Earlier this month, the Jawaharlal Nehru University administration issued a circular in which it directed students enrolled in the university’s undergraduate, postgraduate, diploma, research and part-time programmes to maintain a minimum of 75% attendance if they wanted to appear in the end-semester exams. The administration also circulated a sample of the attendance sheet that teachers are expected to complete for each lecture, practical class and laboratory work.
The justification given was that compulsory attendance is part of the culture at the Indian Institutes of Technology and that Jawaharlal Nehru University should adopt this system too. Several students and teachers in the varsity, located in South Delhi, had earlier questioned the utility of such a move. After the notification was issued, students announced that they would boycott signing the attendance register. Students and a large number of teachers also said that they would fight for their academic freedom by taking to the streets to force the administration to withdraw the new rules.
Leaving aside the procedural issues that the university administration ignored while issuing the directive, its inflexible stance on the attendance rule is counterproductive. It sends the contradictory message that university systems should adapt to new government directives, while discouraging creativity and innovation at the same time. The arbitrary nature of some of these interventions has been challenged by the university community and reported widely by the media.
Additionally, post-graduate students have never been expected to mark attendance before as they are mostly involved in different forms of teaching on campus – public meetings, class lectures, and evening talks in hostels. To attempt to curtail the freedom of students by making marking attendance compulsory is to attack the notion of the university as an independent, critical institution.
JNU and the social sciences
Since it was founded in 1969, Jawaharlal Nehru University has had a significant impact in the field of social sciences in India, especially with regard to the interdisciplinary approach. Its students have always been encouraged to dismantle the disciplinary compartments found in traditional academic structures by studying courses offered outside their disciplines.
Innovation in course content is one of the university’s strengths. This has enabled the varsity to periodically reinvent itself while managing the balance between continuity and change. Like many other universities in the world, Jawaharlal Nehru University has always wanted to maintain a critical standpoint somewhat apart from the worlds of economics and consumerism. Its desire to retain its independence was spurred by the vision that it is a repository of liberal and humanist knowledge. In considerable part, in the working practices and attitudes of academics, Jawaharlal Nehru University followed the pattern of universities from the West but provided a definite shift away from the total dominance once held by social sciences in American universities.
Over time, partly due to its efforts, the social sciences in Jawaharlal Nehru University got involved with policy making and with matters of national welfare, just like any of the physical sciences. Its students were encouraged to develop the ability of critical scrutiny and self-inquiry and a sense of personal autonomy and tolerance. The emphasis on learning was a founding principle, and this was evident in lecture halls, reading groups and evening talks in hostels, where questions of action and contemplation would be discussed.
Above all, the adda culture – a traditional form of intellectual exchange among members of a similar socio-economic class – was democratised here. It gave students the opportunity to pick up linguistic and rhetorical skills that were indispensable, especially for those from remote parts of the country who sought careers in government administration, diplomacy and teaching.
The cultural style of imparting education at Jawaharlal Nehru University, in many ways, reflects the kind of research and learning popular in other parts of the world. Instead of dependence on heavy textbooks to explain texts, its students are introduced to critical methods to interpret them. All this partially explains why its students can still resist and question the way the university is being steered from outside and manipulated with regard to its recruitment and admission policies.
However, instead of attempting to bolster the status of the social sciences that are in a perilous state in India because of declining government funding, political support has been withdrawn to varsities like Jawaharlal Nehru University that are wedded to serious research. This means that the resources of these institutions are inadequate when compared with those of science and technology research institutes in the country.
Universities in trouble
Nobody doubts the necessity for change. In each generation, values and norms of the previous generation come under scrutiny. In response to changes, student participation in our public universities has produced a rich array of new visions for education. The wider participation of students is possible in these universities because of the availability of an open and accessible democratic system and affirmative action for those who belong to disadvantaged groups. This is responsible for the vast difference in the internal population of central universities funded by the government and those that are funded privately.
Given the fact that government funding of such institutes is drying up and the market is not equipped to fill the gap, the hurdles faced by the university system in India should be urgently addressed.
The social polarisation that higher education is facing today can be traced to the problems in our society, split by divergences of skills, social capital and access to work. Therefore instead of focusing on discipline and punishment through compulsory attendance, our administrators should make a case for increasing opportunities for doing social science research in institutions like Jawaharlal Nehru University.
The author is Professor, Centre for Political Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University.