerjee government on Monday moved a step closer to replacing the governor with the chief minister as the chancellor of all 31 state-run universities.

On Monday, the West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Bill was passed in the assembly with the support of 167 votes in favour and 55 votes against, of the total 239 MLAs present. Fifteen votes from the Trinamool Congress (TMC) and two votes from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLAs were declared cancelled.

This is the third instance in less than one year of a state assembly passing a Bill to curb the authority of the governor in matters related to universities. In December last year, the Shiv Sena-Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliance government in Maharashtra passed a Bill taking away the governor’s power to appoint vice-chancellors, while the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DKM)-led Tamil Nadu government passed a similar Bill in April this year.

None of these Bills has received the approval of the respective governors.

West Bengal’s leader of the opposition, BJP MLA Suvendu Adhikari, has also said that they will request the governor not to sign the Bill.

West Bengal’s Bill cites the recommendations of the report of “Commission On Centre-State Relations“, headed by the former chief justice of India Madan Mohan Punchhi and advised the removal of the governor from the chair of chancellors of state universities.

On Monday, inside the West Bengal assembly, when the BJP MLAs opposed the Bill, education minister Bratya Basu said the Gujarat government, with Narendra Modi as chief minister, had taken a similar move in 2013, about a year before he became India’s prime minister.

In 2013, when the Gujarat assembly passed the controversial Gujarat Universities Laws (Amendment) Bill that was meant to take away all the powers of the governor as chancellor of the state’s 14 government-run universities – including the power to appoint vice-chancellors – the then governor, Congress veteran Kamla Beniwal, did not sign it. The Bill found the governor’s approval in 2015, 10 months after O.P. Kohli, who came from a BJP background, replaced Beniwal.

In its report published in 2010, the Punchhi commission noted that “there have been instances where, in selecting vice-chancellors, governors as chancellors have acted in their discretion, overruling the advice of the council of ministers” and said that the governor should not be “burdened with positions and powers which are not envisaged by the constitution and which may expose the office to controversies or public criticism.”

“Conferring statutory powers on the governor by the state legislatures have that potential and should be avoided,” the report opined, and added, “There is no need to perpetuate a situation where there would be a clash of functions and powers.”

On Monday, the state government also pointed at Dhankhar as the reason for the Bill being tabled. It was never required in the 11 years of Mamata Banerjee rule [before Dhankar became the governor], the education minister told the assembly, adding that Dhankhar’s repeated returning of Bills forced the government to take such a step.

On his part, Dhankhar can return the Bill to the state assembly and after the assembly sends it back, because education is listed in the concurrent list of subjects involving both the Union government and the states, he can send it to the Union government.

He has previously done the same with the Bill to rename West Bengal (removing ‘west’ from the name since there is now only one Bengal in India) and the Bill to set up a legislative council – both of which are pending before the Union government.

Adhikari told the media on Monday that the present Bill will meet the same fate. “The chief minister will retire but not be able to become chancellor,” he said.

The government can bring an ordinance but that would remain valid for six months only.

According to educationist Pabitra Sarkar, who served as the VC of Rabindra Bharati University during the Left Front rule, the post of chancellor should be abolished altogether.

“From my experience, I do not see any role of the chancellor apart from being present at the convocation and performing some other ornamental roles. There is no need for a permanent chancellor post and neither the governor nor the chief minister should be required to occupy such a post,” Sarkar told The Wire.

A prolonged battle

While the state government’s tussle with the governor has ranged a number of issues since Dhankhar assumed his chair in July 2019, the West Bengal government’s plan to remove the governor from the post of chancellor came to the light on December 24, 2021. Education minister Bratya Basu told the media that the government was taking legal opinion toward this purpose.

Incidentally, it was the same day Dhankhar had an outburst on the state of educational institutes in the state after chancellors and vice-chancellors of 11 private universities did not turn up at Raj Bhavan to attend a meeting the governor had called. The governor is also the ‘visitor’ of private universities.

“Education scenario @MamataOfficial worrisome as no Chancellor & VC of Pvt Univ turned up for meeting with Governor – Visitor. Shocking unionism,” an angry Dhankhar wrote on Twitter, besides posting a video statement.

It was also the time when the Maharashtra government was planning to introduce a Bill to remove the governor from having any power in the affairs of varsities. Finally, the decision was approved by the state cabinet on June 5.

