To

Shri Naveen Patnaik Jee,

Hon’ble Chief Minister of Odisha,

Bhubaneswar-751001

An appeal to the Government of Odisha in defence of an idea called University

Ref.: Odisha Universities (Amendment) Ordinance 2020

Hon’ble Sir,

At the outset, we would like to express our warm regards and heartfelt congratulations to Hon’ble Chief Minister, ShriNaveenPatnaikJee and other distinguished members of the Government of Odisha for having initiated a timely move to bring in structural reforms in the higher education sector of Odisha exactly after three decades of the promulgation of the Odisha University Act of 1989. This interventionist move had indeed assumed critical urgency in view of the fact that the wholescale structural reforms of higher education had taken place for the first time in modern India after economies across the globe opened up in the 1990s with the commencement of liberalization. Secondly, the pathetic low to which the universities of our state have been pushed in the national and global ranking scales despite annual reiteration of the mission that we set for ourselves to upgrade our universities to match international standards. A policy intervention to overhaul higher education sector, therefore, is a praiseworthy exercise. 

Having said this, we would also like to draw the attention of the Hon’ble Chief Minister to a few issues underlying the present amendment which merits urgent and critical review and consideration. Given your globally acclaimed reputation as one of the top minds of the world both as an intellectual and a statesman with pro-people predilections, we are sure that our representation will receive sympathetical consideration  And , and that necessary amendments will be initiated as part of the broader process of reforms that the Government has undertaken in the education sector.

We wish to inform that a Joint Action Committee (JAC) has been constituted to urge the Government of Odisha to review and reconsider a few anomalous provisions in the Odisha Universities (Amendment) Ordinance 2020. The JAC comprises the members of all the Universities in Odisha, former Vice Chancellors of the state, academia, and intelligentsia from several places. JAC has drafted this appeal not only to draw the attention of the Hon’ble Chief Minister to the amendments proposed in the Ordinance but also to put forth a few modest suggestions in that regard.

We would like to reiterate that, as leaders of the universities, the sitting Vice Chancellors have both a professional and ethical commitment as academicians to share their views and perceptions on any issue concerning higher education and academics. So also, they have even greater responsibilities to present the views and perspectives of members of the university community to the Government. It is still truer for the State Council of Higher Education, which has been given shape as an apex body for tailoring and standardizing policy norms, and follow up their implementation across universities.

We have appealed to the vice-chancellors of the existing universities of the state along with the Chairman, State Higher Education Council, to facilitate the conveying the appeal of the university community to the Government.

One of the major and contentious issues concerning the Odisha Universities (Amendment) Ordinance 2020 pertains to entrusting the responsibility of recruitment of University faculty members to the Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) by taking it away from the University.  It is noteworthy that The Gazette to notify the Odisha Universities (Amendment) Ordinance 2020 is fundamentally at variance with Gazette published by UGC on Minimum Qualification for appointment of Teachers and Other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges and Measures for the Maintenance of Standards in Higher Education 2018, especially its provision on the recruitment of faculty members in the University.  By any standard scrutiny of the proviso on both counts, it appears that the current amendment raises issues of violation of federal proviso of the Indian Constitution.  However, before delving into the issue to examine the basis and justification of the amendment, it becomes imperative to understand three crucial dimensions of the university system. We seek to explain these three aspects as follows:

University ecosystem 

For centuries, continuous and ceaseless efforts to advance the frontiers of both teaching and research across subject disciplines have gained fruition in an ecosystem of self-governance and democratic practices which constitute the foundational basis of a university system, be it Bologna (1088, Italy) or, Oxford (1096, UK) or, Harvard (1636, USA). As the “nourishing Mother of studies”, ‘university’, according to its originary Latin motto of Bologna, illuminates an ideational space. Its classroom, laboratories, research centers, archives and seminar halls each entail exposure to new ideas, and new ways of knowing, understanding and questioning. It makes for a diverse living and academic environment where students from varied social standing and inclinations and evolving identities come to stay and pursue different academic programmes, which sets in motion intellectual transformation paving way for social transformation. In fact, living in such an environment, student do fashion their lives and sharpen their professional choices by gaining a sense of what they want to do depending on their specific gifts and talents. This is how the processes mark the birth of a dynamic community of students, teachers and researchers who comfortably express, celebrate their diverse backgrounds, talents and interests while learning how best they can serve the world around them.  Most significantly, the university upholds the belief in the transformative power of liberal arts, humanities and science education in educating the citizen and citizen leaders of the society.

