Cover Story

Death of a professor: fear and frustration in small-town India's neglected colleges

The violent death of Prof. H.S. Sabharwal in Ujjain is the fallout of widespread student anger and frustration sweeping the Indian hinterland. Its fury could halt the momentum of the fast-track Indian economy. Dilip Thakore reports

Beyond the glow of the bright lights of mega shopping malls and soaring plate glass skyscrapers of metropolitan India where smug chauffeur-driven corporate chiefs take home annual salary packages of Rs.4-6 crore, and glitzy page 3 parties crowd political and economic news reports out of daily newspapers, there’s an uncoiling serpent of student anger in small-town India’s under-served colleges and universities. Its fury could halt the momentum of the fast-track Indian economy currently growing at 8 percent-plus per year.

The violent death in the small town of Ujjain (pop. 700,000) of Prof. Harbhajan Singh Sabharwal, head of the political science faculty at Madhav College of Arts, Commerce and Law (estb.1890) on August 26, which was graphically depicted on several television channels on the eve of Teachers Day (September 5), is the fallout of this anger and frustration sweeping across the Indian hinterland. The trivial issue of postponement of student elections at the college, prompted a posse of students under the banner of the ABVP (Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad) — the students wing of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — to storm the gates of the college in protest. In the ensuing melee, Prof. Sabharwal (62) who reportedly made a mild show of support of the faculty decision to postpone the college election during an argument with the militant students, was manhandled and suffered a fatal heart attack. Some eyewitness reports say he was inflicted several blows to the chest, which triggered a cardiac arrest.

Whatever the facts of the case, the identity of the aggressors is beyond doubt. The main protagonist was Vimal Tomar, the burly, thickset secretary-general of ABVP who was clearly shown to be threatening Prof. M.L. Nath (who was actually in charge of the college’s students union election) and Prof. Sabharwal standing beside him, on several television news channels. It’s a telling indicator of the extent to which students unions even in obscure colleges have been captured by political parties that Tomar, who is in his mid-thirties, has no direct connection with Madhav College. Since then following a national uproar and the opposition Congress party in the state making capital out of the "murder" of Prof. Sabharwal, Shashi Ranjan Akela, the president of the Madhya Pradesh unit of ABVP and several other members of the BJP-supported students union have been arrested.

With the BJP — the parent party of ABVP — in power in the sprawling (308,252 sq. km) Hindi heartland state of Madhya Pradesh, infamous for its lawless dacoits in the ravines of the Chambal Valley as also for the open, continuous and uninterrupted exploitation of its native tribal population, a massive cover-up operation to suppress the ugly face of student unionism in the state (pop. 49 million) has begun. Perpetually haunted by fear of transfer to obscure colleges in rural outbacks and the raw muscle power of students unions, the academic community in Ujjain and across the state is enveloped in a tacit conspiracy of silence.

This was discovered by your correspondent who journeyed to Ujjain on September 14-15 to discover the root cause of anger and dissatisfaction which is driving student communities of the educationally backward BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) states of the Hindi heartland — which host over half the population of the country — to violence and incremental anti-social behaviour.

Even three weeks after Prof. Sabharwal’s death, there is a palpable fear within the academic and student communities which makes them reluctant to elaborate upon the facts and circumstances of the incident which culminated in the death of a professor on campus on August 26. Although several hundred eye-witnesses were on the scene on that fateful day, and millions witnessed the assault on Prof. Sabharwal on national television, the only eye-witness who volunteered to sign the first information report at the local police station in Ujjain is Komal Singh Sengar, a peon in the college (in whose arms Sabharwal expired). Currently Sengar receives several death threats per day to withdraw his testimony, and was unavailable for interview when your correspondent visited Madhav College.

