Delhi University may finally see redemption. The past seven-eight years have been most horrendous for the university with a prestigious legacy. The decay started sometime towards the end of the tenure of Professor Dinesh Singh as the vice-chancellor.
It started to sink during the time of Professor Yogesh Tyagi leading to his suspension, followed by the ad hoc regime whose tenure is comparable to the rule of Sayyid Brothers of Delhi Sultanate.
Thanks to the ad hoc rule, the DU today has unaccountable number of professors and equally unaccountable number of associate professors and nearly complete absence of assistant professors. The appointment process has been stuck for many years, and end of the tunnel seems to be still some distance away.
In the midst of these, we have the new V-C, Professor Yogesh Singh, with the assignment to repair the university’s image and ward off competition from other universities like the Guru Govind Singh Indra Prastha University (GGSIPU) and Ambedkar University of Delhi (AUD) offering UG programmes.
While the DU community can give a short shrift to the very thought of they being challenged, the fact remains that their new V-C is a product of the GGSIPU, having joined the newly-founded university two decades ago. He for five long years served as the Dean of the information technology department.
Singh comes to the Maurice Nagar campus with about a decade of experience in the position of V-C and its equivalent. However, the nature of challenges in the DU would be different from what he had faced at, say Delhi Technological University or Netaji Subhash University of Technology.
May be his experience of V-C at Maharaja Syaji Rao University, Baroda may come in handy. However, the point to be noted here is that the Gujarat University has a single funding head, whereas different funding heads of DU is proving to be its biggest bane. There are 12 colleges starved by the policies of a quirky Delhi government, which funds them.
The first challenge for the new V-C would be to restore pay-parity among the teachers and staff of the differently-funded colleges. He should not give in to the tactics of the Delhi government. If the government continues to work in the manner it has done in the past three years, Singh should work out a plan for the Centre’s take over.
The next big challenge is to take trade unions by horns and restore teaching-learning process on the campus. Absenteeism by teachers is at an all-time high. Academic lethargy has been rewarded by the outgoing regime with a basketful of promotions. It has created situation where the university today has more professors than professional teachers.
Probably he could take a cue, without getting into the ideological debate, from the tenure of Professor Deepak Nayyar, who not only tamed the bullying unions, but also restored academic credibility. To a great extent, his successor Deepak Pental continued in the same vein though not with the same degree of dynamism.
The rot started during the tenure of Professor Dinesh Singh, who promoted community parochialism over academic credentials in the matters of appointments. It turned into a gangrene during the term of Yogesh Tyagi and the ad hoc regime only added to it. How well will the new V-C wield the scalpel to clear the rot, only time would tell.
(The writer is an author and president, Centre for Reforms, Development & Justice)