Teachers from various Delhi University colleges held a march from Mandi House to Parliament Street on Monday in protesting against the latest gazette notification of the University Grants Commission (UGC).
Marching under the banner of Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA), the teachers have been boycotting evaluation of undergraduate exams in protest against the new UGC criteria to ascertain their academic performance.
They feel the new amendments will lead to job cuts to the tune of 50 per cent and drastically increase pupil-teacher ratio in higher education. The protest entered Day Seven on Monday and the teachers plan to continue the boycott till Thursday.
“Narrow parameters”
“Through this march, teachers have given a powerful clarion call for a widespread movement against the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s narrow parameters on workload calculation and impossible Academic Performance Indicators [API] targets for promotions,” one of the protesting teachers said.
The teachers, who were accompanied by a few Jawaharlal Nehru University students, tried to march till Parliament but were stopped near the Parliament Street police station. A few agitating teachers then went to the Union Human Resource Development Ministry to submit a memorandum of demands.
“Bullying”
“The teachers and students are resolute in their determination to not submit to the Ministry’s bullying and will leave no stone unturned to broaden the movement to a mass campaign against the government’s attack on public-funded higher education,” another teacher said.
“By introducing such retrogressive amendments to the UGC regulations, this government is pushing the academic talent of the nation back to the trailing end of the global knowledge society,” she added.
The new gazette notification has increased the workload of Assistant Professors from 16 hours per week to 18 hours plus another six hours of tutorials, bringing the total to 24 hours. Similarly, the work hours of Associate Professors have been increased from 14 to 22 hours. This indirectly means that a lot of work being done by ad-hoc teachers will also be done by permanent teachers, putting the jobs of ad-hocs at risk.
“Stubborn stand”
“The Ministry’s stubborn stand has damaged the job prospects of 5,000 young teachers of DU alone and has put a question mark on the promotions and career advancement of the entire teaching community,” a DUTA member said.
The Ministry had last week defended the new UGC criteria for API for college and university teachers saying it provides “more flexibility”. It however ruled out any possibility of reduction in number of teaching jobs.
