Social Exclusion and Inclusion in India or how every attempted inclusion leaves behind a trail of exclusion.

The 21^st Century has been teeming with discourse of how society excludes certain category of people from the mainstream of society and how these excluded populations have to live on the fringes of society without access to development and the fruits that it generates. This call for inclusion based societies has been almost global with almost every conceivable society having substantial populations living outside of the mainstream society.  In India too, the call for inclusion or inclusiveness as it is called by some has found a place not just among the members of the academia and activists but also among those who belong to the excluded communities notably from among the LGBT community. When the Supreme Court of India criminalized homosexuality and sodomy (the criminalization was based in an archaic law dating back to the 1840s) it has overridden a judgement of a lower court, the Allahabad High Court which decriminalized both homosexuality and sodomy taking into consideration the spirit of the law (which is an acknowledgement of changing times) and went by the word of the law to recriminalize it, saying that it was up to the government to end the problem by carrying out a constitutional amendment.

We would do well to remember that the issue of exclusion of LGBT communities, though every bit valid, is usually the subject of interest to the urban based populations and very little of it actually means anything to the rural folk.  We would also do well to remember that in India exclusion from the mainstream involves many different strokes for many different folks.  When Prof. Sukhdeo Thorat became the Chairman of the University Grants Commission of India, he sanctioned the setting up of Centres in select universities to study the process of social exclusion.  These Centres came to be called the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy.  The wording not only sounds inelegant but also garbled which became in difficult to understand what exactly these centres’ mandate was. With time it became clear that these Centres became de jure and de facto Centres for Dalit Studies.  In India, the caste system has claimed the right to be studied first and this has been the case since the times of the Indian freedom movement and the debate between M K Gandhi and B R Ambedkar and this culminated in the Poona Pact, which then become the basis for the creation of a reservation policy. What was interesting about the system of reservations that it also included a 7.5% reservation for the tribal people, while giving 15% to the lower castes in the hierarchy of the caste system, and most of these lower castes consisted of people who were characterized as the untouchables. To make sure that these reservations would be constitutionally guaranteed, they were included in the Constitutional (Scheduled Castes) Order of 1950 and the Scheduled areas and Tribes in the 5^th Schedule of the Indian Constitution.

However, the output of research in the various Centres for the Study of Exclusion and Inclusive Policy only has created a rhetoric against the Caste System and exclusion of Scheduled Castes from the upper echelons of the Hindu society.  While some forms of research have brought out newer dimensions most others only reiterate the same story again and again. What is very surprising is that research on Tribal populations in this Centres (not situated in the North-Eastern region of India) has almost ritually given the question of inclusion of scheduled tribes in the mainstream of life, the blind eye treatment. Apart from that, the various activists who work for the interests of the scheduled tribes seem to believe that the best way to deal with them is to make them continue in their present existence in remote forests, arguing that bringing them into the mainstream society would disadvantage them tremendously because of their lack of familiarity with the complexities of modern life which would  perhaps add them to the already burgeoning numbers of labourers who have been dispossessed of small land holdings that were originally theirs. This argument while having some merit, raises questions which are both ethical and moral.

One can differentiate between the moral and the ethical because the latter term derives itself out of a certain ethos often a social ethos and the former is derived out more out of a faith that people have in them or a faith that they follow and hence like the German philosopher Kant would say morals and morality are a categorical imperative. One could debate on the morality of leaving the tribal people as they are. Those who support their existence in the forests would argue and not very wrongly that they are most comfortable leading a form of life which they have led for centuries so for them the so called goods of modern society are not of any consequence. Others argue again not very wrongly, just because they are used living in a certain way does not mean we can leave them there open to the diseases that have a cure and also exposing them to the problems of modern civilization like environmental pollution which have already made way into their living sphere. Also the growing population of the country has been putting pressure on the forest cover of the country since more people require more land to live on and cultivate. So the pressure is not only on the tribal people but also on animals that require a certain amount of forest cover for their existence. Today, India is the only country where the Tiger and the Lion exist though in different parts. Both animals have been reduced in numbers to the extent that they are on the verge of extinction.

In this scenario, would it not be a better alternative to slowly initiate the forest dwellers into the mores of modern civilization with all its problems?  The answer should be yes, because the future of the forest and its dwellers including the tribal people and animals is precariously poised towards destruction.  Before the problems of modern civilization reach the doors of the tribal population and make them homeless and unfit to live in the world, it is the responsibility of both government and peoples’ organizations to equip them with the necessary skills to not just survive but thrive in the modern society. This has to be done gradually and in a phased manner. The best way to start the process would be to impart them education and that would facilitate their being drawn into the mainstream society. That this can be done has been demonstrated by the Christian missionaries in the North-Eastern part of the country where every single person can speak and study in English.

