One hundred and forty-one years after it admitted its first batch of liberal arts students, the Jesuit-promoted St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai — routinely included in the India Today annual ranking of India’s best liberal arts and/or science colleges — has been granted academic auton-omous status. In a long overdue act of magnanimity, the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (estb. 1956) — the apex supervisory and grants-dispensing body of all non-technical universities and colleges in India — granted St. Xavier’s the academic autonomy it had applied for in October 2007. With effect from June 16, St. Xavier’s became the first academically autonomous college of Mumbai University.
Within the Gothic-Victorian premises of the college, there’s deep satisfaction that this long-standing demand, which will empower this mainly undergraduate college with an aggregate enrolment of 3,983 students to design its own curriculums and conduct its own senior college examinations, has been finally acceded to by the UGC and Mumbai University. St. Xavier’s new status will also enable its management to introduce the semester-based system, permit inter-disciplinary studies allowing students from one stream the freedom to take classes from an entirely different stream. The year-end examination system will be replaced with continuous evaluation over three years. However given that it’s an aided college (academic and staff salaries are paid by the state government), tuition fees will be determined by the state government and the degrees awarded will continue to be awarded by Mumbai University.
“This will mean that the core of what we do in the classroom — the syllabi and evaluation — will be designed by our faculty, in tune with what our students and faculty are capable of, while we continue to receive degrees from the University of Mumbai and finance from the government of Maharashtra,” says principal Frazer Mascarenhas S.J. in his 2009 report.
For India’s vintage colleges, invariably granted A grade status by the Bangalore-based National Assessment and Accreditation Council, the award of academic autonomy is an important issue. It distinguishes them from parvenu institutions aggregated under the affiliating university’s umbrella. Currently the University of Mumbai has 600 colleges affiliated with it.
Other colleges with full academic autonomy are Presidency College and St. Xavier’s in Kolkata, Christ College, Bangalore and Stella Maris and Loyola in Chennai. Applications for collegiate autonomy are first made to the affiliating varsity which processes and forwards the applications to the state govern-ment, which approves and sends it to UGC. Colleges are eligible to apply for three kinds of autonomy — adminis-trative, financial and academic. Committed to keeping tuition fees low and dependent on government grants, St. Xavier’s applied for only academic autonomy.
St. Xavier’s, which celebrated its 140th year in 2009, has been preparing for autonomy for the past three years. The new curriculum will be offered to the fresh batch of first-year degree students admitted this year. Second and third year students will continue to follow the existing curriculum of the University of Mumbai.
“St. Xavier’s is grateful for the opportunity of implementing autonomy, as it will help the college to upgrade the quality of its education, in keeping with the capability of its competent and dedicated faculty and the excellent students it draws from all over the country,” proclaims the principal’s statement on the college notice board.
Nisha Khiani (Mumbai)
Third time unlucky
Upper middle class parents and students in Maharashtra and Mumbai in particular are jubilant. A recent high court judgement struck down a state government directive to junior colleges which would have made class XI or junior college admissions easier for students writing the class X exam of the Maharashtra Secondary School Certificate (SSC) examination board, vis-à-vis students writing the class X exams of the pan-India CBSE and ICSE boards.
On July 23, a division bench of the high court comprising Justice J. N. Patel and Justice S. C. Dharmadhikari held that the state government’s ‘best of five’ directive, which obliged higher secondary/ junior college managements in the state to evaluate the applications of SSC board school leavers on the basis of the aggregate score of their best five of six answer papers, while school leavers from CBSE and ICSE affiliated schools would continue to be adjudged on the basis of their overall averages, was discriminatory and in violation of Article 14 of the Constitution and ultra vires. With the new academic year about to commence on July 10, the high court directed higher secondary schools and junior colleges to restore the status quo ante and complete the admissions process. The Maharashtra state govern-ment has appealed the decision in the Supreme Court.
Following a sharp increase in class X student suicides — over 25 since January — Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan constituted a committee headed by the state education minister, Balasaheb Thorat, to investigate the causes thereof and suggest remedial measures. The committee recommended best of five as the ideal option for reducing student stress. The policy recommendation for higher secondary (Plus Two) admissions was duly decreed last April.
The new Plus Two/junior college admission policy was widely welcomed by the 1.2 million SSC board students in the state, but was perceived as discri-minatory by the 8,289 students who wrote the ICSE class X exam, prompting some parents of ICSE schools to challenge the state government’s pro-SSC best of five policy directive in the high court. According to the petitioners, the policy directive gave SSC students an unfair advantage in the annual scramble for admission into the state’s much-too-few junior colleges.
