NEW DELHI: Some of the toughest cookies in the departments still won't speak on record. "These guys are not above suspending me," says one referring to the Delhi University administration. The academic council's clearing of FYUP with only six dissents in December, 2012 has been used to argue that the programme actually enjoyed widespread support when it was put to vote. While college teachers thought their deans, heads of department and principals (who form the bulk of the AC) have failed them, teachers from the departments and current and former members explain why the AC's decisions on FYUP seem to always coincide with DU administration's.
From personal matters such as retirement benefits, sanction of leave and promotion to departmental issues such as approval of funds for seminars, repair-work and recruitment --- everything is in the hands of the DU administration. "We are under their nose," says a professor from an arts department; "The welfare of the department depends on the goodwill of the administration," says another from a social science one. "Very few HODs have the courage to stand up to the administration" and they didn't even when the first FYUP document, described as "an embarrassment" by a senior academic and AC-member, was up for discussion. Also, AC-members from departments that don't run undergraduate programmes may have thought it wiser to not stick their necks out for an issue that doesn't concern them directly.
An arts department professor alleges that support for FYUP was gathered through "a combination of threat and incentive." Another teacher adds a third - "humiliation." The last part of the roll-out of the semester system, under vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh, gave them an inkling of "the shape of things to come." One teacher recalls seeing for the first time the gentlemen who'd later be known as "the VC's bodyguards."
"There was unprecedented coercion even then. The VC threatened legal action all the time," he says. Eleven teachers from the English department were show-caused for resigning from non-statutory committees of the department in protest against the semester system. In fact, show-cause notices have flown thick and fast over the last few.
One HOD was asked for names of the teachers at a protest. When they wrote back explaining no one was taking a head-count and that no teacher will be abandoning classes to protest, another letter followed reiterating the demand for names. "There'd be 10-15 letters, badgering you at work and home and worded like you're a criminal," says a teacher, "The UGC has done to DU exactly what DU administration has been doing to us." Many teachers who openly opposed FYUP haven't applied for promotion or travel funds. "I knew my application will be rejected. People have been denied leave and job applications have not been forwarded," says a teacher, "I asked a colleague who is actually against FYUP but supported it in public why he didn't speak up. He said his retirement was due. If he'd protested, he wouldn't have got a penny." The department as a whole suffers. "Funds for seminar won't be approved; you won't be allowed to book a hall at the Conference Centre," she says adding, "Everyone is terrified, says a teacher, "That's how they got things passed in the AC."
The "incentive" part of the deal, allege teachers, has resulted in "unbelievable recruitments" especially in departments that resisted FYUP most. Sanjay Bohidar, who teaches economics at Shri Ram College of Commerce lists out the reasons it's easy to "influence" the department heads, even principals - "non-transparency in grant of leave, approval of projects and allocation and auditing of grants to and expenditure by colleges and departments; assumption of unjustified powers in deciding misconduct and initiating disciplinary action without being accountable for its selective use; lack of statutory requirement to respond to demands and complaints in any time bound manner."
What the FYUP debacle has done, however, is to raise questions about the exact role the AC plays in DU. Several general bodies of teachers - subject-wise, non-statutory groups of teachers from across college who have traditionally had a strong say in courses and their content - had submitted resolutions to their respective departments (psychology teachers, for instance, had objected to the 'BTech') but were disappointed when the reforms they'd resolved against were passed without any dissents from HODs of the same subjects.
But if the teachers were caught unawares, departments were blindsided too. "The official account of the slow germination of the idea of FYUP in the rarefied echelons of the administration since 2008, is belied by the "shock and awe" speed of its implementation," write Pradip Kumar Datta (department of political science) and Udaya Kumar (English) in a 2013 piece on the introduction of FYUP for the Economic and Political Weekly. They argue that the administration deployed "an array of minutely worked out tactics - of bypassing selected procedures and long-standing practices, subtle uses of silences and announcements." The AC and departments haven't always been privy to the plans behind these announcements.
They write that there was "some mention of FYUP" in an AC meeting in 2008 but nothing more till the Academic Congress in 2013. They point out that FYUP wasn't mentioned in its agenda though it was later hailed as a a major step in the "consultation" process. Also, the AC may have signed off on the proposals, Datta and Kumar point out that many of the crucial decisions regarding FYUP - its structure with exits, for instance - were taken by a 61-member task-force and that "the mysteriously appointed task force sent its recommendations directly to the Academic Council."
"People would tell me outside meetings that they wish they could speak up," says an AC-member. A lot depends on how strong the department head is, on whether he enjoys the support of his colleagues and whether he had a " strong academic reputation." If a head checks all these boxes, he is likely to be "more confident." But if his position is bigger than his academic achievements, "those vulnerabilities can be played upon." "There is," he further explains, "a fundamental confusion about the role of a HOD in the AC." HODs aren't elected. It is possible to regard them both as representatives of teachers or as parts of the administration. But FYUP has got them all to think about their part in the fiasco. "None of us has the right to feel innocent. We are all implicated and it reflects on all of us."
