TThis time around, the elections are going to decide the role of DUTA – whether it is a trade union body to defend teachers’ rights and a democratic public funded education in the country or whether it continues, as it has done in the last two years, to become a mouthpiece of the government and its policy implementers at the university level. Never before in the history of the DUTA has it remained silent in the face of repeated onslaughts, proving its utter complicity in the rapid changes that we are witnessing, be it syllabi, workload norms, the 8am – 8 pm notification and others that are altering the very ground on which we stand.

These elections are an opportunity for teachers to give a resounding rebuttal to the NDTF leadership that, in the last two years, has helped the administration to undermine every aspect of our academic life. Its role has been that of a sentinel of the ruling dispensation in its drive to undermine and eventually privatise public higher education. Hence the ongoing demobilisation of the teachers’ collective. In return, it has been allowed to make the DUTA Office a seat of power over teachers.

This loss of DUTA as a body that anticipates, let alone recognises, the assault on education and on teachers’ service and working conditions, and that understands and calls out restructuring which is harmful to teachers and education, is a matter of urgent and grave concern. The DUTA cannot be allowed to become a pocket organisation of any government or the administration. DUTA leadership cannot be allowed to become a seat of power. The urgent need is to reclaim the DUTA as a teachers’ collective and restart the struggles on issues affecting teachers now and issues that threaten their future. That is why so many teachers’ organisations (almost all organisations barring the NDTF) have set aside their differences and, along with many individuals, have come together under the Democratic United Teachers’ Alliance (D.U.T.A.) to put up Aditya Narayan Misra as the candidate for the post of DUTA President.

Displacement

The betrayal by the NDTF, through its connivance with the authorities in the massacre of serving teachers in college after college as well as departments, is unpardonable. Its promised “regularisation model” or absorption through interviews was just a hoax. The magnitude of displacement and its implications for those who were deprived of livelihood overnight are before all of us. The NDTF is complicit in the institutional murder of Samarveer – a young life that was snuffed out because of the callous administration and the DUTA’s silence except for a perfunctory letter. Now, the NDTF claims that some of the displaced teachers are being absorbed in other colleges at its behest. The question that needs to be asked is that why were they displaced in the first place and why nothing was done to prevent it? Instead, the NDTF leadership has created an environment where teachers have to plead / even beg while it boasts of being the benefactor who “grants” permanent jobs deserving eternal gratefulness (their ability, experience and hard work ostensibly having no role in this process). What is even more shocking is that the Staff Association that stood up for its adhoc teachers was aggressively attacked by the authorities, with the active connivance of the NDTF-led DUTA.

Many of those who have lost their jobs have not even got an adhoc appointment as those have been informally prohibited. Once again, the DUTA has remained silent. Apart from writing a few letters, the DUTA has done little to ensure additional posts for EWS reservation and for implementation of the FYUP. The replacement of adhoc appointments by guest teachers with markedly limited pay and benefits is intended to gradually convert the University of Delhi into a site with a small cadre of permanent teachers and a vast army of guest teachers akin to many other public universities in India. This process of disempowerment by stealth is not only part of a process of defunding public education but, thereby, also disinvesting in the future of India.

Delay in Salaries

Permanent teachers are also the target of this disinvestment as salaries, pensions and arrears are being delayed regularly and with impunity. The NDTF leadership’s attempt to normalise this by taking credit for salaries and pensions being merely a few weeks late (rather than few months late?) is outrageous. This is nothing but an outright attack on the basic rights of teachers and pensioners. Obviously, the NDTF-led DUTA is loathe to take on its political masters and behaves like ostriches burying their head in the sand. It has failed to point out that this is a sign of the systematic withdrawal of grants from public funded institutions.

NEP & Graded Autonomy

The surreptitious application for Graded Autonomy Category I status by DU without discussion in statutory bodies and the grant of the same was reported in the recent AC meeting of 11.8.2023. The UGC Regulations on Graded Autonomy will mean that new courses/ depts./ centres will run in the self-financing mode with the danger that existing vacant posts can be diverted to running such courses. This is a step towards pushing us into becoming self-governing independent self-financing institutions. This must be read in the context of Clause 19.2 of NEP-2020 which envisages a new “light but tight” regulatory structure that, among other things, hands over each college/ university to a BOG which will have full/ unbridled powers over courses and teachers. This will undoubtedly lead to further contractualization of jobs and differential salary structures. Courses that are not market-friendly will be eased out leading to rampant commercialization of institutions and education. The DUTA leadership is content pretending that the UGC Regulations / NEP can be held back by begging for some make-believe assurance by the VC that DU will not start new courses in self-financing mode.

