Making BHU great again

Cctv cameras are being installed at sensitive spots in Banaras Hindu University. (Express Photo: Anand Singh)

It was a pleasant morning in March. Hundreds of students strolled through the red-yellow vintage hostels to queue up in Banaras Hindu University where President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam would be addressing them. While talking about his interactions at BHU, President Kalam was full of praise for P. Ramachandra Rao, Shrikant Lele and other eminent professors from the university. He talked about Madan Mohan Malaviya, he talked about how we can shape India’s future.

Spread across 1,300 acres, BHU is one of the largest residential universities in Asia. With six institutes, 14 faculties and about 140 departments, BHU attracts talent from more than 30 countries. After a persistent struggle, Madan Mohan Malaviya established BHU in 1916 and nurtured it as a centre of excellence. BHU is one of the only universities in India with an IIT, Institute of Medical Sciences (IMS), management institute, law campus and agriculture education within its campus. The list of luminaries produced by BHU speaks to the strong foundation of the university.

For the last few weeks, BHU is making news. Unfortunately it is not for any ground-breaking discovery or innovation, but for the university administration mishandling a genuine protest by its female students, the university appointing a woman as its chief proctor for the first time, and the current VC going on long leave. This episode of unrest has expectedly disturbed many alumni; it has also detonated the anger of students/alumni groups which was simmering and piling for quite some time. The centre of excellence has become the hub of an inefficient and unimaginative administration. Nepotism has overtaken meritocracy and BHU in unable to attract the best academic and research talent. The alumni network accepts that cases of molestation are not new. Even 20 years ago, girls used to face such problems and the BHU administration failed to provide a completely secure study environment. This time, when the girls protested for genuine demands, the university acted casually. The administration talked about political conspiracies, but the harsh reality is that in such conditions, outrage and politicisation are bound to happen.

With its infrastructure, BHU should have been among top 20 universities in the world. But unfortunately, a glorious university which was nurtured by vice-chancellors like Malaviya and S. Radhakrishnan is rotting under the feudal mindset of a mediocre administration. Excuses like “this happens in other universities also” are infuriating. BHU was established to set benchmarks. It’s the “bellwether” of the quality of Indian education.

It is evident that BHU urgently needs a rethink of its priorities and policies. Time and again, alumni groups and experts have suggested urgent attention towards the following aspects: The first job of the VC and the newly-appointed proctor has to be to provide a safe, secure conducive environment to students. Being an open campus with the Sir Sunderlal Hospital and Vishwanath temple in its premises, it is a perpetual challenge to maintain a secure environment. This has to be sorted out. Two, while BHU receives considerable funds from the central government, this is not reflected in the quality of education at the university. Departments are running short of professors, and of late, most of the professors who are recruited are mediocre. A long-drawn selection process fails to attract talent from across India.

Three, apart from a few institutes like IIT and IMS, the student demography is also losing diversity. Due to a dip in students from all regions of India, BHU is losing its vital vision of “India within a campus”. Without good infrastructure, faculty, and a good environment, BHU can’t attract best talent, and without good students, BHU can’t do justice to the vision and mission of its founders.

Four, the university needs to digitise its bureaucratic processes and make it easy for students and faculty to prosper and grow. Many industry projects, coveted chairs and research grants are stuck in paperwork. BHU needs to implement new-age technology used across the best universities.

Five, building the alumni network. Universities in the US and Europe are shaped by student-alum-professor networks. However, BHU has not been very generous to its alumni network. Alumni and students have a minimal say in decision-making and syllabus design. This alienation hampers the university from adapting to change.

Finally, BHU has the potential to set up world class incubators, solving India’s societal problems by using technology. This needs to prioritised by the university and an outcome-oriented approach must be adopted.

BHU is symbolic of what New India can achieve and all of us must contribute to making Malaviyaji’s vision for BHU as a beacon of Indian education succeed. It’s time that BHU delivered headlines for new thinking, research output and making it to the top universities in the world list.