Leaderless, rudderless Delhi University

The much-delayed admissions to Delhi University have begun. The next few days’ headlines will be about the big rush by students, the high cut-offs, etc. However, once the admissions are done, the university would be conveniently forgotten, especially as far as any good news is concerned. Thereafter, it would be about candidates splurging during the students’ union elections and the teachers being perennially in agitation mode over one issue or other. 

However, even these agitating teachers have rarely fought a ‘do or die’ battle over any issue in past years. Their agitations are largely in blackmail mode and are withdrawn as soon as they are placated with individual favours.  How else would an issue like the non-payment of salary to the teachers and staff of the 12 colleges get dragged on for so long without any solution? Finally, the teachers went to court and got some relief.

While the teachers and employees have faced the brunt of the unjustifiable action of the Delhi Government, the fact also remains that the situation has arisen because the University has remained completely leaderless and rudderless in the past five years. The present Vice-Chancellor Professor Yogesh K Tyagi has been more conspicuous by his absence than his actions. The issue of non-payment of salary should have been taken by the V-C with the Delhi Government. Any other V-C would have defended his teachers and taken up the matter with the Centre. However,

The V-C has not paid heed to the matter even as Delhi Education Minister Manish Sisodia has claimed that the crisis has been Tyagi’s making. The Vice-Chancellor functions via a council of Deans, Directors and Pro-VCs. He/she is assisted by the Registrar and Finance Officer in administrative matters. DU, all through Tyagi’s tenure, has not seen a fully-functional team and the appointed people have also been holding other responsibilities.

Can a university be governed in such an ad hoc manner without facing academic setbacks? DU, in the past few years, has been living just on its traditions and the past laurels. Several colleges are functioning under officiating principals. In most colleges, the teaching-learning work is being done by ad hoc faculty members. During the present V-C’s tenure, we saw students protest against the lack of teaching-learning infrastructure for the first time.

The courses are being run on outdated syllabi. The BA (Honors) course in Journalism is a case in point. While most journalism schools affiliated to Guru Govind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU) have embraced newer and larger topics of mass communication and digital media, DU is stuck on an age-old syllabus. Any educational institution needs to make consistent progress and update regularly to remain. After five years of ad-hocism, there is no doubt that Delhi University is staring at a gloomy future.

Sidharth Mishra
Author & President, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice