Guest post by Pratiksha Baxi

The UGC’s new regime of qualifications, evaluation and supervision of teachers employed in universities makes fascinating reading for those who are entertained by the sublime ludicrousness of those with the power to shape our everyday lives in the academia.

The new regime betrays a lack of understanding of the basic enterprise of what academics do. The new regime is too voluminous to be read with lucidity at once. However it is not too difficult to understand immediately that the new regime, ushered in with the new pay hike, has imposed adverse conditions of employment. This is specially true for assistant professors who now are eligible for associate professorship only after 12 years of serving the University (instead of 5 years as earlier). The doctrine of reasonable and legitimate expectations  stands fully violated by the UGC, as assistant professors at the time of employment would not have expected the imposition of these adverse conditions.

The UGC has ignored the fact that the revision of pay scales cannot enforce a contract – signed or otherwise – on any faculty to adhere to the new rules since such a contract can only be constituted as un-free and therefore, not valid. In other words, better pay which was ostensibly ushered in to meet the rising cost of living cannot be conditional to the UGC’s homogenising and uncreative vision of how to enhance evaluation of teachers’ performance and determine promotions.

This imposition of a regime of evaluation is unfair and creates new academic hierarchies between faculty members. Assistant professors now have to jump through three stages over 12 years. They are expected to do a refresher and/or orientation course at each stage. The minimum of publications expected from an assistant professor is no less than a grand total of three publications over a period of 12 years! There are no exceptions to this rule, which indicates that the UGC and all universities who adopt this mandate assume that assistant professors research less, or should be expected to have less research or publication as compared to senior faculty, irrespective of the nature of the university. This condescending viewpoint assumes that undergraduate and post graduate academics at the assistant professor level ought to be teaching machines, refreshed in their subject matter every few years till they move up the academic hierarchy. Has the UGC based its rule on a survey of whether associate professors and professors produce more research and publications than assistant professors, especially in research based universities? Does rank determine academic creativity? If not, why are the conditions for academic creativity so adverse for those at the entry level?

The passion to research and write which animates our academic careers must find nurturance rather than be killed by a system of hierarchy and disincentives which positions an entry level academic as intrinsically academically unproductive, as compared to those senior in the academic hierarchy. Talent and passion are surely not subservient to institutional hierarchies and newer hierarchies must not be created to reduce the space or the time to experiment with ones ideas when young in the profession. All this is inimical to career development at the threshold levels.

Yet the UGC is fuelled by a passion to evaluate academic creativity through a mechanical and frankly, inane system of counting points. The translation of academic work in to the point system for both direct recruitments and promotions of faculty already employed speaks of a strange fascination with numbers. The UGC wants to give us more points for publishing in international journals or with international publishers rather than national journals or publishers. The UGC wants to reward participation in international rather than national conferences with greater points. Surely all the academics in universities in India are not equipped to host international conferences, nor is an international conference necessarily more academically productive than a local or a national one. The UGC has not even counted the number of journals available or taken into account the political economy of publishing. It seems the UGC has no awareness of the politics of the production of knowledge in postcolonial contexts.

If that which values everything international as accountable and good is a form of racism, it is a mystery why a then nationalist energy simultaneously animates the UGC. We are told that we will get points for doing community work which includes the demonstration of “values of national integration, environment, democracy, socialism, human rights, peace, scientific temper, flood, drought relief”. This is far-fetched, if not entirely‘ridiculous. By this logic every faculty who does not have children should earn points for reducing the population of the country!

Why does the UGC reduce the university to a tool for implementing state policy? It is not clear why the UGC wants us to certify and count each time we fulfil our constitutional duties as citizens. Can the UGC determine the framework of our praxis, in our academic and personal life?

The UGC not only wishes to frame our praxis but enters our classrooms by suggesting that new and innovative pedagogical styles will earn more points. So those who use power points will earn more points. Surely we all know that writing on blackboards or power points without reading out what is written, or presenting images in a classroom without describing these images, is not friendly to visually challenged students. If one does not use technology in class, it does not mean one is not innovative in terms of teaching.