However, the actual tussle over universities began soon after Dhankhar took charge as governor in July 2019. Dhankhar had taken a special interest in universities right from the beginning and had met the VCs at Raj Bhavan on September 4, during which he advised them to send him a monthly report about the varsity’s activities. The meeting left the impression on some VCs that “he wanted to have a clear idea about how far he could go to apply his authority on campuses.”

The tension between him and the state government peaked after September 19, 2019, when groups of leftist students in Jadavpur University (JU) gheraoed Babul Supriyo, then a junior Union minister who went to the campus to attend a programme organised by the newly opened unit of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Union minister of state Babul Supriyo at Jadavpur university in Kolkata, on Thursday, September 19, 2019. Photo: PTI

While the leftist students were protesting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), ABVP organisers were seen vandalising the student union room of the arts faculty. The governor had asked the vice-chancellor, Suranjan Das, to call in the police to clear the gherao but the VC declined. Das had always maintained that he was against calling in the police and, going by the law, the police cannot enter a university campus without permission from the VC. Dhankhar was criticised for not condemning the vandalism allegedly carried out by ABVP workers.

Dhankhar took strong exception to Das’s denial and threatened to take action against him but the Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association (JUTA) as well as all the students’ bodies stood by the VC.

Dhankhar’s attempts to establish his authority on the functioning of the JU continued for a few more months, peaking in mid-December when the JU executive committee decided to change the format of the convocation so that the governor does not have to be present – a decision taken in the face of students’ threat of boycott if Dhankhar was to be present. Dhankhar termed the decision illegal and asked the VC to organise the event as supposed to, making it clear that he meant to be present at the event.

It is in this context that in December of that year the state government took the first steps toward curbing the governor’s authority over universities. It reframed Rules under the West Bengal Universities and Colleges (Administration and Regulation) Act, 2017 – which did not require the governor’s signature, though was issued in the name of the governor.

The rules took away his power to convene meetings of the highest bodies of the universities or take action against vice-chancellors, abolished the chancellor’s secretariat, stating that the VC’s communications to the chancellor will have to be routed through the education department, and mandated the chancellor to “maintain the order of preference of names placed before him” when choosing vice-chancellors.

Meanwhile, even though the JU convocation was organised on December 24 as per Dhankhar’s instructions, leftist student protesters and TMC-backed employees’ union members did not allow him to enter the campus – protesting his “partisan attitude” and his pro-CAA stance.

An angry Dhankhar informed the press that very day that he had called for a meeting of all VCs on January 13. However, none turned up. This tussle was revived in June 2020, when Dhankhar asked all the VCs of state-run universities to attend a virtual meeting.

Tension peaked in July, when Dharkhar wrote to Banerjee on July 9, saying the VCs not attending the conference called by the government “will send (a) wrong signal all over the country” and that their “non-attendance would be a serious matter in law.”

Banerjee responded on July 14, saying that the VCs and universities are governed by their own statute and rules. “They take guidance from (the) higher education department as their administrative department. You have already met the higher education minister and secretary yesterday and discussed the matter with them.” she wrote.

Responding to her letter, Dhankhar first wrote on Twitter on July 14 that he was looking forward to the proposed ‘virtual conference’ scheduled the next day and that “the conduct of VCs in not indicating open ended issues of students (is) not appreciated. Surely not in sync with their office.” He also wrote a letter to all the VCs asking them to be present at the video conference.

On July 15, he wrote on Twitter, “Keeping Student Welfare uppermost in mind VCs must attend VIRTUAL CONFERENCE and desist partisan stance. Taking positive approach for sake of education and students had an over reach ⁦@MamataOfficial. “POLITICAL CAGING” of education would ve disastrous and suicidal.”

However, none of the VCs attended it.

Instead, the Upacharya Parishad, a body of vice-chancellors, issued a strongly-worded statement, saying that the VCs received “a humiliating letter” from the governor on July 13 and an “intimidating letter” the next day. “Upacharya Parishad considers it extremely unfortunate to receive such communications from the office of the Hon’ble Chancellor during this critical national crisis (the pandemic),” the statement said.

The battle calmed down for some time, only to resurface at some intervals, over one varsity or another.

Almost Half of All Central Universities Functioning Without a Regular Vice-Chancellor

Education ministry officials have said that the delay was because the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had failed to approve the files of the shortlisted candidates.

