Page 2 Editorial Dismantle Public University Education ... · Janaki Nair is a professor at the...

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Saturday, November 23, 2019Editorial

Page 2

Courtesy - The WireBy : Janaki Nair

A golden jubilee for any institutionis not something that should goquietly into the night. Yet JawaharlalNehru University, which iscommemorating – ‘celebrating’would be grotesquely inaccurate –its five-decade existence as ‘apremier university with the uniquemodel of interdisciplinary teachingand research’ (to cite the officialwebsite’s words) stood perilouslyclose to just that.Apart from some lacklustre andpolitically questionable programmes,including the lending of the goldenjubilee logo to a pet company-sponsored event, the year haspassed in turmoil rather than incelebration. Still, by the officialgolden jubilee calendar, Novemberwas supposed to celebrate ‘Jasn-e-JNU’ as a fitting closure to 2019.What supreme irony indeed that thelast five decades have climaxed inthe bloodiest confrontation yetbetween those determined totransform the idea of the publicuniversity, and those committed todefending it! The story of JNU – andits place as the exception it has cometo be – can only be framed withinthe Indian university system and itshistories, and the extent to which oneinstitution has rewritten thosehistories (there are of course manyothers).M.C. Chagla, who piloted the bill tobring a public university like JNUinto existence, pointed out that thiswould be a university of “an entirelydifferent and new type”. “It musthave a free atmosphere where thestudents can enquire andinvestigate, challenge every dogmaand every doctrine and start on avoyage of discovery,” he continued.“A university should provide anexperience of living as well as anopportunity of living and this iswhat we expect of this university.”To what kind of exceptionality washe gesturing? For one, it wasaffirmed that existing hierarchies andstructures of the 70-odd universitiesof the time (the 1960s) should not bereplicated, since they had all beenfound wanting. In its foundingmoments, there was fierce debatebetween those who envisioned JNUas an audacious experiment – butwhether as a place for the productionof distinction, or as a site that wouldequalise access, remaining true toall the varieties of Indian democracy?Could these two at all be reconciled?Was a doctoral degree to be auniversal right or a restrictedprivilege? Or both?Over the past five decades, JNU hasproved that such that suchparadoxical values can be reconciled– achieving excellence whileupholding its commitment toinclusive democratic ideals. Howwas a public university to pursuethe ideals of distinction while yetfulfilling its commitment to openingup the worlds of thinking to those

‘Jasn-e-JNU’: What Lies Behind the Calls toDismantle Public University Education?

who had been denied suchopportunities for centuries, if notmillennia?As those who participated in thedebate on the JNU bill pointed out,a real memorial to Jawaharlal Nehru,in whose name the institution cameinto being, could not ever be a‘church’ or ‘caged in the cult of aprophet or any great man’. Yet acommitment to adhere to the causesthat Nehru held dear was enshrinedin the First Schedule: “nationalintegration, social justice,secularism, democratic way of life,international understanding andscientific approach to the problemsof society.” The commitment was tobuild a new community, “acontinuing membership of mindsdevoted to the tasks of learning andof the good life…inspired by loveand guided by knowledge.”To begin with, this meant that theuniversity was not to be a meredepartment of the state. A foundingcommitment to autonomy wastherefore a crucial building block,the compulsory autonomy of thepublic university as defined in thereport of the Radhakrishnancommittee (1948) at a time when theprivate university appeared almostan oxymoron:“We must resist, in the interests ofour own democracy, the trendtowards the governmentaldomination of the educationalprocess. Higher education is,undoubtedly, an obligation of theState, but State aid is not to be confused with State control overacademic policies and practices.Intellectual progress demands themaintenance of the spirit of freeinquiry.”It was planned as a postgraduateinstitution, committed to researchand writing as much as to teaching,and a residential university like noneother that existed at the time. Butdid it deserve to be called, as it wasby one of its severest internalcriticism the first few years ofexistence, the ‘government’s thinktank’ serving the ‘ruling classes’?Or would it be the gadfly, critiquingand provoking people into action?Or both?JNU’s reputation as a universitythat simultaneously producedestablishment intellectuals and anti-establishment intellectuals isreluctantly acknowledged even