"I can’t comment on the incident of August 26 as it is under police investigation," says Dr. L.N.Verma, a political science alumnus of Madhav College and Vikram University and incumbent principal of the college. "The root cause of student unrest in government colleges which offer traditional arts, commerce etc study programmes is the prospect and reality of unemployment after graduation. In this college we have neither the financial nor academic autonomy to introduce professional education programmes which would improve the employment prospects of our students. Moreover the example set by the intensely competitive, no-holds-barred political parties in the state has pervaded all college campuses in MP. There is very little that college administrations can do about these problems," Verma told this correspondent in Hindi, the lingua franca of Madhav College.

The sentiment of resigned helplessness which Verma exudes is understandable. His sparsely furnished room is an open door office dominated by a large table on which rests a lonely telephone. Academics and students wander in at will with assorted papers for his signature, which is readily given. According to some staffers speaking off the record, the office was trashed a few months ago by a mob of angry students of the Congress-affiliated National Students Union of India (NSUI), and is unlikely to be refurbished in the foreseeable future.

This sentiment of resigned helplessness is also discernible in the commerce faculty of Madhav College, established 116 years ago by an eponymous maharaja of Gwalior. Dr. S.C. Moonat, head of the college’s commerce faculty — its largest with an aggregate enrollment of 1,800 students — insisted on meeting your correspondent accompanied by over a dozen faculty members who did most of the talking. According to them, "not a single student" involved in the assault upon Prof. Sabharwal was enrolled in Madhav College, i.e they were all outsiders. They believe that there is an urgent need to reintroduce the system prevailing during the period 1992-2001, under which student unions were college specific, and nominations to student councils were made by college managements on the basis of merit. "The basic problems of MP’s government colleges are well-known, but no attention is being paid to resolving them. They are ridiculously low tuition fees — Rs.9 per month in Madhav College — outdated syllabuses and exam systems, and huge inflow of poorly educated rural students who are unprepared for college education. The consequence is low classroom attendance, as little value is attached to the education we deliver. Instead students engage in anti-social and political activities. The managements of the state’s 330 government colleges are completely disempowered from addressing these problems which flow from policies framed in the state government’s education ministry and affiliating universities," says an anguished professor of the commerce faculty who candidly admits that "80 percent of the graduates of this college are unemployable".

The consequence of poor learning outcomes and steady devaluation of the degrees of India’s estimated 10,000 government colleges, is the rise of private colleges and in particular coaching schools, which prepare students to write the competitive public entrance exams of the much-too-few reputable institutions of higher education such as the IITs, IIMs and the few elite privately managed liberal arts colleges in metropolitan India (St. Stephen’s Delhi, St. Xavier’s Mumbai etc). However although unanimously dissatisfied with the lacklustre academic ambience and culture of government colleges, their tenured academics are loath to migrate to private sector institutions. By a curious and typically Indian anomaly, while tuition fees in government colleges are ludicrously low, faculty salaries — directly paid by state governments — tend to be significantly higher than in privately managed colleges and coaching schools where greater accountability is demanded as well.

Hence despite crumbling infrastructure, poor classroom attendance and runaway student unionism, faculty positions in government colleges are highly prized by lower-middle class and small-town college postgraduates who move heaven and earth within government secretariats to receive the all-important letter of appointment. Unsurprisingly, the great majority of the faculty of Madhav College comprises graduates of this very college and the affiliating Vikram University, Ujjain — classic in-breeding which perpetuates academic mediocrity.

Yet within the sprawling 300-acre campus of Vikram University (estb.1956) which boasts 80 affiliated colleges (including Madhav College) with an aggregate enrollment of 86,000 students and 2,500 faculty, there is placid unconcern about the pernicious rot gnawing at the vitals of affiliated colleges. Even though a senior professor has been reportedly murdered on campus. "It’s important to appreciate firstly that this unfortunate one-off event happened outside the college campus. It’s also important to note this attack on the professor was the work of outsiders — foreign elements. The great majority of our teachers and students are content with the quality of education they receive in institutions under the jurisdiction of Vikram University which has a 5,000 year tradition of higher learning," says Dr. Ram Rajesh Mishra an economics scholar, lecturer and professor of Vikram University who has risen to the very top of his alma mater.