New Delhi: Nearly half of the Central universities in the country are currently operating without a regular vice-chancellor, which has hampered their ability to recruit permanent teachers and implement the National Education Policy’s features, according to a report in The Telegraph.

Of the country’s 45 Central universities, 20 were functioning without a regular vice-chancellor, the report said. The 20 Central universities which are currently without any regular VCs include leading educational institutions like Banaras Hindu University, Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University.

They also include North-Eastern Hill University (Shillong), Manipur University, Assam University (Silchar), Guru Ghasidas University (Chhattisgarh), Sagar University (Madhya Pradesh), two Sanskrit universities in Delhi, two Central universities each in Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir, and one Central university each in Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh and Nagaland.

For 12 of these universities, selection committees had conducted interviews and submitted the names of the shortlisted candidates for the posts of vice-chancellor four months ago, two education ministry officials in the know told the daily. For the other eight universities, the selection process was yet to commence.

The ministry officials also said that the delay was because the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) had failed to approve the files of the shortlisted candidates.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, a DU professor said that the government was suffering from “policy paralysis”. “They are so driven by ideology that they do not bother about higher education institutions,” the professor said.

However, a senior education ministry official said that legally, the PMO had no role to play in the appointment of VCs. “The ministry has to send the file (of shortlisted candidates) to the President, who is the Visitor of the central universities and makes the final selection,” the official said and added that it would usually take a week to issue the appointment letters then. “However,” the official said, “these days the files are sent to the PMO unofficially. The files are delayed there.”

Also read: Like it or Not, Faculty Shortages in Indian Universities Are Now Permanent

The Prime Minister’s Office vets the shortlisted candidates and sends the list back to the education ministry with its recommendation, following which, the ministry sends the file to the President along with a verbal communication about the government’s preferences.

As per procedure, the education ministry must set up a search cum-selection committee to find a successor at least six months before a vice chancellor’s term ends. The committee will then submit a ‘panel’ of around three names to the ministry for informal ‘vetting’ and ‘due diligence’. These are then sent ahead to the Visitor to all central universities, which is the office of the President of India, for approval, after which the final appointments are announced.

Last August, selection panels held interviews to shortlist VCs for Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri National Sanskrit University and the Central Sanskrit University in Delhi. However, since then, the files with the shortlisted candidates have been awaiting approval from the PMO, officials said.

In most of the 20 universities, the outgoing VCs had received extensions while in the rest, the senior-most professor had been appointed as the acting VC, a DU professor said.

“The VCs on extension and the acting VCs are hesitant to decide key issues such as the implementation of the NEP, for instance, starting inter-disciplinary courses and four-year undergraduate programmes, or discontinuing the MPhil courses,” the DU professor said and added that acting VCs were also hesitant to plan academic activities during the pandemic or decide on starting COVID-19 care centres on campuses or exempting students from paying fees for facilities that remain unused since the institutions are closed.

Additionally, interim VCs are not allowed to recruit any permanent teachers or employees as well.

Last week, the RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) also urged President Ram Nath Kovind to “appoint full-time vice chancellors, thus filling in the vacancy or replacing the temporary vice chancellors in 21 central universities”.

The press release by the ABVP said that in Central universities in Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Meghalaya, the appointment of VCs had been pending for over a year. “In Manipur, the appointment has not been made even after the interviews concluded in August last year,” it said.

“Absence of a full-time vice chancellor for more than a year in some central universities is a matter of grave concern. The vice chancellor plays a major role in academic and administrative activities in the university,” national general secretary of the ABVP, Sushri Nidhi Tripathi, said.

Furthermore, the IITs at Bhubaneswar, Patna, Indore and Mandi have also been without regular directors for over a year. While a selection panel headed by education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal had last year interviewed candidates for IIT Bhubaneswar and IIT Patna, the PMO had not returned the files.

CAA Protests: Why Universities Are Taking Increasingly Arbitrary Measures Against Students

The heads of Visva-Bharati University and IIT Bombay, instead of engaging with their students, have moved to punish them instead.

Bidyut Chakraborty, vice-chancellor of Visva-Bharati University, could have chosen to defend his critical remarks about the Constitution’s Preamble. This is what academics and heads of educational institutions are expected to do, to argue out the defensible and non-defensible positions they take on various occasions. Chakraborty, however, has gone ahead and done the very opposite. The vice-chancellor has punished the student who recorded the speech he delivered at a function on January 26.

