Elect Rajib Ray as President!

Save Public Universities, DU and DUTA!

सरकार की गलत नीतियों के कारण हजारों की संख्या में नौकरियां खत्म हो चुकी हैं
और लगातार खत्म होना जारी है….
ऐसा दिल्ली विश्वविद्यालय में ना हो …

नई शिक्षा नीति के दुष्प्रभावों से बचकर,
दिल्ली विश्वविद्यालय के शिक्षक गरिमापूर्वक शिक्षण कर सकें,
प्रमोशन व पेंशन पा सकें, शासन- प्रशासन के समक्ष आत्मसम्मान से खड़े होकर
अपने अधिकारों के लिए संघर्ष कर सकें।

इसके लिए मजबूत और संगठित डूटा की आवश्यकता है।

Polling: Thursday 29 August 2019, 10 am – 5 pm, Arts Faculty

नई शिक्षा नीति: सार्वजनिक शिक्षा पर हमला; DU और DUTA के अस्तित्व पर हमला।

Dear Friends,

Teachers have entrusted us with the responsibility of leading the DUTA for the last eight years. We have carried out the responsibility of representing teachers in the best possible manner during extremely trying circumstances and promise to continue to honour your trust. The past decade has been a miserable period for the teachers, the University and the entire higher education sector.

Teachers and universities have been under assault from the Government and the Government appointed VCs. The relentless barrage of Governmental moves to push us towards commercialisation through self-financing and academic restructuring, as well as governmental indifference towards social justice, required us to make a popular critique linking the assaults on teachers and universities to the assault on the public character of education, organise ourselves, agitate and build public opinion despite repeated moves by some to disunite us. We have succeeded in pushing back some policy offensives which would have had disastrous consequences.

We have resisted and kept the DUTA intact even when an authoritarian VC had unleashed a reign of terror and targeted teachers on matters of appointment, promotion and pension. Now, we have a VC whose appalling apathy towards the University and disdain for teachers has brought the University to a standstill and prolonged the agony of teachers. His complete inability to act on teachers’ issues is in sharp contrast to his prompt action on what the Government/ ruling party wants. CPDHE has been handed over to the ruling dispensations and positions of power to those affiliated to the ruling party.

The ugly spectre of university officials, including members of the VC’s team and some Principals, getting together at the University guest house recently in order to garner support for the NDTF candidate for DUTA President reveals a sharp decline in administrative and political morality. The NDTF’s false canard associating the VC with the DTF continues unabated even as it takes the help of University officials and Principals to influence teachers.

Despite the attempts by the university administration to withhold reliefs wrested by teachers through relentless struggles, there have been advances. What we have achieved, and what we have not yet achieved and have to pursue further, are recounted in our leaflet.

The various steps towards privatisation we have pushed back and some which have crept in, such as Tripartite Agreement and switch to HEFA loan funding with EWS expansion, pale in comparison to what is imminent. The Draft NEP is to become NEP very soon. It proposes whole sale privatisation starting with handing over public funded institutions to private management (BoG) and vesting more powers over institutions and teachers than currently enjoyed by the UGC, Executive Council and the Governing Bodies taken together.

The agencies we are fighting for our pay, appointment, promotion and pension are to become irrelevant. What we need is that each of us is informed and together we inform students and public at large. The NDTF has been trying hard to make teachers believe that there is nothing to worry about now and claiming that thinking about the NEP weakens / diverts our struggles on the continuing issues. It absconded while DUTA studied the Draft NEP and formulated its feedback and kept silent except occasionally calling a policy document an academic exercise.

Five days before the DUTA elections it has responded but only to hide the true character of NEP and mislead teachers that it doesn’t concern us now. What is shocking is that the NDTF proposes that we should bother about the NEP only after it is implemented!!! To quote: “We are still grappling with the over 3 decades old 1986 Policy. The proposed NEP 2019, which is still in the process of being evolved, shall be there for next few decades.“ It proposes that we wait for the policy to be adopted and build opinion on some features of it later! The NDTF clearly has taken upon itself to ensure that this NEP gets adopted.

One of the first steps proposed is to privatise the management of the public funded institutions by 2020 by forming BoG at every such institution. A BoG has the power to hire teachers on its own terms and fire them. Privatisation of higher education does not require immediate change in private institutions. Private ones can take 10 years for constituting BOGs.