Sharing an anecdote about how he participated in anti-Hindi protests in his youth in his home town that borders Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, Vice-President and Delhi University Chancellor M. Venkaiah Naidu said that he only realised many years later when he came to Delhi that without learning Hindi, one cannot move forward in India.
He said that everybody must be fluent in their mother tongue but in order to build an integrated India, it was important for people to speak the multiple Indian languages.
The Vice-President was speaking at the formal inauguration of the Delhi School of Journalism (DSJ) that admitted its first batch of students this year.
He lauded the university for launching a five-year integrated course in journalism that is being offered in Hindi and in English.
He said that the course being taught in Hindi will create new opportunities for students from the Hindi heartland.
“What I particularly like about the way this course is designed is that it ensures that students who take up the course in Hindi have to study one other Indian language. It is the multilingual capabilities of the youth that will keep our country united as students will respect various Indian cultures and traditions,” he said.
On work ethics
He told students that in their careers, they must not sensationalise news and must present news to the people without fear, compromises and voicing an opinion. He added that we are living in a world of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation that we cannot run away from but must stay close to our roots.
Standard syllabus
Ram Bahadur Rai, chairman advisory council, DSJ, who was also present at the inauguration said he hopes that DJS will be able to set a standard journalism syllabus for the entire country that is at par with the best in the world.
Meanwhile, the National Students’ Union of India and the All India Students’ Union organised a protest outside the venue against the new course as it was implemented as a self-financing course.
Demand rollback
“The fees in the newly opened School of Journalism at Delhi University is a mind-boggling four lakh. For the socially and economically weaker students like SCs, STs and OBCs, such high fees adversely affect the accessibility to quality higher education,” alleged the NSUI.
They added that the UGC-MHRD has been denying colleges to start new courses with its funding and allowing new courses to start only in self-financing mode and the trend has now reached the university level too, they added demanding an immediate rollback of the exorbitant fees. Kawalpreet Kaur of AISA said, “Isn’t is strange that you are spending four lakh for just a course, leave alone the rent and all other expenses and you don’t even have infrastructure, labs, studios, library or even permanent teachers? This is such a big scam that DU is doing which needs to exposed.”
The AISA said in a statement that it believes that the model of self-financed course is in continuation with the autonomous colleges scheme which provides autonomy to colleges to decide their own fees and also push for self finance courses to raise funds.
“This clearly means high fees to be charged to students, all this is being done to make affordable quality education out of the reach of common students,” it added.