Addressing students on Republic Day, Chakraborty said the Preamble of the Constitution, which has now become the “Vedas” for the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protesters, was drafted with the support of a “minority.”

“Today, those who are opposing the CAA are reading the Preamble. But this Constitution was drafted by ‘minority’ votes…Now that has became the Vedas for us (sic). Preamble has become the Vedas. But if we do not like (the Preamble), we, who are voters and form Parliament, will change it. But the process to change does not mean a wave (of protest), hurling abuses,” Chakraborty said.

His comments drew criticism from teachers, constitutional experts, and academics, even as university authorities rushed to identify the undergraduate student who shot the video. The authorities subsequently interrogated the student and asked him to leave the hostel.

Also Read: Visva-Bharati Evicts Student Who Recorded VC’s Controversial Speech

Chakraborty’s arbitrary handling of the controversy generated by his own comments is of a kind with what is happening every day in different parts of the country. In a civilised society, people in positions of authority, especially those claiming ownership of knowledge, have to be able to defend their positions. They need to engage in a debate even on controversial issues. Chakraborty could well have explained his remarks. Instead, he chose to retaliate against the student.

The vice-chancellor’s remarks were doubtless aimed at getting back at protesters among his student body. In the absence of further clarifications, his comment sounds more like political sniping than historical rebuttal. Sugata Bose, professor of history, told The Telegraph, “The Preamble may be called the Vedas because it encapsulates the spirit of our democracy. I can’t understand what he (the VC) meant by ‘minority’. If he refers to religious minority, that is not right as there were very few Muslim members. The Constitution was passed with majority votes.”

A clarification on Chakraborty’s remarks finally came – not from the vice-chancellor himself but the university’s public relations officer, Anirban Sarkar. “By minority, our VC meant that those who framed the Constitution were elected on the basis of restricted franchise as the franchise was based on educational qualifications and the share of property tax unlike today when it is based on universal adult suffrage… Many sections of Indians thus remained unrepresented,” said Sarkar.

One does not have to think hard to understand the reasons for Chakraborty’s peevishness with regard to the Preamble. Across the country, protesters are reading aloud the Preamble to remind the government of how the CAA violates its very spirit. In Chakraborty’s own state, this Republic Day, thousands of people formed an 11-kilometre human chain in Kolkata and read the Preamble. As did the women protesters in Kolkata’s Park Circus and Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh. People are reading and discovering the Constitution.

An adversarial relationship

On the whole, students and women are at the forefront of the ongoing protests. As college and university students become more and more restless, heads of institutions adopt increasingly arbitrary measures. The JNU experience shows us that a complete breakdown in communication between the student community and the vice-chancellor is not an impossibility. JNU vice-chancellor Jagadesh Kumar has set a dangerous precedent. He has institutionalised – with the backing of the Central government – a culture of presiding over an educational institution whose administration is in constant conflict with its student community. The adversarial relationship between the university establishment and student and teaching communities on campus has led to numerous incidents of violence.

Also Read: ‘Sedition’ for School Play on CAA: FIR Says Class 6 Girl’s Dialogue on Stage was Insult to PM Modi

As apparent, protests against the CAA are not showing any signs of petering out. Neither are the protesting students backing down. On Wednesday, the IIT Bombay administration issued a circular asking students to stay away from “anti-national activities” on campus. The circular banned speeches, plays and music, even if faculty was part of the gathering, without the prior approval of the dean of student affairs. The circular, emailed to the students, listed 15 rules as part of the code of conduct. The students are expected to subscribe to them at all times. Any violation will attract strict disciplinarian action. “Residents shall not participate in any anti-national, anti-social and or any other undesirable activities,” one of the rules dictated. The students on this campus have been protesting CAA for weeks.

A protest at IIT Bombay against the attack on JNU students and faculty members. Photo: By arrangment

The question of what constitutes “anti-national” activity is left unexplained. And deliberately so. The objective is to keep the students anxious about the nature of such “anti-national” activities.  A word here, a line there, could attract the charge of sedition. The police could be at your doorstep.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath recently declared that raising azadi slogans would attract the charge of sedition. “… the government will take strict action. It can’t be accepted. People can’t be allowed to conspire against India from Indian soil,” he said.