In stark contrast to this, tribal populations that inhabit Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha have become dispossessed of whatever lands or forests they had control over and have been drawn into the mainstream society as labourers. Many remain in the forest, for example the Konda Reddys, Chenchus, Gonds, and it is just a matter of time before the relentless march of civilization will come face to face with them and render them unlivable. In Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, there is yet another unprecedented development which was a result of political pressures. The Banjaras or the Lambadas as they are called in Telangana in Andhra Pradesh are considered to be like the gypsies or nomads. However, the story that they tell about themselves is that they are the descendants of the Rajput King Prithvi Raj Chauhan. In Rajasthan and in Maharashtra they are considered to be OC whereas in Karnataka they are considered OBC. I have already written articles about the how OBC is a misnomer because it stands for Other Backward Classes. The problem here is that when you have called them other backward classes implicit is the notion that there are backward classes which are already identified and it is apart from these already identified backward classes that you are looking at the other backward classes. However, in India, there has been no identification of backward classes and it should be remembered that class is an economic variable, which means that you can have the rich classes, the middle classes or the lower classes who are all categorized on the basis of their economic strength alone.

However, the notion of other Backward Classes does not invoke the economic position of these groups at all. What it does is that it only invokes castes. I have written at length in the past the only way in which these groups should be addressed is backward castes and not backward classes. To make the murky water even more murkier dominant social castes like the Vokkaligas and the Lingayats in Karnataka, the Yadavs and Khurmis in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and the Yadavs and Gouds in Telangana get classified as OBCs.  However, to return to the point about the Lambadas or the Banjaras, due to political pressure that they were able to exert they managed to get themselves the status of Scheduled Tribe in the erstwhile undivided Andhra Pradesh and the present Telangana and the residuary Andhra Pradesh. Once can see that the reservations meant for the Scheduled Tribes are totally hogged by the Banjaras or the Lambadas. The Gonds, Raj Gonds, Konda Reddys, Koyas, Chenchus etc have not had any access to the benefit of reservation in educational institutions or in jobs. Only the Lambadas who cross over into Telangana and Andhra Pradesh corner all the benefits.

In this scenario, it is obvious that neither the government institutions or people’s groupings have any interest in the upliftment the tribal populations. At best their efforts are akin to the Narmada Bachao Andolan where all that is demanded is the cessation of the construction of the dam on the river Narmada so the forest which would otherwise get submerged would remain intact and the tribal people will also have a status quo ante.  The question is how long would this last even if the construction of the dam were to be stopped?  The inexorable march of the modern civilization is bound to get to the forest dwellers sooner rather than later despite the protests against the construction of the dam.

In effect, when words like progress and development are used they are used only in the context of the scheduled castes because that is vote bank politics at work. The LGBT question is raised because it is a safe bet for the urban upper caste to appear progressive and at the same time escape the criticism of being upper caste. In all this the tribal populations of the country (except in the North-Eastern parts of the country) remain anonymous, undeveloped, backward and out of everyone’s consciousness. This means that while we talk of inclusion, we do so selectively and every inclusion creates other exclusions in Indian society. At this rate, the goal of inclusiveness of all cannot be reached. Exclusions will remain and worse still their exclusion will be ignored and that is the sad truth behind  the discourse of inclusion in this country.

Dear Reader,

I am down with some ill health and not in a position to write the rest of the post that I had started. This is only a very temporary hiatus and I should be able to start writing again and finish the posts that I have made. Please bear with me.

With thanks
Satish

The new cocktail of politics and academics: Armed with deliberately created semantic confusion and making giants out of the undeserving - Part I

Yesterday when I started out writing a piece on the mixing of politics and academics, I  had the idea about how potent the mixture of the two was becoming. While doing so I realised that my arguments would perhaps be best served if I were to give readers a glimpse into the functioning of academic institutions and to make that apodictic I decided to draw from my own experience. As I kept writing I realised that I had a great deal to say since I had decided to draw from my own experience. The post had already become pretty long and to append the actual content of what I wanted to write originally would not only make a long piece even longer, it would also confuse the two things. That is why I made that post a personal preface to this post, which should help readers understand the raison d etre behind the post that would not seem like a rant of someone who is just saying things for the sake of saying things.

Two incidents, which should have been settled in two or three days, have become national issues and have been grabbing headlines for a very long period; so long that I do not even know when they actually started. But I remember the reasons why they started and the places and specific instances that set off an unfortunate trail of events that shows no signs of ebbing. The first instance was something that happened at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) and the second just few days later was what happened at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. The first instance was supposed to have been a meeting convened by the UoH to condemn the hanging of Yakub Memon, the man who was indicted as having been involved in bomb blasts in various trains in different parts of India. The argument advanced for the condemnation of his hanging was that since he confessed to his guilt, he should have been given a sentence of life imprisonment. This was followed by a research scholar Rohith Vemula who hanged himself leaving behind a suicide note which was quite eloquent and profound and ended with a line that said that his suicide was a result of his introspection and no one was particularly responsible for that. Then a high pitched campaign began first targetting a BJP MP who had apparently written a letter to the higher ups in his party claiming that there was anti national activities that were happening on the UoH campus. Slowly the Yakub Memon issue was side tracked and Rohith Vemula's suicide had become the central issue.