If we look at the Indian landscape, JNU, BHU, Delhi University, Hyderabad Central University, Jadavpur, and Tezpur, to name a few public universities, have become pioneers in research and discursive ideas in various fields. These universities have been privileged to have departments researching on certain critical domains of study for a long period of time. In the process, they have been transformed into reputed centers of excellence. It is too well known to cite the case of JNU in this context, whose first Vice-Chancellor, Gopalswamy. Parthasarathy, a journalist, educationist, diplomat and a member of United Nations built the University who laid the foundation for the intellectual, academic and physical quality of the institution. He became the flag bearer of setting a worldclass, liberal yetinclusive model of higher education institution by instating academic programmes with multi-disciplinary focus while hunting for global talents who could fit the bill across subject divides. This is how JNU came to boast of social scientists with degrees in engineering or chemistry. This new generation of teachers knew all too well how necessary it was to go beyond conventional academics which remained out of touch with social reality  and instead to create socially relevant pedagogic practices.

 Against this backdrop, it needs no emphasis to suggest that a visionary Vice-Chancellor plays a critical and decisive role in furthering both the general as well as specific mission of the University. A Vice-Chancellor with outstanding academic credentials and high degree of integrity is arguably the person to lead an academic world in all respects. Whether it is a question of recruiting her/his teaching or other members of the university, putting in place a vibrant and transparent structure for both academic and administrative governance or mapping out the goals, needs, and strategies of the institution, it is her/ his critical insights that remain crucial. Yes, such profound insights which they ought to demonstrate shared and shaped through the critical imaginaries of the academic community of the institution they lead and beyond.  Thus, Vice Chancellor’s position may not ideally be reduced to a position of managing the everydayness of institutional governance.  Ideally, as academic of high repute, they are privileged to fashion the architectural marvel of the academic world they are supposed to lead.   In fact, the novel practice adopted by IIMs, IITs, IISERs to hold  faculty short-listing and  selection melas in different leading university campuses  across the world to attract talent for their institutions with appropriate perks and salaries.. Such moves are intended to enrich the research thrusts of the universities adding to the competitive edge of the concerned institutions at global plane. The faculty members selected against such lucrative packages are mandated with certain clear-cut research agendas to attain.  Vice-Chancellors thus have to be conceptually endowed and thinking captains to rise up to the multi-tasking challenges underlying an idea of any world university.  It is within such complex nature of professional callings, a generalistic pattern of recruitment may not hold good. But at the same time, it becomes an imperative to play out such strategies to make the university a thriving hub of world class research and teaching. These aspects remain so intimately yet intricately woven to the system that any process of recruitment for university being extended out to an external agency like PSC appears violative of the spirit of the university as a deeply embedded and complex idea.

Intellectual Enquiry and culture of Research

Research along with critical teaching ideally remains the key focus of the university system. It is a system where ideas, norms, and conceptual perspectives underlying liberal arts, humanities and sciences are acquired, debated, contested and upheld. New paradigms of thoughts are explored in the diverse disciplinary practices followed under the above branches of knowledge. Such evolving discourses of different subject disciplines do have their critical resonance in the domains of society, governmentality and public policies. Through sharing of the academic practices and normative values by students, researchers and teachers underpinned by the system, A dynamic community of students, researchers and teachers gets forged endowed with a distinct consciousness based on sharing of  academic practices and normative values underpinned by the above processes.

The tradition of teaching and research in universities undergoes continuous shifts in terms of philosophical orientations and thrusts based on periodic reviews and academic audit conducted by academic councils or board of studies on state of art in knowledge practices. Such reviews are intended to identify and prioritize cutting-edge areas of research for a particular university or its departments and decide the modalities of participation in such areas to reinforce a particular thrust area of advancing knowledge. The academic community of the university based on multi-tiered review systems decides on the nuances of specific research areas, thrusts, and orientations for each department and thus accelerate the given research directionality of the institution of the institution. In the process departments and universities emerge as centers of excellence. In such a system, it is the Vice-Chancellor who is fully aware of the research needs of the university and hence is in the best position to hire the required manpower. S/he understands the felt needs of the university and accordingly strategies to fashion a policy of recruitment. Just doesn’t have to do recruit for recruitment’s sake!