The fundamental message is simple. Like the Visva Bharati vice-chancellor, IIT Bombay authorities too, are warning students to stay away from the anti-CAA protests. In recent days we have seen more and more students – even in IITs and IIMs, usually considered apolitical spaces – joining protestors. As the push back from protesters grows, so do retaliatory measures. The scope of what amounts to “anti-national” activity widens every day. The longer the list grows, the more opaque and absurd it becomes.

JNU: The Emotional Cost of Protesting

It was terrifying to realise that if you do not run, you will be beaten up and detained.

Young students wearing anti-pollution masks while being chased by the police on the streets of Delhi in an attempt to secure affordable higher education for themselves and future generations of students.

This is what dystopia looks like. These are times straight out of an Orwellian nightmare, and it looks like they are here to stay – whether we want to admit it or not.

As if living in dilapidated hostels infested with bedbugs is not enough, we, the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University, never get to meet our Vice-Chancellor to air our grievances much like past batches did before with their respective, more approachable Vice-Chancellors.

Our schools have been under lockdown for almost a month in protest against the new hostel manual draft issued and discussed using undemocratic methods. We have been sitting outside our schools in batches, some of us braving Delhi winter nights, vigilantly guarding our right to affordable education.

This is time we would have otherwise invested in more “productive” endeavours. Our assignments have been gathering dust on our tables because we have been refraining from submissions. A strong sense of uncertainty lingers across the university, lined with Silk floss trees, as we wake up every morning not knowing which way our day will go.

A Silk floss tree on campus. Photo: Meghna Roy

Our beloved professor often points out that as young scholars in 2019, we have many more subjects to research than her generation of sociologists did some 40 years ago. These are distressing times when everything seems to be falling apart – governments, ecological balance, the education system, the integrity of the media; you name it.

To the observant eye, there is chaos everywhere.

Living far from my home in Kolkata, I try to call my parents every day. For the past few weeks, on the good days, I’ve spoken to them about the mental exhaustion and frustration the ongoing struggle has brought with it.

On bad days, I never end up calling.  

Running from the police is something most of us had never encountered until we were out on the streets fighting for the principle of public education.

It was terrifying to realise that if you do not run, you will be beaten up and detained. Watching our peers getting caught by the police and being brutally beaten as our seniors urged us to keep running is indelible in our collective memory of this struggle.

Also read: The JNU Protests Stand For More Than Just Outrage Over the Fee Hike

We had been peacefully protesting through music and art, asking for the administration to initiate a dialogue. This is when the street lights were switched off and we were pushed, groped and baton-charged by the police.

Our relentless bold slogans were soon replaced by helpless whimpers and pleas.

This is when we learn to appreciate our freedom – not only is it hard-earned, but also extremely precious. We are so accustomed to capitalism and the neoliberal norm of private education that the very idea of a university whose fees are affordable to all sounds shocking to many – as can be seen on social media.

As it stands today, the student community faces many more challenges that just the physical hurdle of not being allowed to walk freely in a demonstration. 

Besides constantly explaining the need for a public university like JNU to friends and family, we have to keep arguing derogatory remarks on social media, and combat fake news about us and the institution on a daily basis. This movement has laid bare the depravity of our ‘civil society’, which clearly has so much animosity for the poor that it constantly feel the need to malign a set of students who are determined to ensure equality and diversity – at least on campus.

The JNU I joined last year was not its best version it has been in all its years of existence. It was far from perfect.

However, it was certainly more diverse than all the other campuses I have so far spent time in. It sounds almost idyllic how the dream of erasing social inequalities has been realised in this institution for decades, so much so that upward social mobility has actually materialised here time and again.

A year ago, I used to crib about the deplorable hostel conditions, often discussing with my peers how the administration could charge us more to improve the situation. I was naive. 

Today, I orient all my energy to mobilise the citizens of Delhi to support us in a forthcoming march to parliament.

Despite all that I have lost in terms of my mental health during this movement, I have gained emotional insight into social stratification – a subject well beyond the confines of coursework.

For this, I will forever be grateful to JNU.

Meghna Roy is a student at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Featured image credit: Meghna Roy

UGC’s Anti-Plagiarism Rules Don’t Make Room for Realities of Indian Academia

It is difficult to imagine that people in positions of power and with strong political connections will be caught and penalised for plagiarism.

