Stoned & stunned over varsity funds

SANDEEP SINHA

As someone who has never been a student of Panjab University but lives and works in the City Beautiful, I have come to admire the institution.

Other than its beautiful sprawling lush green campus, the PU is an intellectually stimulating place with its sheer range of academic activities and the eminence of scholars it attracts. Besides its pursuit of excellence, what one found commendable is the exposure it provides to its students by giving them access to the luminous minds in diverse fields. 

On the few occasions that I have been there to listen to eminent journalists like S Nihal Singh and Mark Tully, I found the atmosphere informal, relaxed and participative. The best thing is that the events are open to all. You can enrich yourself by listening to the scholars and have the freedom to pop a question or two.

So, it was with dismay that one watched the university get caught in a stir over fee hike. Much has been written about how the university is jointly owned by the UT and Punjab and how they are supposed to meet their expenses in the ratio of 40:60. The University Grants Commission says the PU is already getting a grant of 

Rs 176 crore while other universities in the country are getting just Rs 50 crore. PU authorities feel if the Central government was to cut the fund allocation to UGC, getting even this grant would become difficult. So, hiking tuition fee was the only course open to it.

Predictably, the fee hike proposal — said to be steep, in some cases by 1100% — has invited protests. The agitation by students is not new in this country, right from the days of the freedom struggle to the clarion call by Loknayak Jaiprakash Narayan against the Emergency. In recent times, we have seen Kanhaiya Kumar and Gurmehar Kaur take up the cause, braving the odds that came their way.     

But the large-scale involvement of students over an issue like fee hike causes concern. While the major political parties have their student units like the NSUI and the ABVP, that are taking up the cause of the students, going on chain hunger strike, the absence of a trigger in the shape of a politician — as in the case of the famous “Mere Jigar Ke Tukron” phrase used by a Bihar CM, Mahamaya Prasad Sinha, — to stoke the flame should serve as an eye-opener.

The spontaneity should remind that despite being right in intent, it has not been able to take the students into confidence. As to the view that most PU students were from affluent families who could pay up, Akshay Sharma of the NSUI, who was leading the hunger strike on the 21st day of the agitation, said, “Most such vehicles are of outsiders. Jyada toh hamare jaise hi hain ji.”  

Ensuring quality while granting access to education has been a great dilemma for planners. Education today is not just about imparting knowledge or character building. It is also about empowering people. That is why arresting the drop-out rate in the elementary stage of education is a priority. A majority of the people in India are still beyond the pale of market forces and subjecting them to laissez faire economy, even in education, would mean effectively depriving them of it. That is why the UGC itself exists, to sustain colleges and universities as it is not possible for all students to make it to the DU or JNU. 

 In the case of a stir by parents’ association over fee hike, it was reported that the Punjab CM had decided to cap the fee hike at 8%. A similar thing could be done in the case of PU. Politicking over funds will only undermine an institution that compares with the best. It will also take away the best of minds, both teachers and the students. As PN Haksar, adviser to Indira Gandhi, had famously remarked, “Brain drain is better than brain in the drain.”

Hope things get resolved before they come to such a pass.