E-co-xotic Greens?

This was a vegetable we grew up with. Then it was  available on and off  in the summer  season at  Delhi. It wasn't particularly memorable, and we ate it as part of our must-eat-green-vegetables program  for a host of reasons, after discarding the ones that had turned  reddish orange  in the heat. In any case,  our years of growing up were punctuated with our parents approximating to the comforts of a   middle class life. through  austerity and thrift and a long journey initially undertaken by my father from Cuddalore to New Delhi to earn a living.

Lunch at New Delhi was traditionally rice with a combination of  vegetables and  kozhumbus and our favourite was usually urulakayangu  kari (aloo roast)  with kutti  vengaya(small onions) sambhar.
 Kovakkai (the tamil name) or kundru (hindi variant)  we tolerated and ate our mandatory shares of. We rarely fought over the last serving or  tried to get a ladleful more on our plate. Over potatoes we  fought and tried to pull the  advantage of rank to get a larger serving than the sibling lower in the pecking order.
 So possibly the good thing about the kundru was that it did not excite or inflame the passions and allowed for the peaceful ingestion of  meals. Only when I ran my own kitchen and began reading up different ways to cook vegetables did I stumble on to the fact that there were many ways of making the kundru and that it had many health benefits.
 I read a recipe for the kundru which involved cutting it along its length into tiny  roundels, stirring in salt, chilli powder and asafoetida and drying it in the sun, to be stored as crisps, which could be eventually eaten  deep fried, much in the manner of wadis with rice and daal. Apparently this was the way  housewives in maharashtra  dealt with the tindori as they called it. While it was delicious, the time spent in waiting for the vegetable to dry and the subsequent high oil submersion to  bring it back on the food platter seemed excessive, so I experimented with the offered recipe further.
 Greasing the tindori with oil and chilli powder and asafoetida and then spreading out the little circlets on a greased baking dish was my first attempt. This trick seemed to work  and  crisp kundru vegetable bits were obtained with far less oil, and were readily devoured, although  the potato continued to occupy  first place in the preferential vegetable list.

Eventually I settled for making the  tindori  on a shallow iron griddle. They could be cut into roundels or simply smashed whole, after being set aside for half an hour with chilli powder, asafoetida and salt. Next , a small tadka in gingelly oil  and mustard seeds provided the base onto which the whole or diced kundru could be dropped. Slow cooking on the griddle for twenty minutes allowed for delectable kundru. Occasionally,  a garnish of freshly grated coconut before serving made for a memorable meal, but even without, the kundru has a delicious enough flavour. It is also a great store house of nutritional benefits. Kundru seems to have been created in nature as a scrouge for  the  debilitating ailment of diabetes that modern lifestyles have  begun to steadily incorporate. Regular consumption of  Kundru  is credited with the lowering of   blood sugar and supplementing the beta-carotene stores in the body . My mom  recalls using the seedy gel like insides of the kundru to wipe down slates (personal black boards) that were a mandatory everyday  part of their early schooling.   This versatile vegetable  from the gourd family,  referred to as the ivy gourd is also quixotically identified as "gentlemen's toes". This name possibly compensates for the okra being known as ladies' finger in English parlance. It must be acknowledged that  there are many reasons why the  kundru  deserves  special mention in all our kitchen affairs.

Blueprint of Application for Excellence in Foundation Course Teaching Fellowship under FYUP.

I  rushed home after an afternoon tutorial.  Most mornings begin at 8.45 am and  newspaper reading in the morning has been one of many casualties in this extend-the-workhours -regime.  I learnt  later in the day about the new carrot policy in the morning  paper, whereby  "able academics"  could alter   their academic-life conditions almost instantly.  
The  second round of shake ups in the university academic system   have begun. New golden  apples are steadily being dislodged from the viceregal chambers for the  dexterous Jasons of the university to run after and capture. Yet again , an act of  largesse was in place, an undeserved opportunity for those of us who had been Left behind.
 In retrospect,  objecting  to violation of  procedure and policy was short-sighted.  Being loyal to time tested teaching practice  and believing in academia as a place for dissent, brainstorming, dialogue and collective growth  was a strategic mistake. Demanding transparency and dialogue were tantamount to tilting at windmills. Weary of chasing mirages, I  decided to plunge myself  heroically into this new opportunity  and re-invent myself.