There is another sub story behind this story of the suicide. Four months prior to Rohith Vemula committing suicide he along with 5 other dalit research scholars were expelled from the hostels for a period of 6 months on grounds of indiscipline and were living outside the hostel in the open. Rohith Vemula on the fateful day committed suicide and this issue which was dormant for 4 months was brought out into the open. A new twist was given to the suicide story, claiming that the suicide was a result of the harassment of Rohith Vemula by his former research supervisor Prof. P. Appa Rao. Unable to bear the harassment meted out to him, Rohith Vemula shifted from one school to another a few months ago. Appa Rao was appointed by the BJP government recently and Appa Rao was considered as a candidate for the post of Vice Chancellor since his ideological leanings were towards the BJP. Rahul Gandhi materialised from nowhere suddenly to support the striking students and heaped praise on Rohith Vemula and even went onto say something to the effect of his being a new Mahatma Gandhi. Not to be outdone in all this, Sitaram Yechury of the CPI(M) also descended on the campus to show his solidarity. Rohith Vemula became a national hero.

But all this that appeared here is only a sub plot of a deeper reason behind the interest shown by the politicians in the affairs of the UoH Campus. Lot of parallels have been drawn between UoH and JNU. The only similarity that they have is that they are both Central Universities but otherwise as different as chalk and cheese. The reason why JNU came into being was because the then PM of India Mrs. Indira Gandhi was fighting a political battle within her own party that involved Kamaraj Nadar and Nijalingappa. She sought out the CPI (M) for outside support and as a sop she gave her nod for setting up JNU and most of the faculty in the place were scholars with a Marxist leaning. JNU's politics were for long dominated by the left, read that as the Students Federation of India which is the student wing of the CPI (M). My having been a student of the university when the left was still relevant world wide, gave me a great deal of insight into the working of the SFI. I was never a Marxist but what I respected about the SFI was the culture that they had created there was quite open and it did not really matter if you were a Marxist or not if you did not aspire for political positions. The place was also vibrant with several people sitting around what were called dhabas and discuss many issues of a political nature. There was a political maturity not only among the faculty but also among students.

On the other hand the reason why the UoH came into being was totally different. At the end of the first separate Telangana agitation which was crushed by again Mrs. Gandhi, she doled out a sop to develop the area by sanctioning the setting up of a Central University in Hyderabad. I must say as an aside that this was really a trick, since setting up of a central university in Hyderabad hardly could create a situation where it would serve the people of the region because by definition a central university cannot play a regional role and to say this new university would play such a role can only be considered to be chicanery. However, to describe the place further in its incipient phase is necessary. Most of the students who went to this university were apolitical and very studious and being far away from the Hyderabad City in those days (now it is a central and happening location) meant that students rarely ever came out of the campus. In fact, the institution was not even served by the regional transport corporation and as a result the University acquired a couple of buses of its own to ferry students from and to the campus. A part of the campus was in the middle of Hyderabad, in the precincts of the Golden Threshold which was once the residence of no less a person than Mrs. Sarojini Naidu and the building got its name from one of the poems written by the great lady herself. The place was shunned by local people who belonged to the lower castes because they felt that the standards were much to high there in educational terms and most of the faculty were non Telugu speaking people who came from different parts of the country. The students too were from places in the present day Odisha and some of the southern states. The reservation category seats were filled up by students from the Coastal region of the then undivided Andhra Pradesh. The place therefore did not really have too much of a local content because Osmania University then was still a functional place with competent faculty and students of Hyderabad felt more at home there.

But things began to change in Osmania University (OU) post the failure of the first separate Telangana movement. A Presidential order was made which is now referred to as the Article 371 (D) which later on became the 32nd Amendment of the Indian Constitution and as per this 85% of the seats in educational institutions were reserved for local people. This did not apply to the faculty selection but some of the academic Dons decided that this rule would be used in recruitment of faculty as well. And that sealed the future of Osmania University. Already a number of good faculty members went to JNU and some to UoH which was coming up and in order to drive out non Telugu (read that is a Telangana Telugu people) people, Telugu was introduced as a medium of instruction especially in the constituent colleges where the elite students went for their under graduation education. Nizam College (which was always an English medium college and older than OU before it was made part of OU, was affiliated to the Madras University)  and the Women's College at Koti which also was merged into OU saw the introduction of Telugu Medium. This produced the effect of driving some people out (teachers that is) and recruitments that happened post the end of the first Telangana agitation were purely for people from the region initially and from within the university later. The striking quality of this recruitment was that it was made with a view to keep out the urban people of the region and to recruit incompetent people deliberately so  that the sovereign fiefdoms that emerged within the University would be safe in the future as well. The people thus recruited came from all castes and that is important to know. The lack of a properly educated faculty made its presence felt by the time it was the 1980s and locals turned to the UoH for their post graduation education.

