By Asmita Sarkar:
Two weeks after an interview with Brinda Bose, Associate Professor, JNU, which talks about how police presence in campuses must not be allowed, did the rounds of the internet, the UGC released a new set of norms that makes sure that students are ‘safe’ on their campuses. How do they plan to do so?
By installing CCTVs, and increasing police presence on campus. This same state police, which, through its comradery with the administration had been allowed to clamp down on student movements, will now be a prominent presence, to ensure safe campuses.
Professor Bose’s statement that much of the policy changes in these academic spaces are done under the garb of secrecy, is especially true when FTII’s ongoing protest is taken into account. The ‘stakeholders’ i.e. the students, teachers are hardly consulted anymore and the most prominent proof is how students of Delhi University have been treated as guinea pigs over the years by suddenly introducing the semester system, then the FYUP and now finally CBCS. She also states how higher education is being seen by the government as an instrument to create a future generation imparted with their ideologies.
Recognising the platform that social media has given to students, Brinda Bose talks about the constant effort to hush things up in the academic sphere.
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