 I  fixed an appointment with  the  head of More Perfect Relations, assuredly the best PR company in the world (  this is  Goebbelspeak   which first  requires the articulation of  a fiction that must be consistently  reiterated  to  prove its  veracity.) Reaching the MPR office  posthaste I began  work to eliminate the competition. Illustrating  my innovative abilities, I am submitting a blue print for the  proposed production.

.
Director MPR :  You want to produce a DVD demonstrating your excellence as an innovative teacher? My firm  provides publicity for filmstars, politicians and sportspersons. Surely academic awards are bound by some well-defined academic criteria?  Are you sure you are in the right place  ma'am?
Me: Yes! The university no longer has the time for  evaluating academic excellence. We are in a hurry and must therefore forgo all  extant sane academic  procedures because they are depressingly accurate. Academic worth is now to be measured by TRP ratings. So we have a point system in place and both quantity and volume of visible noise are essential qualifications. Academics must produce these special effects or be for ever fallen!

Director MPR: Well, we are in the visibility business. So how do we go about it?
Me: I need to make a ten minute video  showcasing my excellence as a teacher  transforming  the lives of hapless students  by  teaching  ill-conceived and illogical courses that  are smashing the foundations of  serious academic disciplines.

Director MPR: Ten minutes is very little
Me: It is a lot.  Fiinely calibrated mathematical  calculations from cellphone smses have  revealed that  student attention spans  last only a few seconds. Also new protocols from American universities demand brevity as nine continuous  minutes are  now the stipulated information-absorption  norm. We actually have a surplus of one whole extra minute.!
DirectorMPR:  What will we be focusing on?
 Me: Well I need an able film maker who will work pro bono  for me. I need him to focus on my best profile and since I am overweight, he must have good photo-shopping skills.  I was thinking  close focus on my left profile with my hands raised to the sky. This will be an iconic  inspirational pose reaching out to a grand Indian narrative.... and then  the camera must quick shift to  faces of students looking both awed and inspired.

 Director MPR: Is there any audio content.?
Me: I was coming to that.  The need of the day is  a unifying anthem ( our university has plans for one). I am in the process of writing  a small poem celebrating my attributes, in the tradition of the suprabhatams. I will  get the students to recite it. That would show collective growth, me being praised and them doing the praising.

DIrector MPR:  How will that bring out  your   excellent creative skills and provide proof of  the students as learning from your  considerable expertise?.
Me:  I have it all worked out. I teach an Application Course in Translation. My basic discipline is English Literature, Nobody is more qualified to write a hagiographic poem on me. I shall write this poem in Ottava Rima  or the far more compact  Tetrameter. My students will  memorize and recite it in English. This will be part of their presentation. Then I will get them to translate it into Hindi and other regional languages. Actually it doesnt matter that our students have minimal knowledge of other regional languages. We also have no  translation laboratories or equipment to assist students.  All this is irrelevant as we have complete leeway to do anything we want.
We have an exciting component  called project work, which will be useful  for  outsourcing  translations.
 Once this is on camera, the DVD can be outsourced for dubbing into various languages. (a minimum of ten)
 This way,  I will  have created a text, provided for inter-textuality, created a link between the various languages of India and also put myself on the national map with at least sixty unknown scholar-translators per semester.
 I shall also acknowledge my  sources(even though this is a practice that the university is beginning to frown upon) I need everyone to know that my  inspiration is global.  The Ceausescus Of  Romania  rewrote themselves into  their  nation's  school  curriculum.  Surely university teachers  are better  qualified to direct   higher education?
Taking a  a leaf out of Chinese Olympic Inauguration protocol  the camera must focus on the good looking and photogenic students for best visual appeal.   They must  be choreographed  looking rapturous. Don't worry about discrimination. The ones with good handwriting will write  me glowing feedback about how they had never understood the potential of  teaching till they attended my lectures.