The University Grants Commission (UGC) recently approved the UGC (Promotion of Academic Integrity and Prevention of Plagiarism in Higher Educational Institutions) Regulations, 2018. These regulations are dedicated to addressing plagiarism by students, researchers and faculty at India’s universities and colleges.

Plagiarism is, along with publishing in fake journals and fabrication and falsification of research, among the major offences committed by academics worldwide. Other lesser known, though common, offences include the practice of adding an author’s name to a paper when she has not contributed to the research, not acknowledging conflicts of interest and general sloppiness in conducting research.

In many countries and certainly at the better universities across the world, there are regulations and strong mechanisms in place to detect and punish offenders. Still, academic fraud of one kind or another takes place everywhere.

Until recently, the UGC as well as the universities have been rather casual with matters of research fraud. As a result, existing regulations and investigative and punitive mechanisms have not deterred fraudulent activities. Offenders usually get away with small and big crimes and this has encouraged others to follow the same path. Slowly, however, the government is taking steps to address research fraud. The latest set of UGC regulations pertaining to plagiarism are an example of the government’s intent to control research fraud. But it is important to understand that anti-plagiarism measures by themselves only attack one pillar of research fraud and must be combined with attacks on at least two others: fake journals and fabrication/falsification of research. It is also necessary to admit that the immediate impact of these anti-plagiarism measures will be minimal.

API and promoting research fraud

Though research performance of India’s universities and other academic institutions has improved, it is overall still dismal. There are many reasons for this research deficit, of which inadequate funding is an important one but not the only factor. Indian academic institutions underperform in research because most universities have traditionally emphasised teaching over research. Indeed, research has been close to the bottom in terms of institutional priorities. However, with the growing popularity of world university rankings in which India’s universities perform poorly because of low research output, the government started to take notice and take measures to address the deficit.

One of the first attempts at addressing the research deficit was the introduction of the academic performance indicator (API) in 2010. The API required all faculty members at central universities and central-government funded colleges to do research and publish – in addition to teaching and administrative duties – to benefit from the Career Advancement Scheme (CAS). Unfortunately, most state universities and colleges also adopted the API. With the widespread application of API across all kinds of academic institutions, including undergraduate institutions that are entirely teaching-focused, faculty members were left with no choice but to publish or stagnate in their positions. These included people who lacked any basic training for research and those who were already overburdened with teaching, administrative and other responsibilities. Further, most teachers work at colleges with woeful infrastructure and where the overall academic environment is inimical to substantive research.

The result of the nearly-compulsory implementation of API was that many faculty members took recourse to plagiarism, publishing in fake journals or both. While for some, plagiarising and/or publishing in fake journals was simply a short-cut to career advancement, for most it was a necessity. In both cases, they fed each other: research-deficient faculty members plagiarised and published to catch-up or get ahead of those who were carrying out genuine research, and at some point the latter realised that they would be left behind if they did not do the same things. Many started to plagiarise, publish and flourish. This gave birth to what is now a flourishing global industry of fake journals headquartered in India.

To a great extent, the current and ongoing wave of research fraud in the form of plagiarism and publishing may have started with the API, which itself was a by-product of the growing popularity of the world university rankings. The API was created to boost India’s research output and improve the rankings of its universities; instead, it gave a tremendous boost to fraudulent research.

The API is soon to be revised but the improved version falls short of recognising the proper structure and complexities of India’s higher education sector and will continue to be abused.

Fake journals menace

The Indian Express recently carried a series exposing the fake journals industry in India. This has reportedly led to an immediate response from the government, with the higher education secretary R. Subramanyam issuing an order: “If any substandard/predatory journals are found to be in the list recommended by the vice-chancellors, that would be held personally against the vice-chancellor concerned.”

It is a pity that neither this government nor previous ones paid much attention to reports extending over more than a decade on various kinds of academic malpractices that benefitted dishonest academics and punished honest, hard-working ones. This has direct implications for the new anti-plagiarism measures that the government has put in place. Over time, a large number of academics have risen up the ranks by getting away with academic fraud and the task of restoring academic integrity is now to be placed in their hands!

