The VC of JNU is Turning a Premier Institution Into 'WhatsApp University'

This article is a modified version of an open letter to President Ram Kovind by D.K. Lobiyal, President, JNU Teachers Association (JNUTA) and Surajit Mazumdar, Secretary, JNUTA.

We had written to the president of India nine days ago regarding the crisis in Jawaharlal Nehru University and the urgent need to end its root cause – namely, the reign of mis-governance by its vice-chancellor, M. Jagadesh Kumar. Since then, the crisis has become graver as we are now almost at the end of the scheduled period of the monsoon semester and the schedule of academic activities prescribed are far from being completed.

True to form, the VC has continued to reject every effort at finding a solution to the prolonged impasse and to the restoration of the conditions in which these activities can be undertaken by teachers and students. He has even spurned the opportunity offered by a second initiative of the Ministry of Human Resources Development to facilitate a resolution. The clear evidence of this lies in the complete mismatch between the subsequent actions of the JNU administration and what was put out by the MHRD in a December 12, 2019 press release as a “Record of the discussion held in MHRD on resolving the JNU Issue on 10th and 11th December 2019”.

One of the misdirected efforts of the JNU VC has been a concerted attempt to somehow complete the university’s end-semester examinations as per the academic calendar by reducing this process to a mere formality. This is also in sharp contradiction with the approach reflected in the MHRD’s report – that of first redressing the concerns of students and then consider an extension of the semester by a couple of weeks to allow academic activities to be completed.

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In his rush, the VC has disregarded the fact that examinations are serious academic exercises which can only be undertaken after fulfilling prescribed pre-conditions and under definite conditions. This disregard has now reached unbelievable levels that will bring nothing but disrepute to JNU and to India’s higher education system.

After initially trying to pretend that examinations are taking place normally and as per schedule, which was pure fiction, the VC now wants examinations to be held through alternative modes in the next three to four days. What he is pushing can only end up making JNU the laughingstock of academia the world over. He wants the question papers for exams of all courses to be sent to students registered for them.

Students are expected to then write their answers in their homes, hostel rooms or anywhere other than the classrooms where these examinations normally take place. They are then supposed to submit these answers after a few days – and acceptable modes of submission include not only submission through e-mail but also in the form of WhatsApp messages. Oral examinations are also supposed to be conducted by this kind of method – by converting them into written examinations!

It may be considered shocking that a VC of an institution of higher learning could even imagine reducing the system of evaluation to something like this, which would never be acceptable as a credible exercise and whose integrity would always be questionable. We, however, keep learning every day that there are no limits to the absurdities he can inflict on the institution he heads. By asking teachers to participate in this travesty of an academic exercise, he wants us to join him in destroying the university’s hard-earned reputation for maintaining high academic standards.

He is also, in the process, asking us to join him in violating the provisions of the JNU Act, statutes and ordinances that the VC and teachers are supposed to be bound by. These define the process through which the academic requirements of different courses and programmes, including the evaluation systems, are to be decided and through such a process these are already specified for all courses that are being taught in the current semester. What the VC is proposing is in gross violation of these statutory provisions.

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We had earlier pointed out that JNU’s teaching-learning was one of the most significant casualties of the VC's autocracy. Today he has himself offered the starkest evidence of this by proposing a mockery of that process as his solution to the crisis in JNU.

We believe Professor M. Jagadesh Kumar’s continuation in office is also doing great damage to the President of India's standing as Visitor of the university.

We  urge the president, and through him, also the MHRD, to act immediately to abort this destruction of a premier public institution. Only after that would teachers be in a position to ensure that the academic activities of the semester, including evaluation, are completed in the manner they should be.

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