Director MPR :  You must be a fantastic teacher to generate such  student response!
Me: Actually, teaching is the least of it. I  control their marks. The Carrot policy is as effective at the bottom of the pyramid..   It works well for me too. Every student clears my course with distinction.  This is in keeping with  our new output based national  educational policy where we record an annual  increase in the  numbers of outstanding  scholars. How else in the absence of infrastructural facilities and indifference to quality do you think education is being upgraded.? Education is expanding  in geometric proportions inside of our own heads. All we  are required to do  is to manufacture  the data to support it. I am first  and foremost a patriot!

 Director MPR:  This is a brilliant innovative project.
Me: Yes, It  should merit a one year fellowship to China or maybe Romania,  and recharge me.  On my return, I shall contact a recording company and hire playback singers, maybe train  the next translation batch to sing in  many languages. My first video will also be immediately updated and submitted for the next round of  awards. Hurrah for innovation and  diversification in the  business of higher education.

The Chancellor's Cabbie and Ours by Chance!

“The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” 

Joseph Goebbels




This, as we all know has been the operational plank of the FYUP (task) force headed by the Vice -Chancellor of Delhi University. Today, as part of a discussion on FYUP we had the privilege of listening to the Vice -Chancellor in person as opposed to hearing him speak out of the idiot-box. Many people want to know why some of us continue to protest and turn up for rallies and demonstrations and television shows when the writing on the wall is so clear.

Teachers responsible for enabling young adults to think and learn in a free and unbiased space, have consented to be part of a decision making process that is neither free nor fair. When the mantle of greatness fell upon them, they wrapped it around themselves leaving everything else out in the cold. Expediency and pragmatism aside, the good that comes from collective energy has been lost.
It is inconceivable that teachers are not saddened by the short shrift given to syllabi framing or by the inter-departmental and intra-departmental ugliness this has generated. So for all those who received the gift of an extraordinary education from Delhi University, this continues to be time for introspection and action.

Today's talk show, after several repetitive points had been aired, unveiled a new story. A taxi-driver of Indian origin had a heart to heart with our Vice Chancellor. Discovering that he was speaking to the first citizen of Delhi University,the taxi driver divulged that he was a DU graduate! In an unnamed American city , this DU alumnus egged the VC on to do something about the undergraduate programs at Delhi University.

One quick thinking young lad responded that this taxi -driver had changed the course of Delhi University.The VC replied correctly on principle that it was important to factor the opinion of taxi drivers as higher education must be accessible to every citizen of this country, whatever occupation s\ he chooses.

 Post- show, we were dropped home in a taxi by the media channel that had invited us and while we discussed the story of the American cabbie animatedly, the man at the wheel introduced himself as a graduate from Delhi university. This is a story of a taxi driver from Delhi Universty who never made it to America.
Bhim Raj passed out of the B.Com program in 1982, worked as a sales representative for two years, and then set up a rubber roller unit. This industrial unit shut shop due to the Pollution Control Act of 1996. Subsequently, Bhimraj did trading in rubber rollers for a while but made little money. Despite owning some land he lacks the capital to set up a new industrial unit.

Bhimraj has been  with Aaj Tak since 2004. Coming from a very modest background, (he mentioned that his father was a labourer) Bhimraj has been unable to send his son Sachin to college. Sachin works as a pest controller after having completed class XII. Bhimraj's daughter Anjali is in the first year of college. Her college fees, Bhimraj disclosed took away a whole month's earnings. When we explained the FYUP to him, his response was, "It is very difficult to send children to college , how will we be able to afford the burden of an extra year?" How we wished Bhimraj had been on the show. A graduate and entrepreneur; Delhi University's three year annual course, without the improved program courses  had worked for him! (The pollution board and cash registers still remain outside the university's domain.)