today. If significant cohorts ofbureaucrats and civil servants,teachers and journalists are countedamongst its alumni, politicians of allpersuasions, activists and criticalscholars and commentators haveequally emerged from its ranks.These contradictory impulses – ofa commitment to sustain societalstructures and processes whilesimultaneously imaginingalternatives to them – have givenJNU its public purpose anddirection.The red brick university with adifference was brought into beingthrough a deliberative process,assuring prospective students adegree of fairness and transparencythat is relatively rare in ouruniversity ecosystem. In its earlyyears, JNU’s students fashionedby 1974 the justly famous‘deprivation points’ policy ofweightage for regional, class andcaste deprivations. It was removedin 1984 following an unusuallydisastrous period of student-teacher antagonism, and restoredonly after sustained and momentousstruggles by the student body in1994. This is among the uniqueachievements that stand dismantledtoday.Since its inception, JNU has been aresidential university with adifference. Partly since its studentbody enjoyed a larger than usualrole in determining institutional life,a true alternative to some aspectsof life outside the university wasimagined and has been sustainedover the last half century.Two significant achievements speakof the truly alternative values it hasmanaged to sustain and protect overthe decades. The first is theresetting of gender hierarchies, rareand even unimaginable in a societythat has been deeply scarred bymisogyny, violence against women,and harassment of women in dailyand academic life. The JNU campushas enabled female students to feelrelatively freer in their daily lives andacademic transactions, within andbeyond the classroom, in hostels andin public spaces. JNU has paid a pricefor this freedom, since it has longhad to live with the backlash againstthis achievement, earning thereputation of being too ‘permissive’.Growing resentment about theperceived ‘permissiveness’ of thecampus has periodically called forre-imposition of more familiar genderhierarchies.Second, this achievement has beensustained by the unusually highparticipation of the student body inthe conduct of the universityadministration at all levels. Studentelections are conducted through awidely acclaimed constitutionalprocess which has kept JNU free, todate, of the kinds of violent, money-driven election processes that havebecome the norm in mostuniversities in the city of Delhi, aswell as the country. This relativelydispute-free election process, inaddition to being relativelyinexpensive and ecologicallysustainable, run by an ElectionCommission composed of studentsthemselves, consciously givesevery political formation – fromextreme right to every shade of left– a chance to contest and deliberateduring the elections. This too standsseverely challenged today.

JNU is no stranger to attacks on itsachievements and its autonomy: theMorarji Desai government famouslyundertook an ‘enquiry’, the entireprocess being carried out throughcorrespondence with the universityby a joint secretary in the primeminister’s secretariat. The MorarjiDesai Enquiry Report was never madepublic, though it is purported to havecalled for the closure of JNU.As an institution, it has pushed backto remain relevant. But over the pastfew years, the assault has beenrelentless.Student opposition to hostel feehikes must be seen not against thebackdrop of JNU’s own statuteswhich are committed to inclusion, butagainst a long subcontinental history that inextricably links hostelsto learning opportunities that werehistorically denied. Which Dalitautobiography today does not talkof the central role played by thehostel in refiguring opportunity?In the state of Mysore, while Brahminstudents attending institutions ofhigher education in its towns andcities were able to organise a systemof varanna – being housed and fedby a caste fellow via a system ofweekly rotation – most other casteshad no such provision. Lingayat andother mathas stepped in to fill thegap, but the Mysore government wasnot far behind. The landmark MillerCommittee Report of 1919 in Mysore,which recommended reservations ineducational institutions and ingovernment jobs, had this to say:“We recommend that preference begiven to the backward class pupilsfor admission into such [educational]institutions. … We deem it essentialthat hostels should be constructedin all taluk headquarters to encourageparents to send their children fromthe village elementary schools to thesecondary schools.”We should ask why the strident callfor dismantling the public universitysystem is coming just at a time whenit has emerged as the most inclusiveof all institutional spaces. Why now,when more than two generations ofprivileged and underprivilegedpeople have equally benefitted fromthe public university system, are thestate and the self-righteous‘taxpayers’ vociferously demandingits end? Could it be because over thelast five decades, what has alreadybeen dismantled with contradictoryand unexpected outcomes are thosevery structures which had servedelites so well? Is it because, asthe poet Sikhamani tells us, ‘Thesteel nibs are sprouting!’For an untaught lessonYou demanded our thumbs—There sprout nibs of steelTo write history afresh—Then, The people who pouredHot metal in our earsWould need ladders to climbTo pluck hairs from our ears!At the end of its 50th year, this‘ township of the learned’ hasplayed a role in helping steel nibsto s pro ut. J udgin g f rom theechoes of support from everynook and corner of the countryfo r the caus e of in clu siveeducation, has JNU finally shedits exceptionalism to become partof a new national movement?

Janaki Nair is a professor atthe Centre for Historical

Studies, Jawaharlal NehruUniversity.