This is how the shifting generations of faculty members, researchers and students add and expand the dimension of research while enriching the dynamic character of the university system. It is precisely this logic that has gone into the making of several centers/ departments of excellence across the world which have carved a niche for themselves as pioneers in specific area of scholarship. History of growth of disciplinary subjects abounds in references to instances of specialized centers of excellence. Harvard and Stanford Universities have distinguished themselves as leaders in field of Engineering and Management; a Chicago in monetary economics; a Heidelberg or a Chicago or a JNU for flagging new directions in South Asian / Indian Studies; a Harvard for Legal Studies, a Princeton for Population Studies, a Johns Hopkins for Public Health, and Australia National University for Subaltern Studies; and instances can keep multiplying. At home, one could discern similar such pioneering leads undertaken by universities like BHU, Allahabad University, Aligarh University, DU, NEHU, Tezpur, Jadavpur, Kolkata, Sambalpur, Pune, Mumbai etc., apart from much easily thought of category of JNU

Indian higher education has largely been shaped by the policies of University Grants Commission which has recently been replaced by the Higher Education Commission of India. The salient objectives of such apex regulatory body have been to coordinate, determine, set up and ensure implementation of the academic standards for higher education institutions across the nation while disbursing grants under different heads including research. UGC research fund or seed money or Special Assistance Programme (SAP), all of which have remained a major funding source for many institutions for promotion of culture of research and publications and patents. Besides, there are several national and international agencies which sponsor the universities’ research programmes. Funding from industries and corporate houses do flow to the university as part of university-industry-corporate house interface.  Such strategies have proactively been pursued by universities across the globe in order to encourage research in the domain of frontier areas of research which entail larger investment beyond the support extended to the public universities by the governments. In the context of inadequate budgetary support by the state for expansion of infrastructure as well as research activities, mobilizing resources i the form of extramural grants and alumni endowments has become a key challenge for any Vice-Chancellor today.

Autonomy

Autonomy of a university is reflected by its embedded components of self-governance, collegiality and appropriate academic leadership and implies an institutional form of academic freedom. Autonomy assumes critical importance for building up a thriving university ecosystem as it provides necessary precondition to guarantee the appropriate fulfilment of the functions entrusted to higher education institutions and its teaching personnel. If UK and USA can be gainfully relied on for critical inputs on the tradition of building lasting and excellent educational institutions, then Oxford (with a millennium old tradition) or Harvard (with four centuries of history) or such institutions of more than 150 years old in both the countries share a fundamental belief in adhering to a robust process of institution building. This vision and commitment to excellence in building up higher education institutions is shared by the key stakeholders, including the government. An unwritten tradition of showing due respect to such institutions has always existed among political leadership, which is a mark of their maturity. On the other, by virtue of scaling new peaks in domains of knowledge, universities acquire an aura of awe and grandeur and preeminently emerge as symbols of national / global pride. Such an enviable position locates the HEIs beyond the unreasonable reach of any political and government entities. It hardly requires emphasis that JNU, DU, Jadavpur, Tezpur, Hyderbad Central University, IITs, IIMs, IIS and IISERs have arguably emerged as the iconic and vibrant centers of research and academics of global repute because of institutional autonomy they have been endowed with.

It is disturbing that the current amendment seeks to undermine some of the dynamic features of the latter including autonomy.  The amendment has ironically sought to place and structure HEIs in Odisha around a regime of burecratisation which would be deleterious by any logic to the cause of promotion of critical, futuristic and world class academics in the long run.

Citing institutional autonomy and shortage of faculty as the twin irritants plaguing the Indian HEIs, the NEP vows to reverse the situation to make quality education, research and innovation highly happening phenomena within these institutions.  In fact, NEP 2020 foregrounds autonomy to such a remarkable degree that the architecture of policy orientation for the Higher Educational Institutions (HEI) is marked by a hegemonic dominance of the concept of autonomy. One of its conspicuous mantras, as NEP declares, is to enable all HEIs to aim at becoming “independent self-governing institutions pursuing innovation and excellence” based on “graded autonomy in a phased manner over a period of next 15 years”. Further it envisions a thorough re-energizing of the higher education system by progressively shifting towards faculty and institutional autonomy. Its vision also maps out a future for HEIs in India where “institutions would be free of any external interference, make all appointment including that of head of the institution”.  In sum, it powerfully argues to instil and disseminate a ubiquitous culture of autonomy in Higher educational institutions while upholding uncompromisingly the spirit of decentralisation.