This more pertinent story must be brought to the notice of the VC and his classmates in law(Sibal) politics(Tharoor) and news(Dasgupta). FYUP, gentlemen can do very little for Bhimraj's sons and daughters. There is little data on the countless Indians whom the university has nurtured and enabled, but maybe you need to sift through it? Else, university education will become costlier and inaccessible for the many. It will hold in thrall for an extra year the few that can afford the luxury. These few will be poorly trained as all the disciplines have been watered down and lack  academic rigor.

Why is this being allowed to happen?

Not good enough,  Tharoor, to say that universities must be allowed to experiment and fail. We are dealing with real lives here, Sir, not lobotomized laboratory rats( now in disuse)!
Best time for teachers and students says the University Don who has been away from undergraduate teaching for over thirty years! With truncated syllabi, made in haste and secrecy and zero infrastructure? We really think not!
Teachers shirk and don't teach says the journalist. Take your eyes off the old cliches of news-speak and understand that teaching time has shrunk from the annual mode to the semester! It is poised to shrink further under FYUP!

FYUP is part of a game plan that is much bigger and much larger than we think. This should explain why on TV and in the media, the Vice chancellor acquits himself very poorly. Strong belief in the system that has produced him, lends credibility to the possibility that the VC himself has little idea what this is all about. Possibly, he is following orders? His inability to answer questions, his propensity to fudge facts and provide anecdotal trivia to support the unconstitutional implementation of FYUP, all seem in keeping with this. Is it because he is a front-line pawn in a very large game of aggressive shatranj?  Delhi University's Teachers and the rest of India deserve an explanation. Answers anybody?

ShowTime \Bleak Magic

 Our vice chancellor is becoming more and more of a magician. Over his viceregal lodge hat, he waves his wand and brings forth rabbits out of thin air. His stage assistants, the task-forcers, sway and make every wish of the VC's their ultimate command. They herd  the rabbits pulled out of the hat. These rabbits that were once real  principals are summoned from their offices and placed in the Viceregal lodge and have secrets whispered to them. Then they are whisked back into their own little holes out of which they emerge,  principally  hypnotized, to make pronouncements to members of constituted college committees.

The earlier  magic show was about how to make the Program courses disappear, resurface as  DSI courses and then quickly make posts disappear into thin air by increasing student strength in classrooms. Magic, we must remember, always defies logic. So never mind pedagogical concern that  an optimal number of students per classroom is paramount to make classroom teaching   effective or viable. The  wand has also  waved dismissively over shortage of rooms for teaching and tutorials. An increase in the optimal number of students in classrooms and  tutorial groups  was the next step into magic. After all the trick is to have everything down to the last calculation on paper. Magic has never been about ground realities!

The theme for  the  current show is the new Indrajal:  FYUP foundation courses which promise to enthrall a diverse audience. Eleven compulsory courses, purportedly offering  great choice and inter-disciplinary skill are to be studied by students across all disciplines. Hastily and shoddily cobbled, these courses  form part of the magician's quick trick repertoire and continue to elude comprehension.

  To popularize them principals have  been  given  new magic words: "versatility" and "diversity" in the classroom. This is not to be provided by the courses themselves. Instead, students from three disparate streams are to be bizarrely assembled together in combinations of twenty apiece per section . Since the course content is not challenging, the challenge is to create disparity and distraction and make way for student melees during each lecture period.  This student cocktail of three parts will then be served up as starters during Project operation  which will be orchestrated  by teachers  providing special effects in the form of  marks. What joy and jollity this proposed event will generate is anybody's guess.

 At my college,  members of the Academic Planning Committee  and Teachers-in -Charge have found this practically unfeasible.  Shortage of space has prevented us from including students in  the game of musical chairs  currently reserved for faculty members in the university curriculum.  We recorded  the pedagogic non-advisability of such procedure despite our understanding  that  Magic Shows are about  razzle-dazzle and never  about good teaching or learning practice.