I realise that this has become a very long post as it is and I have not yet reached what I really want to say. So I will say this is part one and sign off with to be continued......

P.S: Not proof read and hence I  request you to go easy on me for all kinds of terrible mistakes of spelling, grammar etc.

The new cocktail of politics and academics: A personal preface

I have not posted for a long time and I have decided to post now for a reason. That is because the level to which politics have fallen to a new low and how politics has co-opted academics to create a heady concoction which is making a mockery of the education system in general and the University system in particular.  First let me express my reasons for not posting regularly. The Indian political landscape has changed dramatically in the last couple of years, that is to put things mildly and ambiguously. The real way to put it would be to say that, the process of lumpenisaton of politics which began in the late 1980s and early 1990s, has now attained a critical mass, strong enough to stymie "free speech" out of fear of becoming a target of the wiles and guiles of the lumpen elements of politics from any party. That is a potential headache that can be avoided if the pursuance of a relatively peaceful life is important. I was not ready to  be the fool who steps in where Angels fear to tread. But this is probably a reason that I make to convince myself that there is good reason for not posting. The other reason was a feeling of despondency at the way in which things are happening  in my country and the lack of any perceptible change even when I have written to a minister who has studiously ignored the mails that I have written to him. The lessons I have learnt is not to believe what the politicians say, for they are after all the products of the very system that people like me  would want to change. Therefore it is like approaching a child with the request to destroy its own mother which has carefully nurtured the politicians into becoming what they are. I understood that the approach is all wrong (from my side that is) and accept that things will move in a certain direction when they have reached a certain speed; a dynamic inertia. And trying to intervene is akin to trying to stop a deluge with the palm of a hand. However this is just a preface which is personal, so I will write one post that tells the reasons why I have become what and that is related to how my confidence was shattered and my academic life seemed to be in tatters and rags.

I said  this post is related to personal reasons  but totally related to the the academic system. . I said that I was affected by the way things were in academics and the impact on my personal life. So I shall lay bare the experiences that I had while I was on lien from Osmania University and working for Tata Institute of Social Sciences when it began the process of starting its campus in Hyderabad. In all fairness, I must first tell you that those people who demonised me later were actually very kind and understanding of my personal and academic profile and capabilities. That  was how it was for less than one year and things began to change rather suddenly and alarmingly. The very people who were interested in progress and my dedicated pursuit to the cause that I was recruited for, turned against me and made a misery of my life. Yet I plodded along purposefully since the student community saw me as someone who was contributing to the widening of horizons because I approached their perceptions with an absolutely open mind, hear them out and accepted if there was something right in their arguments or logically  demonstrated to them the reasons why their arguments were inaccurate.

This popularity of mine (I later came to know was the very reason why the persecution of me began) was what kept me going despite the fact things were being done to sabotage my work and throw me out of the place, since I was put on contract even after a promise that my services would be made permanent. As the days towards the end of my lien were approaching, the attacks on me were also taken to students who were considered to be particularly close to me and also an attempt was made to build a group of students who were against me. Let me cut a long story short. My computer and email were short circuited, complaints (all imaginary) were brought to my notice about my lack of sincerity and dedication. It became impossible to continue there when an attempt to show me as having harassed a new recruit who was from the Dalit community was being made. I realised that I was looking down the barrels of not one but two double barrelled sawed off shotguns. I bailed out and went back to Osmania University. But I was made persona non grata in TISS, which is okay. But when lies and canards were being spread about me by TISS people in other institutions like the Council for Social Development and in some departments of the University of  Hyderabad, I began to question the necessity to do anything like writing blog posts on politics. I said it all began very nicely in TISS and I must also add that I was discharged very politely by giving me a relieving letter as a response to the letter I had written asking to be relieved (I did not write any letter on the that was cited as having written the said letter) but I appreciate this because ultimately somebody did consider me as being worthy of a dignified departure from the place. All the paper work post my relieving order from TISS was also done without any hindrance and in fact it was done very quickly so that I could go back to OU with all paperwork in place. I have to be thankful for this, for making it look like I wanted to leave myself.

