Never in Independent India Has the Teacher's Role Been More Difficult – Or Necessary

Today, September 5, is Teachers’ Day.

Another Teachers’ Day, and the challenges for teachers and the system of education in India are more than ever before. These are not only micro and macro but also emerging from past mistakes and due to rapid technological changes. Teaching, the mother of all professions, needs to take note and respond urgently.

Educational institutions in India are literally in a free fall. Freedom of thought is being curbed and standards of education are declining. Confused and confusing policies are being imposed in the name of a New Education Policy. In spite of problems building up in JNU, in 2016, after the episode in which Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya were arrested, I could confidently write a column on what we teach in JNU and our students learn. Since then JNU has floundered not only due to the COVID pandemic but also due to the internal changes forced on it by those lacking a vision of what higher education should be.

Today, I cannot write an article similar to the one I wrote in 2016. 

There has been discouraging news from various premiere institutions – medical colleges, IIMs and IITs. Add to that the scourge of coaching, cheating in exams, fake degrees and manipulations in appointments. Curriculum are being designed to restrict critical thinking and restrictions are being placed on students’ activities and their participation in the wider political life of the nation.  

Not only in JNU where the students are resisting all this, in TISS, students’ activities are increasingly being restricted. They cannot indulge in any political, anti-establishment, unpatriotic discussions, demonstrations, sit-ins, etc. In other words, no questioning of what is going on in society. Clearly, critical learning is sought to be suppressed – authorities want a docile student body, one that would not challenge the establishment.

The aim is to have docile labour – something businesses want. This is also the intent of the new Labour Code under which conditions of work are adverse. Docile labour will not protest. This is being pushed in the name of higher productivity but, actually, it is for higher profits. Courts are also increasingly pro-business. They are curtailing worker’s rights and reversing the gains that their movement had made over long periods of time.

In brief, there is an important link between the kind of education students will get, worker’s rights and nature of democracy in the country.

Globalisation and decolonisation

The rulers are forgetting that today the world is a globalising one where knowledge generation is the key to competition. Nations good at that dominate over others. That India is lagging behind is evident from the nature of India’s exports and imports and the huge trade deficit. It is also evident from the dependence for import of key military equipment and lack of self-sufficiency.

Knowledge generation requires critical thinking which has to be cultivated in the institutions of higher learning. New knowledge generation requires questioning existing knowledge. This is critical thinking – something that the rulers want to prevent because sooner than later, question would also arise about their actions and policies. 

The best way to suppress critical thinking is to capture/attack the institutions of higher learning. This is being done on the plea of decolonising the Indian mind. But what does that mean? The rulers are confused. On the one hand, they want to promote Indian knowledge systems while on the other hand, they welcome entry of foreign institutions into Indian higher education. So, while the best institutions that could generate socially relevant knowledge are being decimated foreign influence through inviting foreign institutions is being welcomed. This is setting back the little socially relevant knowledge generation that was going on, contrary to what is claimed. 

Decolonisation cannot mean rejection of all knowledge that was developed abroad in the last 12 centuries and starting afresh in India. It cannot mean only taking pride in the knowledge that existed then. It also needs to be asked why the process of knowledge generation atrophied then. Was it something that was in the situation in the country then and if so, how would that be rectified? Would the rejection of the developments in the last 12 centuries not be akin to reinventing the wheel? No answers are provided to these questions. 

Decolonisation has to mean generation of socially relevant knowledge by the current institutions of higher learning and for that they will need autonomy. After all, the very idea of decolonisation comes from questioning the implicit bias in existing knowledge. So, for dynamism, one cannot escape questioning by the faculties and students of institutions of higher learning.

Challenges of new technologies

The world is entering uncharted territory as technology is rapidly changing. The nation’s problems can only grow as many kinds of skilled and semi-skilled jobs will disappear and unemployment will rise dramatically. To cope with it India will have to make advance preparations. Workers will have to be able to learn rapidly so that they can mould themselves to the emerging situations that will confront them. They will have to be able to ‘learn how to learn’. 

India will have to be in the forefront of new technologies. Talking of India’s past achievements will not help rather, present day technologies will have to be mastered. India will have to admit its gap in technology and rapidly close it. If this is not done, the current leaders in technology would be able to dominate over us even more than at present, unless we shut ourselves from the rest of the world. But this will contradict the claim of being ‘Vishwaguru’.

The biggest challenge is coming from rapid strides in artificial intelligence (AI). News has trickled in of the likely integration of developments in Project Strawberry into ChatGPT-5 which is to be released soon. This will be a step towards creation of Artificial General Intelligence which will be closer to mimicking the functioning of the human brain. It is likely to have advanced level of thinking, tackling math problems and solving puzzles. It will generate data which can then be used to further train itself so as to reduce the errors and biases that exist in the present generation of AI models. All this will increase the pace of development of these technologies with deep impact on society which we cannot even anticipate today.

Critical role of teachers

So, without dynamism in institutions of higher learning the nation will flounder. Dynamism is not possible without teachers playing a big role. Not only will they have to question existing knowledge but they will have to enable their students to imbibe this habit. Class room instructions and guiding of research will have to be of a high order. 

Teachers will have to play a leading role in guiding the direction of change in society. This will only be possible if institutions of higher learning are led by intellectuals of high standing rather than by those with bureaucratised mindset who only curb autonomy and think that standards can be achieve by standardisation. They are also not respected by the rulers who appoint them for their narrow political ends of controlling the institutions of higher learning. Teachers who are currently disheartened and disinterested will have to be reenergised to give their best in a new environment that could be created in their institutions. Their role today is even more critical for the nation than at any time since Independence.

Arun Kumar is a retired professor of economics at JNU. He was president of the JNU Teachers’ Association and of the coordination committee of the Teachers’ Associations of Delhi Universities. He is author of Indian Economy since Independence: Persisting Colonial Disruption and editor of Challenges Facing Indian Universities.