 The grand finale of the magic show is scheduled for July when the latest version of the Great Indian  Rope Trick will be staged. Ringside seats will be available in June and laptops will be distributed as gifts at the gala opening.  This time  V.C. Sorcar  will  be using the university as a prop in lieu  of a rope.  The bad news is that instead of  the  VC's disappearance, as  is customary,  the finale hinges on obliterating the  entire  university in the twinkling of an eye. E-classes on laptops will be the only Virtual  Reality left.

March of The Right Wing

University News BULL-etin : All words within quotation marks have been sourced from the VC's Discourse. As we have been told recently, the VC's time is not his own. Ever since the Annual Convocation, the VC  has been redesigning the purple velvet gowns donned by DU's big league. Avid event watchers will recall that Pallam Raju opined that the existing  costumes were inappropriate for our tropical climate. When Ministers notice matters of such grave import at a Central University, faux pas of this magnitude needs to be rectified instantaneously. As long as the convocation costumes are in order,  the harmony of mind, body and heart  is assured. Under such circumstances, the state will not interfere in the vice chancellor's affairs but will allocate junior ministers as cheerleaders to sashay beside the Vice-chancellor on his victory-march. Never mind that  a considerable amount of the VC's energies are  focused on  allowing  India's Premier Central University to self destruct. Despite all this, he has not allowed the moss to grow beneath his feet.   Cabal meetings with an unknown company that flew in secretly to assess 1100 of our undergraduates and pronounced all but three, unemployable, have also occupied  a considerable chunk of the VC's time. Reportedly, the VC is stymied that the said company  viewed  the exercise as a waste of time and vowed "off the record" never to return. This is a matter of National talk show importance as all employees of this company are  Bhatnagar Award Winners. Possession of this distinguished award   renders everything and everyone else inconsequential. For this express reason,  all of us in the  teaching  discipline must no longer refuse to care about secret reports presented by mysterious placement companies.  All of us must also be aware of the  double jeopardy: our current  undergraduates  are unemployable  and there is no future for those who will graduate subsequently since everyone who missed out on the VC's talk shows would have been informed by his secret company about the intrinsic worthlessness of the DU graduate. The VC is also distraught over the fact that hundreds of Noam Chomskys have been lost to us because our Sanskrit Honours students were denied a training in linguistics. This happened  because nobody had access to  information regarding Chomsky's secret study of  Panini's grammar. The VC himself learnt  of this from  a book written by Charles. To rectify this criminal oversight, Innovative Cluster Programmes are hard at work, fine tuning  data collected for the purpose of  cloning  Sanskrit students into Chomskys.  "Make no mistake," The VC is especially concerned about the 50 percent unemployable graduates of  SRCC. He is hard at work trying to  salvage their futures  by juggling data he has personally collected out of his head. Unfortunately,  Charles has been of little help in this regard, being rather  dim at  connecting vedic mathematics with Einstein. A connection between Einstein and TS Eliot exists, by the way. Other equally able collectors of anecdotal trivia have proved that  both  Eliot and Einstein worked as clerks but this research input has been rendered irrelevant since  all clerical work is under the aegis  of  the  DU Registrar who traverses across all orbits as a constellation in her own right. The thirty per cent drop out rate at the university will now be speedily stemmed. All students enrolled in science disciplines who  moved on to engineering, IT and medical options at the end of  their first year when the VC wasn't looking will now be halted in their tracks. "Make no mistake', the VC is hard at work setting up companies all over India, where employable graduates are to be supplied. This will be every undergraduate's  final destination. Those  who have been left out comprise the majority of Delhi University's undergraduate and graduate teachers. It matters little  whether they are right. It matters even less that they have rights. "Make no mistake". You cannot be right if you do not have a Bhatnagar award, if you have not read Charles and if you are not in a position to inquire about electrical maintenance at foreign universities from their Presidents. You cannot be right if the game plan is to have you  left behind in the process of malforming millions of young adult minds. Those of us, left in shock and disbelief, need to regroup away from the right wing and ensure that sanity prevails once again at Delhi University. Amen.