This pushed me into a very deep depression something that I did not want to acknowledge publicly since I started thinking the truth that I was jettisoned from my job would come out if I said or did anything. But as the temporal distance distance grew from my being fired, I began to think that I did not do anything shameful so why should the actual truth be hidden and why should I feel humiliated when I had done no wrong? Now I tell the story as it is. Back in OU things had changed for the worse, when I thought nothing could get worse. But I must say that OU is one place where as a person I received a lot of love and caring from colleagues and very often students as well. I realized that what OU has given me, I perhaps cannot get anywhere else. The biggest plus point of OU I realized is that it is still a place which has not lost all consideration of humanitarianism and sympathy. I will be speaking less than the truth if I were to say that I am over what happened at TISS. I feel betrayed and a victim of politics of hatred, all for my just doing what was expected of a good and diligent teacher. It brought into light the fact that you can get into the way of the ambitious by just doing your job. At TISS I was made the Chairman of the Centre for Policy and Governance. I wanted to do something with that position, so I designed an MA course in Public Policy and Governance. For this I took the help of some of the best minds in the country who were known to have a solid base of knowledge in that area and created a draft syllabus which was later approved by the Academic Council. But to ensure that no traces of my presence existed there, even before the first batch had reached the third semester, the course was completely redrafted and the Centre was converted into a school. So it is now School of Public Policy and Governance which should have a Dean in place but has a Chairman. I could go on but I won't. Unfortunately the place is full of jackals and some of them took this opportunity to kick out a deaf and dumb employee who was the son of a well known Academician of international repute who thanked me profusely for finding employment for his son. He died while the son still had the job, but my conscience kills me about this. His only big sin was that he was someone who was there because of me.  All I want to say is that the demonisation that I faced while I was there was continued. I became Snowball and Napoleon (characters from Orwell's Animal Farm) took care to see that I was not allowed back and Napoleon's canines are there to carry news of  Snowball still trying to play politics with that institution.

I thought maybe by laying out the experiences that I had at TISS, Hyderabad,  I can put my experiences and feelings of being shattered in the public domain, I would feel that I have junked what has been a bewildering experience and that someone now knows the story. But that is possibly a palliative or something that would have a placebo effect on my mental self. Maybe I have got it all wrong but I am going ahead because all this came out when I was actually trying to write a piece on how politics and academics are getting intertwined in Universities of India, specifically the more prestigious ones where the left wants to prove that they are right and the right is doing its best to see that it does not get left out of the process. For today, I will stop. I will write the original blog I had started writing today but will make a proper post out of it tomorrow. I also realise that there is a second part that I have to write on justice, so maybe I will do that too. This is to say that  I am trying to get back to regular blogging again, starting today. All that is required is a rebuilding of my lost self esteem and confidence, which will hopefully happen as I start writing again.

P.S: Haven't proof read, so it is likely to be full of syntactical and semantic problems apart from the regular problem of half baked sentences.

I am still trying to do what I think is right with regard to education

I have written two letters to Sri. K.T.Rama Rao who is a minister of importance for the Telangana State. Today again I have written one letter since I saw a news item in the New Indian Express which has interviews with certain people who have given falsified information regarding PhD admissions in the Osmania University. I have written a letter again today to counter the untruths that were given as truths to the press. I am putting up that letter here. I do not know if the mails that I am writing are being read by him or not but I am doing what I can. Here is the letter.

Honourable Minister Sir,

I am sorry that I am persisting with writing letters to you. What prompted me to write this letter to you (with the hope that you are reading my letters even if you are not replying to them) is the article that appeared in today's New Indian Express on the front page with a picture of the Arts College and some individuals who are part of an elected body of the university, complaining that Osmania University does not have enough faculty to guide students and therefore recruitment should be taken up. I would like you to know that three years ago the University gave admissions into the PhD programmes of various departments that exist in the University, to 1800 students in one go. What made this possible is that the cut off mark for considering a candidate as qualified was 15 out of 100. So people with 15 marks in an objective entrance which had questions like "Socrates was killed by A. hanging him to a ceiling fan B. a speeding car C. giving electric shock and D. making him drink poison. Everyone knows that Socrates belonged to ancient Greece and hence could not be hanged to a ceiling fan or die because of being hit by a car or through electric shock since electricity as we know it did not exist then. So the obvious answer to that is D. by making him drink poison. Despite such questions being asked (the exam pattern is multiple choice questions numbering 100) people could get only 15% and were given admission into the PhD programme. We are all saddled with lots of PhD students none of whom can write a thesis in any language. 

