All’s well that ends well

There’s no denying that the septuagenarian union  minister for human resource development Arjun Singh  is a man of strong will and determination. An unrepentant statist cast in the Nehruvian control-and-command mould, when in P.A Inamdar’s Case (2005) the Supreme Court reiterated the right of privately promoted, unaided colleges of professional education to regulate admissions and tuition fees without interference from the Central and state governments, Singh struck back by piloting a constitutional amendment nullifying the apex court’s judgement. Subsequently citing the unanimous approval of Parliament to the (93rd) amendment, Singh insisted upon an additional 27 percent reserved quota in Central government education institutions for OBCs (other backward castes) — a proposal no politician of any political party dared oppose. Moreover in keeping with his pro-downtrodden castes image earlier this year, he appointed Dr. Sukhadeo Thorat, a professor of agriculture economics at JNU as the University Grants Commission’s first Dalit chairman. Thorat’s unexpected appointment as UGC chairman was widely interpreted as a setback for Dr. Rajasekharan Pillai, vice chairman of the commission since 2003 who was expected to succeed Dr. Arun Nigavekar who completed his four year term as UGC chairman in early 2006. But to Arjun Singh’s credit, he is not unmindful of proven talent. In mid October Pillai, a former vice-chancellor of the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala and founder chairman of the National Accreditation and Assessment Council who won golden opinions in these two assignments, was appointed vice-chancellor of the Delhi-based IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University), which with its 1.8 million (distance learning) students is billed as the world’s largest varsity. A distinguished molecular scientist in his own right, Pillai is reportedly delighted with his latest assignment. So after languishing in the shadows for several years, it’s a case of all’s well that ends well for this unpushy but brilliant academic. Empty autonomy In the ivory towers of indian academia the more things change the more they remain the same. This bitter-sweet truth is being experienced first hand by the managements of two of Bangalore’s top-ranked colleges which are belatedly trying to escape the smothering embrace of Bangalore University (BU) — once respected countrywide but now a hothouse of mediocrity overrun by quasi-literate academics with political connections rather than scholastic qualifications. Earlier this year there was considerable campus euphoria in the garden city’s St. Joseph’s and all-women Mt. Carmel colleges, which many years after they first applied, were granted academic autonomy by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission. Within India’s rigidly state-controlled higher education system, the conferment of academic autonomy enables college managements to devise their own curriculums, introduce job-oriented diploma programmes and conduct their own exams, although the degrees awarded to graduates of even autonomous colleges, are of the affiliating university. Nevertheless conferment of academic autonomy is tantamount to acknowledgment of consistently superior academic standards maintained by the college, and frees it from micro-management by the affiliating university. But more than six months later, the frustrated managements of the two colleges are discovering that notwithstanding the UGC imprimatur, BU is unwilling to cut…