(FY)UP In The Air

 Breaking News

Late last evening Shashi Tharoor  twittered at the Vice Chancellor of Delhi University.
" The University  on Wheels is a good plan,  but we need to fast track."  .

  " Nothing could be faster than this"  the VC  twittered back, taking his eyes off the stopwatch with which he was masterminding Delhi University's demolition.
Tharoor : This is the space age. Trains are a no-no even for  cattle class.

"What  is your  input?" smsed  the VC who believed in strategic planning and consultation with  Experts-at -Nothing.

  Tharoor : The finance bill has been passed,
                 Government  is plush with funds.
                Dont sink money in  Cluster Non-Innovative Projects.
                Buy  up an Airline!


How will that help, queried the VC, following his time tested policy of obstructing  any idea that was not his own.

Tharoor: We can have classrooms in the air.
 Mallya is ready to sell. We support him and Air India, remember?

VC: That is one Ass-stounding Innovation Idea!
      Will make it part of new eligibility criteria.
       Students can  directly apply to the Kingfisher offices for admission.
       Specializations will be area based.
        Air-view of  the area will ensure jobs for  all FYUP applicants  as Travel Guides.

Tharoor: Virendra Bhardwaj  can be given sanctuary. We will   fly him  from airbase to airbase to escape lynching by marriageable women and  all  unwell persons suffering from family mishaps who are  incapable of  completing their graduation

VC . The SOL is also stirring up. Never mind . Every young person not going to America and enrolled for FYUP will support us.

Tharoor: If the numbers add up this is going to be one  Dreamliner of a University.
 In solidarity!

VC: Up Up and Away!

Editorial Comment: The Dreamliner Project is now grounded owing  to considerations of safety and viability. The FYUP seems to be charting similar territories.

Distress Call from  Pilot in Cockpit: Cant Fly this  machine! Is it true that  no safety  check  measures  are in place for FYUP?.

Labouring To Undeceive

In July 2013 Delhi university plans to launch its four year program. This is scheduled to transform higher education as we know it. Instead of a three year undergraduate program which provided an optimal education that was also value for money, a time intensive and cost intensive education is now being introduced in its stead.   In fact, India is probably one of the very few countries in the world where a liberal university education did not until recently exacerbate student debt for a lifetime. All this is set to change for the worse when the gloves are pulled off and the four year undergraduate program is set into operation. The federal structure of the university will collapse and individual colleges will stand or fall by the wayside.  Higher education is now going to be of a longer duration and much much costlier.

Until this academic year, students could choose to study a range of disciplines and get a degree after three years, in science, commerce and humanities. Alternately, by opting for Honours in a specific subject alongside interdisciplinary credit courses that the university offered as part of syllabus revision, a student could go off into various career trajectories, ranging from post graduation, law civil services, management and so on. Students under the annual mode of examinations in the three year graduate program traveled far and wide and excelled in universities all over the world in post graduate studies.

 Suddenly, this system that had served us well for over 80 years, despite being plagued by systemic problems such as lack of infrastructure and overcrowding , is being disbanded and a four year program, ill-conceived and unprecedented in its violation of National Education Policy Guidelines  and academic procedures for syllabi making instituted at the university is being pushed into place. This has been masterminded by the current Vice Chancellor who is supported by the ruling party which is hurriedly divesting itself of its role in education both at the school level and at the level of the university. A large number of teachers have been left out the process of discussion and dissemination which should form an integral part of the academic life of the university. It is doubly disturbing when one recognizes that it is these teachers who are expected to carry the teaching burden of the four year system at the undergraduate colleges.