This situation is further exploited by some teachers who have started taking money and writing theses by using the method that I had explained in my previous missive. Previously there were MPhil courses with a restriction of 12 students every year and with selections taking place after the students had written long essays and passed the written test and then appearing and passing in an interview where they had to explain the subject or research and why it merited research. On completion of MPhil the PhD aspirants then had to attend an interview for admission into the PhD programme. Now there is a one hour multiple choice test and people who get 15% in the examination are taken as research students. Three years ago 1800 students were admitted into the PhD programmes of various departments due to 15% being the cut off mark for selection. The mega number of 1800 students being taken into the PhD programme directly has meant that all the supervisors have the stipulated number of research scholars working under them and so admissions into PhD programmes have become irregular. I understand that as politicians there are compulsions which call for a compromise on some of the values but in Osmania and other universities there are no values left and hence compromise can be made for anything or everything. Caste divides, religious divides have become the norm with all people in the University from the highest position holders through teachers, students to the non-teaching staff. These divides are today firmly entrenched in different identities and very often they clash. I do not know what the plans of the government are with regard to education (from primary to higher education) but if a sincere attempt is not made at least at to start setting some things right then this whole thing will collapse under its own dead weight. I once again request you to take my letters seriously, I am not insane. I have the best interests of the new Telangana State in my heart and I believe that real empowerment of people takes place when they get good quality education and I am sad to say as an insider of the system that institutional rules and regulations have been completely destroyed and any more of this takes place the university will exist in name only.

Yours Sincerely

A V Satish Chandra

Professor of Political Science (*Nizam College) 

Osmania University

Hyderabad - 500007

Telangana State

Mobile:+919949006185

Mail:avsatishchandra@socialsciences.in, avsatishchandra@gmail.com

*Off campus constituent college of the Osmania University.

I hope that people do not think that I am mad or a saboteur of the system. I stayed in this city and country because of my love for them. I take people's money as salary and my conscience tells me that the least I can do is let the powers that be know some ground realities. I will try what I can and leave the rest to God.

Fate of universities in Telangana

This time what I am doing is different from anything that I did before. I am putting on my blog two letters that I sincerely wrote to Sri K.T. Rama Rao, who is the Minister for IT and Panchayat Raj. Ideally this should have gone to the Minister for Higher Education Sri Sri Hari, but given the talk that I hear that Sri K T Rama Rao is sincere in his attempts to develop the State of Telangana and since he is a young man with wider and better exposure to the world (I hear he was educated in the USA and lived there for sometime) I thought perhaps it would be more apposite to write to him. Another factor is that the Chief Minister of the State is his father.

The context in which these letters were written must clearly be established before I make my letters open on the blogger platform. The State government had advertised for candidates to apply for posts of Vice Chancellors of all the Telangana Universities all of which have not had regular Vice Chancellors for different periods of time. The advertisement had lowered the experience necessary of the prospective candidates from 10 years as Professors to 5 years. This has meant that a greater number of people became eligible for application and though I am not aware of who all applied, past experience clearly demonstrates that it is people who are willing to pay obeisance to their respective political masters who actually apply and begin the process of canvassing for the respective selves through those who have access to corridors of power. This tried and tested model has probably been the single most important reason for wherever the education system has ended up today. The days when sincerely constituted search committees were formed and they in turn sincerely identified the names of three eligible candidates all of whom were eminent scholars and made meaningful contribution to the cause of education have been long gone. But the search system meant that at least people with some academic credentials, however little they maybe, became Vice Chancellors.

The new idea of advertising for the post of the Vice Chancellors was mooted by the Honourable Governor of the then undivided Andhra Pradesh Sri E S L Narasimhan in order to draw applications from good candidates who maybe deliberately or accidentally left out by the search committees. The one thing that he did not think about was that he cleared the road for the worst among the academicians to apply for the post of Vice Chancellor. To aid confusion and corruption to this whole process was the UGC's conception and implementation of the Academic Point Index (API) which would be responsible for 80% of the marks that a candidate gets in order to become an Associate Professor from Assistant Professor and from Associate Professor to Professor.  Unfortunately this meaningless system has become applicable even for entry into a University. A candidate gets a certain number of marks for MPhil, PhD and published articles in peer reviewed journals. In India all journals are peer reviewed and therefore every candidate gets his/her articles published through plagiarism. Plagiarism is also used extensively by candidates for completing MPhil and PhD theses. The Indian Government runs an anti-plagiarism software called "Shodh Ganga". I think this is an amazing name.  Now somebody needs to tell the government or the HRD Minister or the Prime Minister that "Modiji/Irani Ji aapki Shodh Ganga mailee ho gayee". This software is like the various methods that are suggested to clean the Ganga river. Anyway all the universities in Telangana have decided that they don't want the polluted Ganga river so simply have avoided become part of the river and plagiarists have been breathing easy.

But this post is about people who are applying for positions of Vice Chancellors. The Chief Minister Sri K. Chandrashekar Rao said that for Osmania University and Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTU-H)  only "Merit" will be taken into consideration but for the other smaller and newer universities considerations of caste, creed, religion will be taken into consideration. I have been aghast at this, since it is the newer universities that need Vice Chancellors with a vision and will therefore be able to build up these universities into credible educational institutions. To me it seems that all universities in India require Vice Chancellors who have the vision to create newer centres of learning which in turn will create newer and credible forms of knowledge. The country in general and the new State of Telangana in particular require Vice Chancellors who can stand up to all kinds of pressure and implement a vision that would be the hallmark of each of the universities.
So this is the long context in which I decided to write to Sri K.T. Rama Rao.