To its credit, the government has in the last couple of years tried to deal with the menace of fake journals. In mid-2016, the University Grants Commission (UGC) took up the difficult task of preparing a list of legitimate journals; faculty members would have to publish only in these journals to benefit from the API. The task has so far been done rather badly. In early 2017, the UGC released a messy first list of legitimate journals that included the names of several fake journals and excluded many legitimate journals. In May 2018, it removed the names of 4,305 titles from its list, noting that these were “of poor quality,” provided “incorrect/insufficient information” about themselves or made “false claims.” In the process of excluding fake journals, however, it also removed several legitimate journals from the list. ‘The list’ very much remains a work in progress and will be for a while.

The new UGC rules

The new UGC regulations on plagiarism represent a sincere attempt to restore some credibility to Indian academia. The text of the regulations is clearly written and there seems to be little that is ambiguous or wrong with it. One can of course debate some specific aspects of the regulations but overall, it is an excellent document. However, the true test of any set of rules and regulations is whether they will be effective. In this case, it seems that anti-plagiarism measures will at best only be partially successful and that too with the passage of a considerable period of time.

In the pre-API era, only a select ambitious academics indulged in research fraud because the others did not have to publish research articles for regular career advancement. For the most part, what mattered was teaching experience measured in terms of number of years. After the API was introduced, publishing was no longer a matter of choice, as outlined above.

The Indian higher education system also experienced massive deterioration from the 1980s onwards, and certainly in terms of the kinds of people it attracted, including faculty members. Academia became for the most part a leftover profession, which one joined after failing at everything else. At the risk of generalisation, one can say that India’s higher education sector is dominated by the mediocre in terms of its faculty. A simple research project involving re-examination of PhD dissertations submitted at some Indian universities, including the best ones, will almost certainly show that many of existing faculty members carried out substandard research and engaged in plagiarism and fabrication. Many of them are now heads of departments, principals, vice-chancellors and academic bureaucrats in positions of power.

The clauses regarding detection, reporting and handling of plagiarism in the UGC regulations suggest one can’t be too optimistic that they will be effective. These regulations call for the creation of a Departmental Academic Integrity Panel (DAIP) consisting of the head of the department as chairman and two other members, one a senior academic from outside the department, to be nominated by the head of the institution; second, a person well versed with anti-plagiarism tools, to be nominated by the head of the department. Plagiarism cases are to be reported to the DAIP, which will also have the power “to assess the level of plagiarism and recommend penalty(or penalties) accordingly.”

The UGC regulations also call for the creation of an Institutional Academic Integrity Panel (IAIP) consisting of the pro-VC/dean/senior academician of the institution as chairman, and three other members, all of them nominated by the vice-chancellor/principal/director of the institution: a senior academic from the home institution; one member from outside the home institution; and the third, a person well versed-with anti-plagiarism tools.

According to the UGC regulations, the manner of dealing with cases of plagiarism will be as follows:

If any member of the academic community suspects with appropriate proof that a case of plagiarism has happened in any document, he or she shall report it to the DAIP. Upon receipt of such a complaint or allegation, the DAIP shall investigate the matter and submit its recommendations to the Institutional Academic Integrity Panel (IAIP) of the HEI.

What could go wrong?

As stated earlier, the regulations are quite well-prepared and written – but there are immediate problems.

Assuming that the head of the department is ‘clean’, can we expect her to pursue charges of plagiarism against a colleague? Department heads are appointed by rotation and the current head may not take any action for fear of being harassed when someone else takes over as head. Second, if the head is someone who has herself engaged in shady practices, she is even less likely to take any action since others may target her as well. The same set of issues will come into play at the institutional level, with the IAIP.

The fact is that the success of the anti-plagiarism regulations is contingent on how they are applied by the people who run India’s universities, from vice-chancellors down to faculty members. There are all kinds of structural obstacles to making the anti-plagiarism regulations work effectively. They will be successful if over time, Indian universities, especially research and teaching-cum-research institutions, open themselves up to hiring faculty on the basis of merit and with proper scrutiny. With the exception of a few institutions, this is not happening yet. For example, it has been reported that even at a premier institutions such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), several new faculty appointments have a record of having plagiarised in their work.

