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.