By Valson Thampu

Academia is undergoing tectonic shifts. There is as much journalistic interest in this simmering crisis as there is State apathy. If premier institutions are in disarray, surely there must be something to it that merits attention?

It is tempting to explain this away as the outworking merely of an ideological agenda. It is an angle that cannot be discounted. We are, after all, a culture that zealously safeguarded knowledge against its universalization. We are, furthermore, a polity organized almost wholly for the benefit of the privileged few.

This, and not the paucity of funds, is the reason why quality education is woefully short in supply. At the root of the turbulence that convulses academia is the tension between democracy and de facto oligarchy.

Are these episodes of show-down local and spontaneous? Well, for those of us who do not have investigative skills or instruments, the only basis to go by is experience.

In July of 2015 ABVP invaded the campus of St. Stephen’s College, and spread panic among the candidates from all over India who had assembled there for admission interviews. For half a day anarchy reigned supreme. Their demand was that I should quit at once. Through a colleague of mine, I established contact with a BJP functionary. ABVP, I am grateful to acknowledge, never troubled St. Stephen’s thereafter.

So, are student wings remote-controlled from party offices? You and I don’t know. But we do know that each party has a senior party functionary overseeing campus politics. Well, do they wire-pull or sit in deep meditation? Your guess is as good as mine.

We know one thing more. The State is progressively withdrawing from education, even as education cess continues to be levied. What makes this laughable is that it is being done parallel to the promise of a new developmental heaven. All agree that education is the critical catalyst for development. But we will starve education. We seem to be quite fine with it. We have funds to finance African countries and Afghanistan, but not to rejuvenate even primary education.

The Indian political class is still struggling to cope with the implication of lowering the age of enfranchisement from 21 to18. This has activated a huge intractable and aspirational segment of the voting population. What no party in power wants is a huge army of educated, employment-eligible youth, frustrated and angry at being continually let down.

The Modi government has realized by now that employment generation is a mirage. Make in India may generate wealth, but not employment for the simple reason that profit is linked to automation. Overseas investors are not missionaries of charity.

If employment cannot be generated, eligibility for employment can be constricted. It is a solution the short-term gain of which will be the long-term undoing of this country.

The present spell of campus turbulence is, therefore, a trailer to the tehelka that is in the offing. The principle of demand-and-supply applies not only to consumer market. So long as the demand for jobs is kept curbed, the motivation to generate jobs will languish. India may glitter. But the youth will wither. The much touted demographic dividend will go a-begging.

Quality of higher education has, in the meanwhile, touched an all-time low. Indian academics provide immense firepower to western universities. But mediocrity reigns supreme in our universities and colleges. Is there no explanation for this? And is there no remedy for this malady?

My four decades of experience in higher education has taught me something. We are hostile to excellence. Why is St. Stephen’s an institution that most people love to hate. That’s where our psyche comes in. In 2015-2016, there were over 32,500 applications for 410 undergraduate seats. They were the best from around the country.

The net result is that the college lost the goodwill of 32,000 applicants and their families. This happens year after year.

This need not eventuate into ill-will, but for a certain streak in our mentality. If my son cannot have the St. Stephen’s label, your son too shall not have it. We are not evolved enough to think of St. Stephen’s as a national asset, the chief function of which is to benchmark excellence in higher education.

It is because of this negative mentality that we have only one St. Stephen’s College in India; whereas we need at least a few thousands. And the one we have was not founded by us but by phoren, firangi missionaries.

Only ask, why should five academics from Cambridge come to India and create educational opportunities for “natives” sacrificing their life? Why can’t we have a comparable sense of responsibility for our own sons and daughters, for all the patriotism and nationalism that drip from our lips?

Hand on heart, I testify: it is a life-and-death struggle to maintain quality of education in India. It is smooth and profitable to sink into mediocrity. So long as this hard reality is not reckoned we shall not emerge from the present academic wilderness.

Turbulence in academia means only one thing. Young minds are starving. Educational turbulence is similar to atmospheric turbulence. It is depression somewhere else that blows your roof off.

Consider this obvious thing. Students stand out, professors don’t. We now know JNU through a Kanhaiya Kumar, not through a faculty member. This is not a matter of media bias. Nor is it because there aren’t faculty members who lack scholarship. What they lack is stature, a touch of personal greatness. We have enlarged brains, but no role-models.

I was fortunate to be taught by Prof. A. N. Kaul who headed the Department of English, Delhi University in the 1970s. I came from a background of firebrand student politics in Kerala and was the college union president. Organizing strikes and protests was my pastime. I forgot all that when I came under Prof. Kaul’s influence. It was such a treat to learn from him and his colleagues in the department. Academia was then hedged around by a wall of inviolability. It did not occur to many to breach it.

I remember walking into the campus of St. Stephen’s in 1971 as a student. I could breathe and smell greatness. The aura was truly august. Over the years a touch of the pedestrian set in. This change was wholly due to the impoverishment of the human stock. Teachers became employees. A retired lab assistant, Marcus Aftab, donated 100,000 rupees to the college to improve science facilities. Teachers are obsessed with protecting their rights and maximizing their advantages.

The growing politicization of education is a cause for worry. It has many faces, of which campus turbulence is only the most evident. Politics is to education what adulteration is to milk. Even a small dose of it compromises its spirit very substantially.

If a student can be abducted from JNU and the State does not have the wherewithal or will to trace him, or his mortal remains, in months, what message does that send out to young people? What are they to think of the inviolability and sanctity of temples of learning?

If Vice Chancellors are appointed for political reasons, or for non-academic considerations, what quality of academic leadership can we expect? How can that contribute to the robustness and coherence of universities? Is that not a worse offence against the cause of higher education than two student factions slugging it out or issuing boorish threats?

If teacher truancy, which is today at an all-time high, cannot be curbed, how can young people be blamed for feeling frustrated enough to think that they are better off shouting in the streets?

Before we queue up to be a global power, we should take care of our youth. They are getting a raw deal. A country that cannot meet the educational aspirations of its talented youth cannot command respect in the comity of nations, no matter what maneuvering and image make-over we do at what cost.

It is shocking that Prime Minister Narendra Modi does not bother to heed the cry of the youth of this country. This should be his first and urgent priority. If only he would sense the historic opportunities this affords, he would take over education and do his mighty best.

If he doesn’t, all his fiery rhetoric and sweeping averments will be seen, in course of time, as mere sound and fury, signifying nothing.

(Valson Thampu is former principal of St Stephen’s College, Delhi)