January 16,2025

Mr. Rahul Gandhi,
Leader of the Opposition, Lok Sabha,
Parliament House,
New Delhi.

Dear Mr. Gandhi,

Higher Education in India is in turmoil. Since the introduction of the National Education Policy (NEP) in 2020, the education system, in general and higher education in particular, is facing a terminal decline. I wrote several articles discussing the challenges and the issues, particularly in higher education, such as the loss of autonomy of universities, erosion of academic freedom, educational divide – gender and digital and urban-rural, indiscriminate privatisation making quality education unaffordable and inaccessible to the lower middle class, the poor, the marginalised and the general masses – the people at the bottom of the social pyramid, the withdrawal of public funding and the decline of public universities, the stunting intellectual growth in university campuses; distortion of history in curriculum and the like, which are published on my Blog. (https://nehrusideaofindia.blogspot.com)

The first Prime Minister of independent India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, delivering an address to a special convocation of the University of Allahabad on December 13, 1947, said: "A university stands for humanism, the tolerance, for reason, for progress, for the adventure of ideas and for the search for truth. It stands for the onward march of the human race towards even higher objectives. If the universities discharge their duty adequately, then it is well with the nation and the people. But if the temple of learning becomes a home of narrow bigotry and petty objectives, how will the nation prosper or a people grow in stature?" This vision of Pandit Nehru is grossly missing today in our higher education institutions, run by petty-minded people who prefer to play a subservient role to their political masters.

Those were the days when the Indian institutions of higher learning were prominent sources of original ideas. They were deeply committed to the quest for knowledge. Teachers, researchers, students and intellectuals were engaged in rigorous debates and discussions in search of knowledge. The government did not interfere with the autonomy of universities. That independence promoted the open exchange of ideas and the development of milestones in enhancing knowledge. The philosopher-statesman Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Zakir Hussain, APJ Abdul Kalam, M Visvesvaraya, Jagadish Chandra Bose, Amartya Sen, Bipin Chandra, Andre Beteille, Jayant Narlikar, Gopi Chand Narang, Irfan Habib, Abhijit Banerjee are a few examples of the distinguished leaders produced by the intense intellectual exercise, academic rigour and firm devotion. They were the products of public universities. Their education inspired them to make an impact on the world.

In contrast, today, our institutions of higher learning are mediocre, produce loyalists and conformists, and are very intolerant of any dissenting voice on the campuses, defeating the very objective of learning. In the absence of free discussions and debates, we find intellectual stagnation in our institutions of higher learning. Even in the elite IITs, no academic seminars are allowed without prior approval of the concerned authorities to ensure that no criticism of government policies and programmes is made at these academic sessions.

No creativity and intellectual growth are possible from a brand of private institutions pledging loyalty to the ruling party that is growing at an alarming pace. When the world over, including in advanced countries, there is substantial public funding of higher education institutions; in a poor country like India, where education is a step towards upward social mobility, there is virtually no funding for educational institutions, depriving a vast majority of people the right to quality education. It is ironic that the policymakers and the persons regulating higher education forget that they were the products of the public universities, which they are now preoccupied with dismantling.

We are heading towards a total commercialisation and corporatisation of higher education, which is a road to disaster. The NEET, JEE, CUET and other competitive examinations, which are supposed to ensure national uniform open merit-based admission policies, have ended up serving the interests of only rich and affluent sections of students, who manage to crack these examinations by heavily depending on coaching centres which are by nature money-spinning endeavours. And the students from rural and semi-urban backgrounds, who can't afford the coaching, are left high and dry. Even otherwise, all their efforts go down the drain with increasing incidents of paper leaks just when they are about to take the examinations. It is an unequal and farcical system. The students from poor backgrounds work very hard and dream of achieving some position in life and not ending up like their parents. They spend huge amounts of money, often borrowing and mortgaging their land and ancestral property, and are unable to crack these examinations, leading to huge frustration and suicidal tendencies.

For the past 10 years, concerted efforts have been made to capture not only the independent institutions of the state but also the higher education institutions, resulting in a loss of independence and the ability to discharge their functions, making them ineffective. The latest attempt to centralise and control the university system is the Draft UGC Regulations 2025, released by the Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and the Chairman University Grants Commission Jagadesh Kumar on January 6. It is a sinister design. Since the introduction of the NEP, many retrograde changes have been made in the functioning of higher education institutions. The UGC comes out with too many arbitrary changes, confusing and contradicting, leaving the higher education system in tatters.

