The whole incident of JNU at the moment is a true depiction of what incompetency can offer when it grabs the helm. Partaking a broader perspective, the ongoing onslaught is neither trivial nor this abrupt. It is the percolating filth finally reaching down to the social grains and rotting them.
Institutions of national repute are being forced to offer their hard-earned credibility on platters while crushing their dissenting voices. Those institutions who are not offering their backs to be ridden are being assassinated characteristically, if not completely. Troubles in JNU are the mere extension of this same ever-enlarging frame.
Time and again attempts are being made to bend JNU; despite all hammering, it is adamantly not taking the shape comfortable to be ridden over. And the most annoying part is that their fine working tools are not coming in handy in JNU’s case.
Of course, on the front of character assassination, significant progress has been made. Across the media, ranging from social to mainstream, some hare-brained individuals are enjoying preferences over researchers and professors even on the issues of the latter’s expertise.
Painstaking gains and the logic of JNUites has been reduced to a mere “Tum to JNU se ho, tum to aisa bologe hi.” (You are from JNU, of course that’s what you think.)
Even those without PAN cards are whining for the claims of their tax money. In this plethora of issues, one should not overlook the doings of our beloved VC. A close observation of his handlings will lead to the conclusion that he is a mere baton in the hand of the regime.
It is simply that the government has found a man in him willing to be implanted as a VC and happily be utilised as a baton. One would hardly move beyond zero while counting the VC’s attempts of reaching out to students.
He is busy showing more accountability to TV news channels than to the students of his university. Issues are making uproars in the houses of parliament, but still, the VC shows no sign of pulling his head out of the sand. A VC who has fear of facing his own students would not have survived this turmoil without a solid reinforcement. It is clearly evident that he is obeying the whip of his masters. Grilling him only for the ongoing onslaught will serve a mere unjust.
Various rhetorics are doing rounds on social media with mixed-up parameters for judging a university and the IITs are being presented as darling institutions. The key attribute behind this dearness allowance can easily be derived from bowing down traits of IITs.
For example, in a very recent move, the IITs came up with a 900% fee hike for their MTech students. Laminated in the cellophane of national pride the hike was presented as a masterstroke move for the well-being of common students.
Not just that, the discontinuation of their fellowship was termed as a necessary change in the national interests. The cherry on the top was placed by the director of IIT Delhi as he went to the extent of comparing the fee hike to a surgical strike on students. “And obviously, a surgical strike was needed. I am happy that the ministry and the council took such a bold decision,” he said.
JNU never had the fantasy of competing with institutions who are inaccessible to the large factions of society. Right from its establishment, JNU has maintained its second to none status while empowering society through quality education. It has truly followed the ethos of India by continuing as a university of the people, for the people and by the people. Comparing it with institutions who are commodifying skills and indebting students in loans will be sheer injustice.