 For those parents and students who believe that teachers do not teach and shirk work, it is time to point out that  teachers are not  protesting over the increase in work or asking for better salaries.  In fact, the semester system has shrunk teaching time, over the last two three years. So those of us who take teaching seriously are really talking about a system that is unfriendly and will be a deterrent to teaching and learning.  At undergraduate colleges we are all grappling with overcrowding in the classrooms and lack of infrastructure in terms of rooms, laboratories, reading spaces in the library and so on. For the last few years, no permanent posts have been filled in the university. More than half of its teachers are employed in ad-hoc or guest lecturer capacity. This is true of every discipline taught at the university. Contract jobs in lieu of the stability of service conditions cannot be the carrots and sticks dangled before young people in search of a vocation or academic\career options.

 While doing very little to address all this, the university has embarked upon a four year program in which students no longer have the option of leaving the university at the end of three years, to pursue  life options. Instead the university is embarking upon subjecting them  to  compulsory foundation courses under the pretext of interdisciplinary learning. School education   under the 10+2 scheme has been geared to choosing disciplines and directing students towards their chosen streams. To suggest that students need mandatory foundation courses is to undermine India’s schooling systems in their entirety.  

Eighteen year olds who come to the university prepared to learn a subject or a discipline of their choice are being told that they are not ready for it. They have to take eleven compulsory foundation courses which are a far cry from the range of choices offered in American universities that the FYUP is pretending to model itself upon.  The university provided interdisciplinary credit courses to students even in the annual mode.  In place of these well researched and carefully worked out options, dumbed down, compulsory foundation courses  can contribute very little to developing  student interest.

Disturbingly, the FYUP  has indiscriminately hacked away at course content so that whatever Discipline I course the student does over four years,  s/he will know far less about the discipline when compared to students who  studied the same specialization under the three year program.  The truncation of syllabi across all Discipline I courses, the dumbing down of interdisciplinary courses  into scurrilously constituted foundation courses of  dubious pedagogy and the addition of one extra year at the university  now  ensures  four years with far less learning and teaching.  

 All the courses across the university report a drastic reduction and truncation of syllabus content. This incidentally is the feedback coming in from teachers who have been roped in to revise the syllabus.  No university in the world can hope to have a pedagogy which is not built upon the ferment of ideas and debates. To summon a few teachers and bulldoze them into fixing curriculum is an indication of intellectual and academic bankruptcy.  The only places where rules and procedures can be overlooked are within functions held privately inside of families. Unfortunately the university administration is behaving as if it is engaged in some elaborate marriage proceedings  which  authorize it to restrict the entry of invitees. What has been set in process is a  dilution and attenuation of academic standards  and integrity that  is deeply disrespectful of the  spaces  real teachers occupy.

Students who could  earlier join a Masters program at the end of three years after graduating with Honours  will now need to wait a fourth year for a baccalaureate with Honours to do a Masters Program at Delhi University. The FYUP is being touted as an opportunity  on par  with international systems for students who cannot afford to study abroad.  In fact, what it guarantees is a downsizing and down grading of all existing national standards.  It must be remembered that we are a poor country with a burgeoning student influx.  The proposed fourth year will be of little use to the student who does not wish to specialize in a particular subject in the first place. S/he has the option of leaving at the end of the third year.  What will be the value of this three year degree anywhere in the country or in the world? No answers are forthcoming on this. 

 Students need to analyse whether they need  such vocationalization at centres of liberal learning. Again, when most postgraduate courses  in Indian Universities  ask for a three year graduation program, exactly how does it benefit a student to do four years at Delhi University where the syllabi  itself has shrunk noticeably?

Alienating serious teachers in the workspace and undercutting serious teaching methodologies can benefit neither  teaching  nor learning.  Small classrooms crammed with enormous numbers of young adults with no real choices cannot be the future that is being promised to India’s young students.   Instead of ensuring a nationwide debate, the MHRD  has ministers making public proclamations to the effect that they are going to stand by and watch the university collapse in order to facilitate self-financing in higher education.