How V-C M Jagadesh Kumar's excesses are eroding JNU
As an alumnus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) since I graduated with an MA from the varsity in 1972, and now a professor of Comparative and Indian Politics retiring from the same institution in 2018-end, I am happy that the media is reporting, in some measure, the wide ranging effort to dismantle JNU.
According to a recent report in News 18, an interviewee professor who presented his research on the idea of “aesthetic regime” to the varsity’s selection committee has alleged that JNU V-C M Jagadesh Kumar — in an email response sent in October 2017 — asked him to focus on “baby ethics and animal ethics”.
Bizarre as this alleged remark by the V-C is, M Jagadesh Kumar is known to make his own rules within JNU. In 2016, when Najeeb Ahmed, a first-year student, disappeared from the campus shortly after being beaten up by Akhil Bhartiya Vidhyarti Parishad (ABVP) activists inside the varsity hostel, the V-C took no action.
When instructed by the court to take action against the ABVP students, the V-C merely transferred them to another hostel. After Najeeb’s disappearance, when the JNU Students’ Union demanded that forest areas within the campus be searched, the V-C did not heed them.
The Delhi Police search came only a month later. As the maxim goes, “justice delayed is justice denied”. No one knows what happened to Najeeb.
Then the V-C decided to have selection committees based on his likes and rules, not on the lines of the University Grants Commission (UGC) or the JNU Act (of Parliament) 1966.
It should be noted that before being nominated as V-C, professor Jagadesh Kumar had neither served as a head of department (HoD) or dean at IIT (Delhi), the institution where he taught — his only major academic administrative task was to serve as “timetable-in-charge”.
The UGC Regulations, 2009, also published in the Gazette of India, clearly lay down that they “shall apply to every university established or incorporated by or under a Central Act, Provincial Act or a State Act, every institution including a constituent or an affiliated college recognised by the Commission...”
The selection committee incorporated in the JNU Act of 1966 is identical for professors and associate professors. It Act says the panel should have the following composition:
1. Vice-chancellor as the chairperson.
2. An academician who is a nominee of the visitor/chancellor, wherever applicable.
3. Three experts in the concerned subject/field out of the panel of names recommended by the vice-chancellor and approved by the relevant statutory body of the university concerned, at least one of whom is to be drawn from the panel of experts developed by UGC and hosted in its website.
4. Dean of the faculty, wherever applicable.
5. Head/chairperson of the department/school.
6. An academician representing SC/ST/OBC/Minority/Women/Differently-abled, if any of the above members of these categories is the applicant, must be nominated by the V-C, if any of the above members of the selection committee do not belong to that category.
7. At least four members, including two outside subject experts, must constitute the panel.
This has been observed in the breach, not in terms of the norms laid down by the UGC. The relevant statutory body of the university has always been the academic council of JNU — as also stipulated in the JNU Act of 1966 and the Statutes of the University.
The panel of experts is decided by the academic council with inputs from the centres and schools.
However, V-C Jagadesh Kumar has dispensed with these criteria. As per rules, though the V-C may recommend names, “the relevant statutory body of the university concerned” has to approve them.
In sum, what the V-C has been doing since 2016 is to violate UGC and JNU norms in the composition of the selection committees itself.
As a consequence, the objective criteria for the selection of faculty have been deliberately undermined by the V-C, his officers and his staff. It is highly unlikely that the MHRD is unaware of this gross violation. But the NDA government, it appears, is determined to flood the universities and colleges with faculty amenable to its interests, irrespective of the UGC and Parliamentary Acts.
If the faculty is politicised — with its major interests lying in partisan politics and/or personal aggrandisement, with little interest on serious scholarly pursuits — the concerned universities and colleges’ esprit de corp and self-confidence will suffer.
Those intellectually active will have to look for different avenues for learning and livelihood. That would be a national disaster.
It should be remembered it takes a lot to build institutions like JNU, Hyderabad Central University, Allahabad University, Banaras Hindu University, Mumbai University, Delhi University, Kolkata University, Jadavpur University and many others.
But the progress made can be undone by politicians, bureaucrats and even a subdued media, who are determined to dismantle these great institutions.
It starts with giving the institution a bad name. The truth, for some, does not matter.