The Draft Regulations seek to buttress changes in the teachers' recruitment policy. The Draft provides that even if a candidate has not chosen a particular subject at UG or PG level but has done a PhD in a subject, he is eligible for appointment as a teacher. For instance, a candidate with a PhD in chemistry, despite holding a bachelor's in mathematics and a master's in physics, would now only qualify to teach chemistry. This change in eligibility for recruitment of college and university teachers marks a dangerous dilution of academic credentials and competence; a candidate can now become a teacher of a subject without having a master's degree in that subject.

Another disturbing feature of the Draft Regulations is the emphasis on the so-called nine "notable contributions," such as "teaching contributions in Indian languages" and "teaching-learning and research in Indian Knowledge systems," to be considered by the selection committee for recruitment and promotion of teachers in colleges and universities. These "notable contributions" are vague and difficult to attain at the entry-level, considering the proliferation of pay-by-hour guest teachers whose teaching experience is not counted. They will prove onerous for candidates from different regions, given the disparity in resources and uneven development of educational infrastructure.

Ironically, when many in the teaching fraternity have been arguing against the proviso of 100 per cent weightage for interviews as per the UGC Regulations 2018 – a measure that has created the scope for all kinds of political cronyism and nepotism leading to mass displacements during interviews – the new Draft Regulations continue to deny weightage to the past teaching experience at the interview stage. This is bizarre. It will open the floodgates for corrupt practices in the hiring and promotion process of teachers. This shift could allow private or public management to appoint candidates of their choice, undermining transparency. Similarly, a candidate who completes the new four-year degree programme will be eligible to take an objective-type examination and qualify for appointment as an Assistant Professor without having a master's degree in the relevant subject.

The Draft Regulations remove the cap on contract teacher appointments, making contractual employment a permanent feature in higher education. This is bound to usher in more intensive contractualisation and casualisation of regular teaching posts, leading to the downgrading of service conditions for teachers and the dilution of the teaching-learning process in higher education institutions, with regular full-time teaching posts remaining vacant. It will make the teaching profession unattractive, leaving the fate of higher education to the whims and facies of people with vested interests running these institutions.

Yet another very disturbing feature in the Draft Regulations is the appointment of Vice Chancellors - the academic and administrative heads of universities. The new regulations seek to facilitate control over universities through gubernatorial proxies by proposing to divest state governments of their role in the selection process of Vice Chancellors. All powers are now vested in Chancellors — Governors of states — by taking away the function of constituting the search-cum-selection committee from State higher education departments. A committee of three members compromising the nominees of the chancellor, the chairman of the UGC and the concerned university is being constituted. The state government has no role in selecting and appointing vice chancellors of universities, which are established by the Acts of the State Legislature. This authoritarianism will destroy the higher education system. It is yet another attempt to capture the temples of learning.

The Vice-Chancellor is appointed for five years but is eligible for reappointment for another term. This is a departure from the existing practice of a VC not having more than one term. The political intent is very clear. This will have a stronghold of the VC on the university system, considering the fact that these days, the VCs are appointed on the basis of their loyalty to the ruling dispensation, and the governor is the sole authority in selecting and appointing such people as Vice Chancellors of universities. What is more disturbing is that the Draft says that non-academics from industry and public sector undertakings, without any teaching experience and who know nothing about the functioning of universities, are eligible for appointment as Vice Chancellors. That is, a university vice-chancellor now does not need to be a distinguished professor with 10 years of experience. Nor is he required to have a PhD; strangely enough, when an Assistant Professor cannot be promoted to Associate Professor without a PhD. This could be used to appoint the BJP-RSS loyalists from the industry, destroying whatever semblance of academic autonomy may have been left in universities, with commercial and business interests overriding the academic interest. The vice-chancellors should be men of learning and have high academic standards.

It is well-known that under the present political dispensation, governors are political appointees rewarded for loyalty to the ruling party ideology. In opposition-ruled Staes, the governor is 'instructed to act as the Viceroy of the central government,' leading to a clash between the elected government and the unelected governor. And now there will be "Two Viceroys, vetted for ideological purity" - the chancellor and the vice chancellor – to administer universities. It is "the nationalisation of Indian universities," says P Chidambaram. Any university refusing to honour the new regulations will be debarred from offering degree programmes or participating in UGC schemes and removed from the list of universities.

As a prominent national opposition leader, it is incumbent upon you to arrest this drift and ensure that the new draft regulations curbing the academic autonomy of our universities are withdrawn to protect the temples of learning from being desecrated.

With kind regards,
Yours truly,
Dr G Ramachandram