The UGC is also approving of big projects. So people who get loads of money for research will be classified as holding major projects and the rest will be classified as holding minor projects. Their outcomes do not need to be academic. They have to demonstrate some policy outcome [not academic outcomes]. Those who research in archives or do fieldwork without a project will not be counted. While some of us have been critical of the way in which projects, funding and targets have altered the nature of social science research – at times for the worse – none of this discomfort seems to affect the academics responsible for bringing in these rules.

The language of indicators and targets reduces intellectual creativity, pedagogic energy and a way of life into a mere statistic. The imposition of a point system, rather than other qualitative modes of evaluation, will create a mindless and soul destroying academia which will promote mediocrity rather than talent. Do we want to be enslaved by a mechanical procedure of collecting points and getting certifications for a way of life as academics, irrespective of where we are positioned in the academic hierarchy?

There are many funny moments when reading the UGC’s text – while it is hard to abbreviate all these humorous moments – one cannot but help noticing that now applicants have to mention whether they have produced educational television when they summarise their experience or performance in the prescribed forms set by the UGC. Why must every academic be interested in promoting educational television?

We are supposed to fill in the application form whether we have lectured in an institute of repute – who decides which institution is reputed. Clearly there is an anxiety about the diversity of university spaces in India – and this has resulted in not only a mindless homogenisation but also reflects a fairly condescending attitudes towards academic institutions which struggle and work hard to be recognised, accredited and be part of the ivory league.

And we are supposed to write our father’s or husband’s name in the form. If UGC had a gender, we would address the institution as Mr. UGC, for reproducing the sexism towards women academics for expecting them to trace their identities through their fathers or husbands. The UGC surely must realise that women academics face many complex struggles in an academic environment and do not need the UGC to reproduce the idea that the mainstream continues to be heterosexist in its symbolic and material manifestations. For instance, in University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University, every woman academic is marked in the telephone directory as ms or mrs alongside their status as professor or associate/assistant professor. Now we know that UGC must approve of this.

Nor is it clear why medical history, disciplinary action as students or criminal action is elicited as relevant information in the application form. The application form, which seems to be inspired by a visa form, not only puts medical and criminal histories on the same register, it allows for disclosure to act as possible prejudice. What if an academic is charged of sedition if her writing challenges the state? Would this prejudice her job application? We know that this has been the fate of several academics who challenge the excess of state power through their writings and activisms – so are we now not going to get jobs if the state institutes frivolous or false charges against us? Professor Ashish Nandy, for instance, was charged by the Gujarat Government on the grounds of sedition for writing a newspaper article, which was squashed by the appellate court. So according to the UGC, if Ashish Nandy was an assistant professor, he would have been awarded ten points for writing a newspaper article (as versus a blog post on kafila), but would have been prejudiced by the charge of sedition by the Gujarat Government, hypothetically speaking. Surely the UGC’s application form is also an act of politics. As academics, as the era of emergency testified, we have valued our autonomy and the university as a space of critique. The UGC diminishes this space.

Do universities have no autonomy in determining our systems of academic standards, values and creativity? Are we to be an appendage to a funding institution without any space to negotiate, adapt and create? In the final analysis, the UGC has imposed adverse conditions on all academics, especially on assistant professors, in violation of the principle of academic autonomy. Why can’t a university determine its own norms of evaluations?

Is this merely an issue that must concern assistant professors who are unhappy about the scheme? It is really sad that when one raises these issues, one repeatedly encounters the view that such a passionate critique of the UGC is borne by one’s position as an assistant professor affected the most by this scheme. Some of us will continue to do our work as before but it is really troubling that the politics of this new regime is not really seem as a common cause to all academics, irrespective of rank, as an issue of university autonomy, an issue which was very dear to many valued academics who shaped many freedoms and rights for us to inherit.

Pratiksha Baxi is Assistant Professor, Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, Jawaharlal Nehru University