One of the three modern presidency universities established by royal proclamation of Queen Victoria as a gift to the people of India on the occasion of suzerainty passing from the East India Company to imperial Great Britain in 1857, the University of Bombay has nurtured and shaped great scholars and statesmen. Among them: Lokmanya Bal Gangadhar Tilak; nuclear physicist Dr. Homi J. Bhabha; B.R. Ambedkar, author of the Constitution of India; Mahatma Gandhi; former prime minister Morarji Desai; legendary lawyers Bhulabhai Desai, Nani Palkhivala and H.M. Seervai; and John Samuel Malecela, former prime minister of Tanzania. But the varsity hasn’t fulfilled its early promise.
In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2015, the University of Mumbai (UoM), as it is known after 1996, is unranked while several Chinese, South Korean and South-east Asian varsities which were established a century later, are ranked in the Top 200. In the indigenous EducationWorld India University Rankings 2015, UoM is ranked a modest #33 in the league table of the country’s Top 200 universities.
This is the backdrop against which Dr. Sanjay Deshmukh (49), a postgraduate of the Institute of Science of UoM which awarded him a Ph D in botany in 1990, was appointed 24th vice chancellor of his alma mater on June 20 by the governor of Maharashtra (who acts on the advice of the state government), from among five academics shortlisted by a search committee headed by Justice (Retd) B.N. Srikrishna, a highly respected former judge of the Bombay high court. According to UoM sources, 144 academics applied for the top academic position in Maharashtra (pop.112 million), of whom 21 were interviewed and five shortlisted by the Srikrishna Committee.
Deshmukh brings considerable academic and administrative experience to his new office which he will assume on July 7, for a period of five years. According to UoM sources, Deshmukh has 13 years of teaching and research and nine years of administrative experience.
UoM’s new vice chancellor will need to combine all his teaching, research, and administrative experience with political sure-footedness to get UoM which the declining value of its certification apart has been engulfed in a series of scams and scandals in the recent past, back on track. Early in the new millennium Dr. S.D. Karnik, a former pro vice chancellor was peremptorily removed from office on graft charges.
Likewise, Deshmukh’s predecessor Dr. Rajan Welukar, mysteriously appointed VC without having the requisite 15 years of professorial experience, or publishing the mandatory five research papers in international peer-reviewed journals or authoring a textbook — minimum qualifications for aspirants to the office of vice chancellor — was sacked on February 19 this year following a public interest litigation filed by former UoM pro-vice chancellor Dr. A.D. Sawant and social activist Nitin Deshpande. After damning strictures were passed by several judges of the Bombay high court, the governor was obliged to remove him from the post a few days before his retirement in July, an unprecedented punishment in the history of the university.
As UoM’s 24th vice chancellor, Deshmukh’s major challenge will be to resist the pressure of political parties — especially the parochial Shiv Sena and Nationalist Congress Party — which have played a major role in reducing Bombay University, which right until the early 1980s attracted faculty and students from across the country, into a parochial institution. With its sizeable annual budget of Rs.465.20 crore, 711 affiliated colleges and aggregate student enrolment of 650,000, the varsity is a rich prize for Maharashtra’s notoriously get-rich-quick politicians. Hence the great interest of all political parties, especially the sub-nationalist Shiv Sena which regards India’s most industrial state, and particularly Mumbai, as its bailiwick.
“The situation of the university is so bad that it will take years to revive it. The varsity needs a strong-willed vice chancellor with deep academic and administrative experience who can withstand political pressure. Deshmukh is a proven academician, researcher and well-intentioned individual, but with limited administrative experience. I wish him well but it will be a herculean task for him to clean up UoM where the rot is deep,” says Sawant.
Great challenges often provoke great responses. UoM’s 650,000 students undoubtedly hope so.
Shweta Nair (Mumbai)