Unemployed Teachers, Rebellious Students, Come together

It has been about more than ten days now since the teachers protest against the new UGC notification began. However, teachers have received support from various corners including political parties to students organizations. Squeezing employment opportunities have become a chronic problem for long time in universities and the new regulations are going to add the worst.

This is the need of hour when more stakeholders need to be taken in confidence to further intensify the struggle. The list should include ordinary university students, parents and also the M.A/M.Phil/NET qualified students aspiring to be college teachers. They must be told about possible impacts on their education and career if these guidelines were implemented.

The new UGC guidelines are not only going to push ad-hoc teachers out of the college but also few permanent teachers will be unemployed and in long run this would lead to steep decline in number of vacancies in college roaster.

There are plenty of misconceptions being planted in public domain like, Teachers don't want to work hard, they just want permanent services and high salaries, just increment in few hours of teaching won't add any burden, why don't they join private colleges etc.

These questions are very necessary to be answered and put forth in public. The questions, Is it that teachers don't work hard? Or, do they just want permanent services, government benefits and high salaries?

Such set of questions are totally based upon prejudices against the government services. The government services are largely being  considered as inefficient or government servants as lethargic and outdated. Of course, this doesn't mean that all the professors or teachers are up to date and well engaging with students but a large number of them are. Colleges utilise ad-hoc teachers even in the works which are only meant for non teaching staffs. They act as knowledge carriers in classrooms to data entry operators in administrative block.

Then, is it about permanent services? Who doesn't want job security, indeed everyone wants it. Government benefits? Every organization needs to ensure certain benefits to their employees, even the private ones. These are their deserving rights and not compensation. High salary? The big private colleges are paying higher salaries than what government colleges pay but there are many teachers for whom services are top  priority than salary.

Few teachers prefer government colleges because many students in such colleges belong to very low social and economic backgrounds, who cannot afford private colleges. This is an example of sensitivity towards service of our academia. But yes, frankly speaking there are also teachers who keep counting on salary increments via pay commissions. Means, variety of faculties are available then, why only the latter becomes the guiding sole of fund cuts and efficiency? Why not the former?

It is also true that fund cuts from social sectors is undoubtedly a tactics of neoliberal economy to encourage private institutions. Thus, Generalising the whole lot of teachers with claims for efficiency and  defending the new UGC regulations is definitely misguiding.

One also needs to ponder on the other side of the story, many ad-hoc teachers have been serving for last 6-8 years and even more than that, by this time they are almost about 28-30 years or more; which means the other career options to them have already closed. So, where should they go?

Disappointingly till date, UGC or HRD Ministry have not get back to DUTA. If the notification is in favour of teachers or university, higher authority must tell the possible number of vacancies that could be generated each year and also the benefits of new regulations.

Being concerned about quality of education is not at all bad but decline in quantity is not a healthy symbol. I wonder if the concerned authorities assure us, appointments in colleges are only based on merit and not on favors and "shifarish", this would be the best way to efficiency and quality addition in the university system.

-Rohin Kumar 
Student, University of Delhi