Given such thrusts on autonomy by NEP, the present amendment seems to follow just the opposite route to a possible future of quality education, research and innovation and World Class University. It is easy to speculate how Odisha would fare in the Indian educational map after a decade or so if we remain insistent on such policy course.

Privileging PSC to Empower University? A Problematique

The purpose of explaining the above three dimensions as conceptual markers of the idea of a university is to argue that the attempt to disempower the university to recruit its own faculty members by vesting such powers with an external agency like PSC defies the fundamental logic of the university as a system. Instead of drawing elaborately on the merits or demerits of both the ideas under the rubrics of University vis-a-vis PSC, we would like to reiterate that both these structures have their own specified domains, goals and ecosystems. PSC is the appropriate centralized agency to recruit teachers for a large number of colleges across the state to ensure standardization. But in contradistinction, the academic needs, and imperatives of a university are complex, and diverse which are core to its mission and its constantly evolving academic goals. As has already been elucidated, these issues remain distinctly in the zone of understanding of the academic community of the university comprising its teachers, students, researchers as well as the Vice Chancellor. We would like to cite an example to illustrate the idea of a university and its transformative potential. One who studied his bachelors in Physics in Kolkata University, and then switched over to do a course in Management in Kolkata, later came to pursue his doctorate in Australian National University in an entirely different subject like history. He was finally called upon to join and lead the South Asian Center at Chicago University on the basis of a famous essay that he wrote at a particular point of time. And he is today one of the most significantly and widely cited social theorists on global south and counted among the very few top internationally renowned intellectuals who have started advocating the idea of planetary histories. This broaches a very pertinent ethical concern; would an external agency like PSC which does not owe it inception or its structural evolution to an environment of academic culture be able to appreciate the intent and spirit of such highly rewarding academic conducts? 

By inviting an external agency which lacks any living connect with the university to start reflecting and deciding on who should be recruited as faculty for university amounts to a proposition based on highly defeating logic. The legislative fiat in its current formulation seems to have emanated from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and functioning of the university. We do not wish to repeat how much of critical thinking and strategising it behoves the Vice Chancellors and Directors of reputed institutions across the globe these days to recruit the faculty members with the sole aim of making their institutions world class. Nowhere in the world, (perhaps barring a very few singular exceptions, which may be  seen as  aberrant  practices) the standard, and healthy practices of  recruiting faculty members for universities or such institutions based on principles of  transparency, multi-tiered scrutiny, and collective endorsement by academic community in tune with complex , diverse and specific needs of their affiliating departments have been diluted. Rather such globally standardized best practices of faculty recruitment have continuously been innovated by adopting strategies like digital surveillance of faculty profile and performance or identification of talents across the globe and extending offers to them to join the varsities ensuing a diligent selection process by constituting a board comprising government representatives and other stake holders.

The spirit of the promulgated ordinance as has been pointed out goes against the spirit of UGC/ Higher Education Commission of India, which, as the national regulatory body, lays down principles, rationale and modalities of faculty recruitment in higher education institutions across the country. By marginalizing the concept of institutional autonomy, it reflects itself in poor light in the context of NEP 2020. But underlying all these apparent departures, what it glaringly seeks to contest is one of its fundamental and intrinsic as well as internationally recognized best practices about universities.

The narrative that we have laboured passionately to build up here illuminates an idea called university. It basically touches upon the argument that the move to divest universities of their power to recruit their faculty members would remarkably enfeeble university of its institutional autonomy, an element that is deeply integral to the very idea.  Given that autonomy is existentially coeval with university, any celebration to rupture this embeddedness would be only a self -defeating exercise at the most. It would rather pathologically hasten the process of    the death of the very idea.

