Guest Post by VIRAJ KAFLE

It is a common sight to see professors today wandering through the corridors of our premier universities with a look of quiet desperation, but they should instead be offering prayers of thanks to the students who never show up. We have reached a peak of administrative efficiency where the traditional classroom, built to house a modest forty souls, is now legally mandated to accommodate sixty or even eighty. This logistical miracle, where two bodies are expected to occupy the space of one, is only possible because of the profound civic duty exercised by the truant. By choosing the comfort of their beds over the cramped benches of the lecture hall, these absent students prevent a literal stampede. They are the only thing standing between a smooth seminar and a public health crisis.

If every student who opted into a course at the eleventh hour or switched sections on a whim actually decided to attend, the resulting chaos would be biblically catastrophic. Oxygen would be traded like a precious commodity. Instead, we have the serenity of the half-empty room. The teacher can speak without being drowned out by the rustle of eighty notebooks, and the floorboards remain intact. We must recognize the absent student as the true backbone of the institution. They pay their fees, they pad the enrollment statistics that the administration loves to flaunt, and then they have the decency to stay out of the way so the system can pretend to function.

The beauty of this arrangement extends to the digital realm. These phantom scholars might never cross the physical threshold of the campus, but they are masters of the virtual submission. Thanks to the convenience of our online portals, assignments appear with the clinical precision of a programmed bot. The teacher is spared the traditional headache of chasing down late work or arguing over deadlines. Everything is uploaded, timestamped, and filed. Occasionally, a few disgruntled faculty members might raise a fuss about academic honesty or the suspiciously identical nature of the projects submitted, but that is really a personal problem for the teacher. It is certainly not a problem for the system, which only requires that the boxes be checked and the data be moved from one folder to another.

We must, however, address the minor nuisance caused by those few problematic teachers who still cling to the wreckage of academic standards. These individuals make it a point to actually read the submitted work, often attempting to downgrade or even fail large swaths of the invisible student body. Fortunately, the system possesses its own immune response. These rogue graders are quickly coaxed down by their more sensible peers and the administrative hierarchy. They are reminded that failing such a massive percentage of the enrollment is not only a statistical impossibility but a direct threat to the peaceful equilibrium of the university. To fail eighty percent of a class is to suggest that the class itself does not exist, an admission that no self-respecting official is willing to make. Thus, the outliers are brought back into the fold, and the grades are smoothed over until every phantom passes with flying colours.

The state and the university administrators are the true beneficiaries of this silent pact, but they do not celebrate alone. The leadership of the  Sarkari Teachers’ Association of Delhi University (DUTA), in its role as a loyal affiliate of the ruling party, plays its part in this grand theater by acting as the administration’s enthusiastic echo. They take to the stage to thump their chests with pride over “historic” achievements, celebrating large-scale appointments and promotions as if they have personally conjured a new era of academic prosperity. In reality, these appointments were decades overdue, a mere clearing of the administrative backlog, and have absolutely no relation to the actual, crushing workload of eighty-student classrooms.

Even more impressive is the surgical precision with which these appointments have been handled to ensure political harmony. While the administrators sign the papers, the DUTA leadership ensures the optics are perfect, effectively displacing the old ad hoc guard. For years, the system thrived on the labour of temporary teachers whose very survival depended on their ability to toe the sarkari line with Olympic-level agility. Now, they are replaced by a new cohort whose entry is framed as a gift by the leadership, even as the actual workload remains a total fantasy. This seamless partnership between the regulators and the representative body ensures that the chaos is never questioned, only applauded.

We must finally accept that the old-fashioned political majority, the kind forged through debate and presence in the public sphere, is a relic of a slower century. It has been replaced by this new kind of majority: a silent, digital mass that exists only on a spreadsheet. This is the majority we are now taught to obey. It is a majority that makes no demands, asks no questions, and ensures that the administrative machine never has to grind to a halt. As long as these students continue to stay away, the leadership and the state can continue to pretend that the university is a thriving center of excellence. It is a perfect, frictionless loop where the less that actually happens, the better the official statistics look.

As for myself, I sit here in the dim light of a classroom where the ceiling is peeling like a sunburnt tourist, my eyes closed in a state of terminal fatigue. I am not entirely sure whether I am a pedagogical genius whose lectures are so profound that they transcend the need for physical presence, or if I am simply so dreadfully boring that the students stay away as a matter of self-preservation. I live in a state of perpetual, low-grade terror, listening for the heavy boots of the flying squads. I fear the moment they burst through those double doors to find me lecturing to a graveyard of empty desks. Would they arrest me for teaching a ghost story, or would they simply check my pulse to see if I am as absent as my students? In this system, the only thing more frightening than a student who doesn’t show up is a teacher who still does.

Viraj Kafle teaches at Dyal Singh College, University of Delhi