Recently, Parliament was informed that over the past three years, there have been three cases of plagiarism against vice-chancellors and others where appropriate action has been taken: Chandra Krishnamurthy, vice chancellor of Pondicherry University (2015); Anil Kumar Upadhyay, reader of Mahatma Gandhi Kashi Vidyapeeth, Varanasi (2017); and Vinay Kumar Pathak, vice chancellor of Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow (2018). These numbers are ridiculously low. Of course, there is no way to know what the actual numbers of plagiarists and others who engage in research fraud are, but it would not be wrong to assume that many of them will be responsible for giving teeth to the UGC’s plagiarism regulations.

In an interview, Jeffrey Beall, who ran a hugely-influential website which identified fake journals and publishers until he was forced to shut down, said, “There is no easy solution. I learned that the publishers now have much political power, and they will do anything possible, including collusion with universities, to attack their critics.”

The same is true for plagiarism and plagiarists. There is no easy solution. Many plagiarists are vice-chancellors, principals, deans and occupy those positions because of their proximity to politicians. They are considered respected members of the academic community. It is difficult to imagine that people in positions of power and with strong political connections will be caught and penalised for plagiarism.

There is, however, one step that the government can take to limit plagiarism and research fraud: tweak the API to make research optional for college teachers.

Pushkar is director of The International Centre Goa (ICG), Dona Paula. He tweets at @PushHigherEd. The views expressed here are personal.

The Hindi version of this article, which was submitted for publication on August 8, appeared in Rajasthan Patrika on September 4 and may be accessed here.

The Harrowing Experience of Attending Meetings in JNU

A scene from the theatre of the absurd.

This is how I can describe the harrowing experience of attending 145th meeting of the academic council of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) a few days ago.

This was the second meeting of its kind for me. I had had the first bitter taste of it months ago in a similar meeting. That was when our beloved vice chancellor (VC M. Jagadeesh Kumar) who earlier used to listen to my interventions attentively – like on the occasion I responded to a proposed shoddy course on Yoga – suddenly turned blind and deaf to me. After repeated efforts made in vain to draw his precious attention, I left the meeting. I even decided that I would no more subject myself to such contempt, which I do not deserve.

I had to go for the 145th AC meeting because my colleagues insisted. The new attendance policy had been thrust down our unwilling throats by ignoring procedural propriety. It had further been put as a resolution of the previous meeting based on inaccurate minuting – a bane of our recent AC meetings. I felt obliged to attend the meeting and request our beloved VC to get the policy approved after taking the objections and suggestions into cognisance. Though our dean had gathered over 20 responses to the proposal, the administration, in its infinite wisdom, had decided to bulldoze them all.

Our beloved and revered VC declared the proposal approved. He said that only four suggestions had come in to the administration. I, along with several senior teachers, stood up and said repeatedly that the proposal bears a thorough discussion. We were silenced by the raucous shouts of ‘yes-sayers’ in the hall. These front-benchers, friends and supporters of our VC, are brought in for no other reason than to manufacture an illusion of majority by the shouting and cheering of people who are not even members of the Council. The VC chose to be deaf and blind to us, more than 30 members of the council, as ‘yes-sayers’ yeses rose to the firmament. Our no’s were drowned.

Suddenly my blood pressure shot up and my body began to tremble. It was a Kafkasque scene. Neither I nor the other no-sayers existed for the vice chancellor and his sacred chorus of gleeful yes-sayers. We were dead. My other colleagues, mostly women, were making desperate attempts to draw the attention of the chair. But the chair only spoke but refused to listen. I felt helpless. What could I, a 63-year-old patient of diabetes and hypertension also cursed with hypersensitivity of a poet do in that melee and pandemonium?

What was happening was adharma. Rajadharma, which applies to all rulers whether of a country or a university, demands that rulers listen to their subjects. Did not lord Sri Ram, the personification of dharma, go to the extent of sending his queen to the forest just because a rude subject suspected her purity? Rajadharma imposes such hard duties on rulers apart from power. Here was a situation where the king turned completely deaf to his subjects – the opposite of Ram’s glorious example.

I walked out of that scene from the theatre of the absurd, repeating to myself the lines of my saintly ancestor Basavanna:

‘When the fence eats up the field
When the housewife steals in her own house
When mother’s breast milk kills like poison
To whom should I complain
O Kudalasangamadeva’

H.S. Shivaprakash is an award-winning poet, playwright and translator who works in Kannada and English. He is a professor at the School of Arts and Aesthetics at JNU.