What you will see below are the two letters that I had written to the honourable minister with some hope, (I called it a flickering flame in one of the letters) and I did not even receive even on liner like "Thank you for your letter, will see what can be done".

Honourable Minister Sir,
Let me introduce myself to you first. I am, A V Satish Chandra,PhD, a Professor in the Department of Political Science at the Osmania University. It has long been my idea to get across the realities of higher education in Telangana to someone in power who would understand my angst  but till today I could not get your email ID. I am told that this is your official email ID, which means someone else will check it before you do. but I am still writing this letter to you with a hope that you will actually get to see it. Otherwise I just have to think, I at least tried.

What prompted me to write this letter to you now (apart from the fact that I have only just obtained your email ID) is the fact that the Government of Telangana State has advertised for the posts of Vice Chancellors to the various universities of Telangana.

My mail maybe a little long, owing to the subject matter, but I seek your indulgence because the matter is such that it cannot be stated in two or three sentences. Osmania University is now the breeding ground of corruption, lack of ethics among teachers, a complete failure in the provision of education, but students get marks in the 80-90% range. It has been often been said that the reason for this is that the students are bad. I would like to correct this misnomer. Osmania University has been ruined by teachers. I can tell you that except for two or three teachers in the whole university, nobody would get a job in another university. People cannot teach. I have known teachers personally who put in about 30 years of service without going to a single class. Various strategies have been evolved by the teachers in connivance with innocent students who seem to think marks are all that count.

Osmania University is a cesspool of dirty academics. Every year PhDs are produced by using a simple technique. There will be one thesis called "Assessment of Janmabhoomi programme in Nalgonda district". This will be taken up by another student who will change the title to "Assessment of drought relief programmes in Mahbubnagar District". All that the student does is change the name of Nalgonda to Mahbubnagar where it figures and Janmabhoomi to Drought relief programme. In this way thesis after thesis is being created and students who cannot speak in English or teach in Telugu have been given jobs.

The senior teachers do not want to engage classes, and so a falsified workload is sent to the university (the university administration is aware of this but plays along) and Academic Consultants and Part timers are taken on to do the job that is to be done by teachers. The sad thing is that these Academic Consultants have been designated Assistant Professor (c) where the C stands for Contract employee. Today these people are demanding regularisation of services. What you need to know is that both Assistant Professors (C) and the Part timers have not faced any interview boards. Service rules strictly say that for a selection to be considered as proper an interview committee consisting of the Vice Chancellor of the University, the Dean of the Faculty and the Head of the Department (for which the interview is being conducted) two subject experts from outside the university (one of whom is a UGC nominee) women and dalit representatives as observers so that no wrong is being committed to them. None of the Assistant Professors (C) or Part timers have faced such a board.

Then there is a question of constituent colleges which are actually off campus colleges of the Osmania University and these are the Nizam College, University College for Women, Koti, Saifabad Science College near Masab Tank and the PG College at Secunderabad. Along with the main campus even these colleges claim that they do not have enough staff. Of these Nizam College and University College for Women enjoy the status of autonomous colleges, which means that they get an autonomy found and both have been Colleges with Potential for Excellence which means additional grants for research. In the case of the Women's College the status of CPE has been withdrawn by the UGC due to no research activity. That is the fate that might befall Nizam College in the beginning of 2017, when it is due for review.

Apart from this the University itself has the Status of University with potential for Excellence (UPE) and two and half years have passed and none of the Centres (about 4) have started any work. The University is due for NAAC accreditation and at this rate it will get a B grade or even C grade which automatically means that the status of UPE will be lost and along with that a large quantum of funds. The UGC is no longer giving out doles. It expects the departments and the universities to pursue research and it is on the basis of that, that it will release funds. The UGC has granted two independent centres; Centre for Gandhian Studies and Centre for Indira Gandhi studies. Research in this centres means that more and more money will come in, but unfortunately they are simply sitting there with no premises even and no work being done.

Sir, Osmania University says that it has a severe shortage of staff. Nizam College and University College for Women also complain of this. Just before bifurcation of the State, Nizam College was picked up by RUSA (Rashtriya Ucchatar Siksha Abhiyaan) for becoming a University. Now the University College for Women is also eligible for it. If these two colleges are spun off into universities, then most of the staff will have to go back to Osmania University, which means that there will be no shortage of staff and no need for Assistant Professors (Contract) and Part timers. If Nizam College and University College for Women become universities (the latter can be the first Women's University in Telangana) and if rules of employment are strictly followed they will emerge as good universities. A bulk of Osmania Universities' staff is due for retirement from service in the next three years. Those posts can also be filled up with worthy candidates again with merit being the basis and following the rules to the T.

