A Bill of wrongs?

A new Bill in Karnataka seeks to reduce the influence of teachers and enlarge that of Government functionaries in university administration, says Supriya RoyChowdhury.

KARNATAKA'S ONGOING crisis of higher education symbolises the general decay of universities in the country. Stake holders in higher education perhaps need to view this crisis as a learning experience to prevent similar developments in university systems in other parts of the country.

Politicisation of universities is not new anywhere in India. What is new in the recently enacted and highly controversial Karnataka State University Bill, 2000, is an open attempt to legally codify governmental interference in university administration. Clause 14 of the Bill provides a framework for the State Government to directly influence the selection of Vice-Chancellors in the State's six universities. The State Government is now authorised to nominate one of the four members of the Search Committee as well as appoint one of the members as Chairman. Previously, from a panel of three candidates short-listed by the Search Committee, the Chancellor (the Governor) made the final selection. According to the new Bill, the Chancellor can now do so only with the concurrence of the State Government. Additionally, the State Government is now authorised to reject the first short-list and ask for a fresh panel.

To cement this control, the new Bill proceeds to make significant changes in the composition of university bodies. Thus, in one stroke, the Senate, which is an elected body entrusted with administrative affairs of the university, is abolished. Second, teachers can no longer be elected to the Academic Council, which would now consist exclusively of nominated members. Previously all Professors of postgraduate departments were automatically members of the Academic Council. In the present Bill, only five University Professors, and ten Principals of affiliated colleges, can be members, nominated by the Vice-Chancellor, and by rotation. This clause effectively limits the number of postgraduate teachers, and completely excludes undergraduate teachers, in the Academic Council.

Finally, the Bill proposes a new agency, the Karnataka State Inter University Board, composed exclusively of Government officers, and entrusted with decisions on substantive issues. The direction of all of these changes, thus, is towards reducing the influence of teachers, and of representative mechanisms, and enlarging that of Government functionaries in university administration.

The Government, on its part, says elections to university bodies have been abolished to keep universities away from politics. We need to note that in a resource-poor context, universities embody both resources (funding, scholarships, seats) and jobs. Inevitably, in such contexts, universities become mechanisms for patronage distribution and thus are drawn into the vortex of politicised competition. The abolition of elections, however, can only introduce a more inferior kind of politics, where university decisions become a matter of monopolistic intervention by the Government of the day. The remedy would seem to lie in efforts to clean up elections, rather than to abolish representative mechanisms.

While the new Bill dramatically expands and legitimises Government control over universities, in a separate announcement the Government has created a context where it can now gradually withdraw from segments of higher education deemed to be of declining value. It has been decreed that all vacant positions in degree colleges must be frozen in future. This means basically that the Government will refuse to fund a large number of teaching positions and gradually phase out the State's grant-in- aid to private aided colleges, thus possibly leaving the State's 294 private colleges permanently unaided. Additionally, out of these, 164 composite private colleges (which teach both PUC and degree courses) are to be bifurcated through an entirely artificial scheme by which the teaching faculty will overnight be divided between the two streams. For a large number of teachers forced to teach only at the PUC level this would be tantamount to a demotion, and a highly demoralising experience. Students at the PUC level would be deprived of faculty teaching at the degree level.

In Karnataka, the phenomenal expansion of capitation fee-based professional colleges, and of IT revolution-based computer education, has completely de-prioritised the liberal arts and the sciences in the scheme of higher education. In this context, the Government feels justified in gradually phasing itself out of funding higher education in the arts and sciences. Pushed towards private funding, the institutional character of non-professional colleges may have to be reshaped in tune with the market. This would certainly spell the collapse of colleges as locales of autonomous, critical thinking. Thus, whether it is a question of increasing Government control over universities, or withdrawing from its responsibility towards aided colleges, the end result converges, in the future shape of universities and colleges as institutions which lack autonomy, transparency and the freedom for critical dissent.

Four members of the Joint Select Committee on the Universities' Bill have resigned, dissenting particularly on the proposal to enhance Government control over the Vice-Chancellor's selection. Amidst bitter criticism from the Opposition, and the public, the Bill was passed in the Legislature, testifying perhaps to the occasional illogic of the majoritarian principle of governance. Thousands of teachers in Karnataka's aided colleges have now launched a formal protest from August 27 and will observer Teacher's Day on September 5 as Save Higher Education Day, before taking the struggle forward. Teachers have demanded that the proposed changes be deferred by one year in order to allow a broad public debate on the future of higher education in the State.

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