The dismantling of public funded education through the NEP has become a reality as we are witnessing in universities across the country. In DU, we are witnessing a serious dilution in the quality of the under-graduate programmes with the arbitrary reduction of teaching periods from 5 to 3, increased classroom and tutorial group sizes (that the NDTF-led DUTA has welcomed and congratulated itself for), the drastic reduction of course content along with sub-standard courses (VAC and SEC) taking up the bulk of students’ time and the removal of English from the AECC. The ill-thought-out cluster college scheme has been pushed without any understanding of its feasibility and the practical hindrances that colleges are facing. The push to substitute classroom teaching with online teaching has already started (in the case of AECC courses) and will soon replace regular classroom teaching as envisaged in the NEP and several UGC Regulations. The CUET is discriminatory and has proved to be a means to deprive large sections from access to higher education. Demobilising the DUTA by not launching a struggle against this restructuring of our working conditions shows the utter complicity of the NDTF.

Instead of enhancing the rights of all teachers, this deliberate inactivity of the NDTF leadership has allowed the administration to carry out, virtually unchallenged, all these changes including the educationally unviable and academically imbecilic requirement to have colleges working from 8 AM to 8 PM. The altered workload change will eventually make even permanent teachers surplus (leave alone temporary, ad hoc and guest teachers) once policy makers feel the teachers’ collective has been adequately silenced.

Promotions & Anomaly Committee Report

Many teachers have been denied promotions or had their promotions delayed because of what are de facto retrospective changes in requirements for promotion. The Anomaly Committee Report of the UGC (which was promised with much fanfare before the elections) seems to have disappeared from the agenda of the NDTF. In this too, the NDTF leadership has disempowered teachers by not organising any protest against the government / UGC. Once again, teachers are being treated as if they should be grateful for their promotions, their ability, experience and hard work being of no consequence!! Even the recent Amendment to the UGC Regulation 2018 has been rendered infructuous because of poor drafting and brings no relief. No effort has been made by the DUTA to secure promotion to higher levels for all teachers despite their immense contribution to teaching, research and corporate life.

Past service should be counted for all stages of promotion. Promotion to Professorship should be extended to all Associate Professors. Promotion to Associate Professorship without a PhD should be restored. Publications should include all kinds of work including books, chapters in books and translation work.

The NDTF led DUTA has not conducted any effective struggle for the issues affecting Librarians (such as written tests and clubbing with AO posts in the roster) and has frittered away the hard won gains of the teachers’ movement in case of PE teachers. It has not taken up the issue of illegal recovery of lakhs from teachers in violation of Supreme Court orders.

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Assault on Syllabi and Bigoted institutional takeover

Whether the Centenary Celebrations or academic development/ orientation/ refresher programmes, babas and pracharaks, demanding reverence and not interrogation of their views, have replaced academia both at the level of the University and its colleges. “Jai Shree Ram” reverberated while greeting the PM of our country gracing DU’s centenary celebrations. Many important subjects of study such as discrimination, feminism, and Ambedkar proposed in the syllabi are under attack much like the case in school education (Darwin, Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi’s essay on women’s right to education, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, Mughal History, Gandhi’s pursuit of Hindu-Muslim Unity, etc.).

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Inclusive Campus

The issues facing differently abled teachers including an accessible and safe campus and provisions for appropriate conditions remain unaddressed. Even the websites of the University and Colleges are not accessible.

Old Pension Scheme

Totally unpardonable is the manner in which the NDTF-led DUTA had also effectively demobilised the all-India body of teachers, the FEDCUTA, which has had a long history of fighting against policy assaults including API and mobilising teachers across the country. Forging an alliance with other bodies fighting for the Old Pension Scheme to all those appointed since 1.1.2004 ought to have been foremost on its agenda (along with employees of other sectors). Instead, the NDTF refused to even respond to calls for a joint movement, leave alone lead it from the front. Fortunately, this was rebuffed by the other constituents of FEDCUTA. Even the recent circular of 3.3.2023 giving one time option for OPS, which can bring relief to a section of teachers, has not been widely circulated by the current DUTA leadership.

The Way Forward

Friends, the challenges are many. The need of the hour is to ensure that the DUTA once again becomes the collective voice of teachers and mobilises them to ensure that our hard-won basic rights (our livelihood and our service conditions including promotions and pension) are not further eroded. And that this assault on our service conditions must stop. We cannot allow the role of teachers to be redefined, wherein they will not have a say in what they teach. DUTA must be reclaimed as an organisation of struggle or else teachers will become bystanders in the destruction of public higher education and therefore their rights and existence as nation builders. It is time to restore the DUTA as an organisation committed to teachers and to once again function as the leading sentinel of public higher education.

The only way to fight back the ongoing and impending vandalization of the University and to resolve all the pending issues before teachers requires articulate critique and bringing public attention to it through campaigns and protest actions on the streets. The DTF has a track record of leading successful movements through widespread mobilisation of teachers to roll back the FYUP in 2014, against the workload reduction and loss of jobs in 2016, roll back of API, promotion to Professor in colleges without any quota in 2018, restoration of the 200-point roster in 2019, and withdrawal of a circular replacing ad-hocs by guest teachers, and continuation of ad hocs without interviews in 2019.