DIPRImphal, Nov. 23,

Printing of text - book for classes I – Xby the Board of Secondary Education,Manipur (BOSEM) for the academicsession, 2020 - 2021, is all geared up tomeet the demands before thecommencement of new academicsessions.Chairman (BOSEM) Shri Th.Kirankumar, speaking at his officechamber, stated that the printing of text– book for the new academic sessionsis nearing completion for almost allsubjects of classes I - X. Under the

BOSEM gears up with printing of textbooksstrict instructions from the Hon’ble,Minister Education, ShriThokchom Radheshyam, theChairman said that efforts are onin full swing so that the studentscould avail the books on time. Heexplained that in order to achievethe target of availing text - booktimely, certain rules and regulationsfollowed by BOSEM for buying ofpaper and issuances of order forprinting to the firms were slightlymodified. The printing of text –book are carried out in differentlocal printing firms.He said that this year the quantity

of order for printing of text -book wasdecided according to the performanceof the printing firms in the previousyears. More quantity orders forprinting text – book were given tothe selected printing firms havinggood records for meeting the dateline,maintaining quality of paper for thetexts – book printed and the capacityof the printing press. He pointed outthat before the issuance of order forprinting text – book the official teamof BOSEM made field verification tothe printing firms. He continued thatnext year too more order will be givento those firms which maintainedquality of printing text – book.He expressed that the failure of timelyavailability of text - book printed byBOSEM before the commencementof new academic session has been aproblem. However efforts are on tolessen the issue of non – availability

of text - book this time. He isoptimistic that if at least for once,the text –book is made available intime then it would help in coping upwith timely production of text – bookin the future.The Chairman highlighted the issuesfaced by the BOSEM in printing text– book was due to financial crunchHe expressed that timely arrangementswill surely make it possible in meetingthe demand for text – book in themarket. In all, eighty - eight text – bookfor classes I – X including forty eighttext - book for classes I – VIII andforty text – book for classes IX – Xare printed by BOSEM.The text – book to be distributed freeof cost to the government schoolsunder the Department of Education(S) will also be made available beforethe commencement of the academicsession.

Anti-corruption crusadeat the time of CAB andframework agreement

CBI raided residence of Okram Ibobi in connectionwith Manipur Development Society scam recently.The government is late but it has neverthelessdelivered a promise to an extent it made to comedown heavily on corruption during the time ofCongress.  The people should appreciate this movefrom the government and expect more from it ,such as Loktak mutlicrore scam which PM himselfmentioned in his speech in Manipur. We should alsoexpect some action against those who were involvedin extrajudicial killing also, given that BJP leaderRam Madhav  said that these would be taken careof once BJP comes to power in the state. Theseactions from the government are expected by thepeople and they will appreciate it. It has been quitesome time and the government’s action on MDS scamin late.  This makes us go beyond the narrative of arighteous government going after ex corruptpoliticians and officials while interpreting thegovernment’s recent action against MDS scamespecially when the state is facing severe economicand political crisis.  Should we to expect action fromthis government on these matters at only atopportune moments of the ruling party, say beforethe election or at the time of a political crisis?  

Government’s stand against corruption needsappreciation but the timing of its action rousessuspicion. Its action comes when the state burnswith CAB row and Framework agreement. The actionattacks the ex-CM at a time when the opposition inthe legislative assembly, civil society organizationand the masses are after the state government onthese two issues. It points towards two things, otherthan BJP keeping its promise to go after corruption.First, it could be seen as an attempt to raise popularsentiment for BJP as people should see that it alsodeliver its promises even if some stand it takes mightseem against the people of Manipur. At this, politicaland economic juncture it needs this to strengthenits position. Second, the move definitely hurts thecongress and at the time when the people, civilsociety organizations and the opposition wants aspecial session of the state assembly. Thecontradiction between the government and the civilsociety organization has sharply increased after thegovernment turned back on its promise of calling aspecial session of the assembly soon. This also remindsus of the recent action against the ex-Union Homeminister and Finance Minister P Chidambaram. Theaction took place at a time when the first signsstarted appearing of Indian economy going slidingdown to the lowest moments of UPA years. Now,Chidambaram is in jail but the Indian economy didnot improve and unemployment rates are still veryhigh.  Can we expect the same fate for Okram Ibobiand the state of Manipur, similar to Chidambaramand Indian economy?  The matter should not divertthe attention of the people from their struggleagainst CAB and the vigilance it is maintaining againstthe Framework Agreement because ex-CM, whetherhe goes to jail or not, these issues burning the statedo not go away.