As far as the new universities are concerned I have some ideas about those too. Instead of being just universities they can be converted to Centres of Advanced research in specific areas. Already my letter is rather long, if you can give me an audience for 15 minutes I can explain and substantiate further all the things that I have written. Please do not take me for an eccentric person or as a person with some hidden agenda. I am concerned for my State and Country.

I wrote this letter to you because you are someone young (much younger than I am) and when I hear you or listen to you, I get the feeling that you mean what you say. It is that hope that has made me write this letter to you. I ask for your forgiveness if you believe what I have done is wrong. But I live in the hope that somethings would change and the education system is better. In fact, I have been working to raise funds to improve the quality of school education through use of information technology and there are a lot of people who tell me that I suffer from a Mahatma Gandhi complex because I want to do these things.

I apologise to you for this long letter and somewhere in my heart there is a flickering flame which wants to believe that things will improve. Thank you Sir, Jai Hind

Yours Sincerely
A V Satish Chandra, PhD
Professor of Political Science (Nizam College*)
Osmania University
Hyderabad - 500007
Telangana State
*Off campus constituent college of the Osmania University


Honourable Minister Sir,

I had sent you a letter in the afternoon of 30/12/2015 and thus far I have not heard back from you. I think somebody in your peshi who accesses your public mail, probably did not report of its existence to you. Maybe you are still thinking about it (if you have received and read that mail) I do not know. In the meanwhile four prospective candidates have approached me to prepare their CVs for them in such a manner that they look good. I have been very ill for sometime now and I have been using that as an excuse to tell them that I cannot do it now. Some of the more persistent ones are waiting for me to recover so that I can manufacture impressive looking CVs for them. My heart and mind both tell me that this is wrong, so I will not do it. I have lived my life on the principle that when something bad is happening, for that bad to grow all it needs is a few good men to remain silent and not do anything. I have taken salary from OU for 22 years thus far and it is this salary that kept me and family reasonably comfortable without any crisis. I am aware that the money comes from the people of the country and the state.  It hurts me to see that a public institution created with the explicit purpose of educating students, so that they can use the opportunities and come up in life, is blatantly being  used for everything other than education.

When I applied for the Girton Fellowship which could take me to England, to Cambridge University and another to the Oxford University I received a letter each from both universities which clearly stated that in order to be considered eligible for Girton fellowship (there are only three worldwide) and other fellowships for teachers  I should be from any of the Central Universities or well known Universities such as Osmania University, Calcutta University etc.From that level of prestige the university has now acquired a notorious reputation of a non-academic institution. I feel sorry for all those people who built the university to the level that it had become known worldwide as a good institution of higher, because what is left  of the people who built this university,s reputation as an institution of excellence is a legacy that today is zero. I saw the search committees constituted for the identification of appropriate candidates and much to my sadness I see names of people who actively contributed to the fall of the university. These people cannot identify  brilliant persons because what that person says will be incomprehensible to them. They will select another notorious person and the university will fade away into oblivion. If you do not get to read this letter and the one above or if you see it as a rant of a madman then the flickering flame of hope that is still there in me will be put extinguished forever. I hope it does not come to that. Thank you .

Yours Sincerely
A V Satish Chandra, PhD
Professor of Political Science (*Nizam College)
Osmania University
Hyderabad - 500007
Telangana State
*Off campus constituent college of the Osmania University.

I know that this post is a bit too long even for the most patient or readers. I ask you to give me a little more latitude and finish my story with what Prof. M. Kodanda Ram Reddy had to say recently about politics in Telangana. He said he was sad that the new state was following the same old practices in terms of the TRS wooing elected representatives from other parties to its own ranks. I have no idea what is going on in Prof. M. Kodanda Ram Reddy's head now and during the agitation, but I am surprised that he thinks it is somehow very bad that the old political practices are still be continued. Why would they change? Telangana is not a new country nor is it a state that said it will change politics. After all the politicians of Telangana are good old and well seasoned people who were there in politics for a very long time. In fact, I probably won't be too much away from the mark if I say the TRS is the problem child of the TDP and still has various members of that party, starting with the Chief of the party and the Chief Minister of the State (and his son Sri K.T. Rama Rao got his name from N.T. Rama Rao the one time supremo of the Telugu Desam Party) and many more members whose names I do not remember to well and that exercise does not have a place in this post. At the height of the agitation when students were saying that the new state would provide them with jobs due to their participation in the agitations for separation of Telangana from Andhra Pradesh, I clearly told them once the new state is formed wait for 5 years and tell me what changes they saw for the better.