The name of Odisha today shines in global discourse of polity visibly under the inspiring and intellectual leadership of Shri Naveen Patnaikjee for taking critical leads in adopting best global practices of governance. Odisha today serves as a bright example of South Asian sub regional polity, whether it is a question of having best practices in tackling natural calamities or Covid 19 or for that matter, taking historic and bold decisions like imparting ownership to people  in governance structure or ensuring adequate political representation of women. It is against this larger context, the provocative question that troubles us is to wonder whether the amendment would be a radical departure to such best practices by marking the commencement of undue regime of bureaucratization of the education system. By any dominant reckoning the proposed move is a retrograde step which is likely to impart backward linkage to the very spirit of reform being initiated into the sector of higher education almost after three decades.   The policy intervention to this sector was long pending and we are extremely grateful to Hon’ble CM for initiating this.  But at the same time, we appeal to him to look into these anomalies and to intervene in order to effect, required corrective measures to make the current amendment retain its progressive character.

Abolition of Senate

The Ordinance 2020 has also done away with its supreme academic body having responsibilities of superintending, regulating in all areas and domains that are an integral part of the university, namely, academics, research and development, administration and governance.  Instead, it has preferred to revamp the structure of the syndicate system for all the universities. Senate as an organizational entity within university system has been often viewed as more of a ceremonial in nature than any effective worth. However, being a democratic and representative body and comprising of various stakeholders of the university, senate could decisively be mandated to   be yet another tier of watchdog group to monitor the health of the university in all respects. In fact, existing research on justification for its abolition has rather pointed to a negative correlation between centralization of university administration and the proactive presence of an academic senate. This is indeed suggestive of the fact that senate notably validates the very principle of decentralization around which university system is woven around quintessentially while acting as a proverbial check against any authoritarian, illegal and unethical   tendencies exhibited by the authorities of the university.

Apart from the issues that we have discussed so far, we would like to crave your indulgence to flag some of the key issues that understandably ails Odisha university system. The plethora of regulatory texts, guidelines, statutes, and rules on higher education existing both at central and state levels along with their grey areas, ambiguities and divergent takes on the same issue have remained a major source for varying interpretations. It is time that we move into standardizing the guidelines of both UGC/ HECI on the one hand and the Odisha State Government’s existing guideline both in the light of NEP 2020. The current amendment can take this process further forward by ensuring incorporation of the best and viable elements into a standardized comprehensive textual code of reference manual on law and regulations for universities. This would come handy for the universities to resolve for themselves the issue of reservation and the modality of its implementation. In fact, it is partly in view of lack of enough clarity or conflicting views on this issue despite several orders and clarification that a huge chunk of vacancies of faculty have accrued or have lay vacant.

 Secondly, an ethical code of conduct may be put on place for the officiating Vice Chancellors and other stake holders involved in the process of recruitment of faculty members so as to make the very process transparent and subject to appropriate public scrutiny in order to weed out any element of nepotism, corruption or any other vested interests. This may equally hold true for their public conduct in the realm of everyday governance of the university.

 Most pertinently, the amendment by enhancing the age of superannuation of VCs from65 to 67 and making it a 4-year term has undertaken a praiseworthy step. But sadly, we have also been appealing to the Government for last so many years to enhance the superannuation age of teaching faculty in Odisha from 60 to 65 or at the least 62. In fact, this has already been widely acclaimed by UGC and other institutional accreditation bodies as one of the best practices of the university system. Besides, most of the states in India have progressively followed this practice so far by enhancing the age of retirement of their university teaching personnel. Since Odisha under the leadership of Shri Naveen Patnaikjee has always led from the front in terms of best practices, we are hopeful that our prayer in this regard will not go unheeded. As the government has rightly thought about the extension of tenure of VCs, similarly it is apt that similar considerations be extended to the teaching community of the universities as part of adoption of best practices.

 We would like to observe here that your extraordinary leadership has been a great source of empowerment for all of as university teachers and we will continue bank on this to raise voice against issues of injustice and discrimination to serve the cause of Bande Utkal Janani!

We request all the concerned citizens including students and academia of India and abroad to sign this petition to uphold the autonomy of the state universities of Odisha

 Thanking You,

Joint Action Committee, Universities of Odisha

Convenor: Prof. Kunja Bihari Panda, Utkal University

Co-Convenors:

Dr. Sruti Das, Berhampur University

Dr. Suman Karkera, Sambalpur University

Dr. Sidhartha Varadwaj, Ravenshaw University

Dr. Bairagi Ch Mallick, Ravenshaw University

Members

Teachers Associations of State Universities of Odisha

Contact

E-Mail: jacforuniversities@gmail.com