The Bombay high court’s July 23 judgement striking down the best of five directive marks the third failure of the Maharashtra state government to tilt the playing field in favour of students writing the state board’s SSC class X exam. In 2008 it introduced the percentile formula under which colleges were directed to divide a student’s aggregate by the average of the top ten students from that particular board and multiply it by 100. The final score (a percentile) would be used for admission. When this proposal was struck down by the court as discriminatory, in 2009 it introduced the 90:10 system under which 90 percent of junior college seats in the state were reserved for SSC students. Even this proposal was struck down as unfair and discriminatory.
Knowledgeable educationists are unanimous in condemning these populist moves of the state government to curry favour with the estimated 40,000 households whose children are enroled in the state’s 19,287 SSC board schools, whereas the number of ICSE schools in the state is a mere 260. But since academic standards of ICSE schools tend to be higher than of SSC schools, a disproportionately larger number of ICSE (and CBSE) students are invariably admitted into the junior colleges of top state-aided undergrad colleges such as St. Xavier’s and Elphinstone. “If the state government wants more SSC students to be admitted into the best junior colleges, it should revise and upgrade the syllabus and curriculum of the SSC board. But it should maintain a level playing field for students of all boards. It’s wrong to tilt the playing field in favour of SSC students,” says Rohan Bhatt, principal of the ICSE-affiliated Children’s Academy, Mumbai.
But if this commonsense prescription is accepted, the number of students faring well in the SSC board’s own liberally marked examinations will fall sharply. Which won’t be good at all for cultivating vote banks.
Anupama Patil (Mumbai)
Hardy hybrid debate
The transportation of tiny pre-school and primary students crammed into the peculiarly noisy and uncomfortable automotive vehicle known as autorickshaw — essentially a 75cc motorised scooter with an additional wheel and a cramped super-structure for seating three passengers — is a familiar sight in most of India’s cities. A half-way option between a two-wheel automotive scooter and a four-wheeler car or omnibus, the pollutive autorickshaw — reportedly designed, mass manufactured and even exported to several developing countries by the Pune-based Bajaj Auto Ltd (sales revenue: Rs.2,194 crore in 2008-09) — is a testament to centrally planned post-independence India’s failure to build adequate public transport systems, and has become indispensable to middle class India.
Now the use of autorickshaws to ferry children to and from school has become a burning issue in Pune (pop. 5 million), where this hardy hybrid was invented. The reason is that the Maharashtra state government has taken a decision to phase out rickshaws for transporting school children, although no date has been set for terminating this service. Unsurprisingly, Pune’s sizeable community of auto-rickshaw owners and drivers — an estimated 45,000 autorickshaws are plying the crowded streets of Pune — threaten to call a strike if the government doesn’t re-consider its decision.
According to the Maharashtra Rickshaw Sena, 12,000 of Pune’s autorickshaws are engaged daily in ferrying an estimated 60,000 children to and from the city’s 125 schools. However Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, the state’s transport minister, has somewhat belatedly become aware of the risks of three-wheelers for school children. “Autorickshaws have been given the permission to transport adult passengers, not school children. The state government will not bow to pressure tactics of strikes, and will go ahead with its decision of phasing out the rickshaws for ferrying school children,” he said.
Rickshaw drivers believe that the proposed ban violates their funda-mental constitutional right to engage in a business, trade and profession. “Autorickshaw drivers are already reeling under losses as despite diesel prices having increased twice during the past eight months, fare hikes have not been permitted. We could have made a hue and cry about this, but haven’t done so keeping in mind the public good. This proposal of banning autorickshaws from transporting school children is going to hit many of our members hard. Moreover the govern-ment has taken this decision without even consulting us,” says Nana Kshirsagar, president of the Maharashtra Rickshaw Sena.
However not a few educationists in Maharashtra’s second industrial city are of the opinion that the decision is overdue. “Autorickshaw drivers have become a law unto themselves. They not only routinely over-charge commuters but also pack in six-eight children into vehicles which are licensed to transport three passengers at a time. This has created valid fears about the safety of children they transport. If their union is so concerned about their members’ welfare, it should impose a carriage capacity restriction upon them,” says a primary school principal who preferred to remain anonymous citing fear of “hooligans”.
But Maharashtra Rickshaw Sena spokespersons dispute these charges. “In fact school buses are more unsafe. Last year 22 students were injured in Panvel when a bus they were commuting in caught fire. Similarly, three students were killed in a mishap that had taken place at Jogeshwari, Mumbai in 2008. In Pune, autorickshaws are not only safe but also the best means of transport considering the city’s narrow roads and congestion. More buses will mean more congestion as a result of which children will not reach their schools on time,” warns Kshirsagar.
Huned Contractor (Pune)