Fiercely loyal, and proud of the track record of Vikram University, Mishra dismisses complaints of excessive political interference, poor infra-structure, obsolete syllabuses, give-away tuition fee structures and poor learning outcomes which the faculty of Madhav College identify as the root causes of perennial student unrest which claimed the life of Prof. Sabharwal. "By awarding us a four-star rating NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) has confirmed that the higher education offered by Vikram University is as good as in any other university in the country. Currently a large number of our graduates and former faculty are teaching in universities in Canada and other countries around the world. If our syllabuses and curriculums were outdated, how would this be possible? If at all we have a problem it is that of poor public relations. We have not been able to project the reality that Vikram University has an ancient tradition of learning — Lord Krishna himself was educated here — which is alive and vibrant to this day. This reality is testified by our alumni who include former chief justice of India, Justice R. C. Lahoti, poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar and Hindi litterateur Naresh Mehta among a host of others," says Mishra.

But while institutional pride is undoubtedly a positive attribute, there is abundant evidence on the campuses of Madhav College and Vikram University which testifies to institu-tional neglect, poor teaching standards and abysmal learning outcomes.

Leaking roofs, peeling walls, dirty toilets and dilapidated libraries (despite several requests for access, the library of Madhav College remained firmly locked against your correspondent), faculty in-breeding and poor student attendance are self-evident to even the casual visitor. Moreover the status of English is ambiguous. Although the faculty claims that English and Hindi are mediums of instruction, it proved difficult to find an English-fluent individual — teacher or student — on the campus of the college or university. Students entertain embarrassingly modest postgraduation ambitions and women on campus seem excessively timid. Certainly the neatness and order, free flow of ideas and robust student confidence associated with academia are conspicuously absent on the campuses of Madhav College and Vikram University.

For instance in Meerut (pop. 1.6 million), a small town only 60 km from Delhi which boasts its own university, an agriculture university, a medical college and a host of other professional colleges, student militancy backed by all political parties has taken a heavy toll. Cheating and exam evaluation scandals are rife and the Uttar Pradesh state government which reinstated student union elections in 2003, has little time for attention to detail which institutions of higher learning require.

At the Choudhary Charan Singh University (CCS) where there is a "grave administrative crisis because of a collapsed examination and evaluation system", the new academic year is yet to commence, says EducationWorld’s Delhi correspondent Autar Nehru who visited the university for this feature. The delay is caused by an examination evaluation scandal outed in August when 10-12 year old boys in Agra were discovered to be evaluating over 80,000 answer sheets of the university’s BBA, MCA and home science undergrads. The answer paper evaluation work had been ‘outsourced’ by university evaluators to the school children. A trio headed by the CCS’ absconding registrar, B.L. Arya (whose property has been confiscated for possession of assets beyond known sources of income), Prof. A.P. Garg, head of the varsity’s microbiology faculty (now in jail) and Y. B. Krishna, principal secretary to the vice-chancellor who are widely believed to be the "mafia" behind several scams and scandals in this university ranked B+ by NAAC, is also alleged to have master-minded this shocking scam which has delayed the commencement of the new academic year. "Police on campus is a regular sight in higher education institutions in Meerut because students are always protesting against some injustice or another," reports EW’s Nehru.

A growing sentiment within small-town campuses that they are on the outer peripheries of the radar of apex-level higher education administrative organisations such as UGC and AICTE based in imperial New Delhi, is pervasive in the vast Indian hinterland. "A perennial resource crunch is something we have to learn to live with, so there is little scope for upgrading our infrastructure. We receive an annual grant of Rs.50 lakh from the university which just about covers the emoluments of our 93 faculty. It’s well-known in academic circles that UGC allocates 80 percent of its grants-in-aid to Central government sponsored universities in larger cities, particularly Delhi. This means that 200 universities and over 10,000 colleges countrywide have to share the remaining 20 percent. At the same time state governments are too cash-strapped to pay anything more than faculty salaries. Therefore the only recourse for us is to generate our own resources by raising tuition fees and introducing self-financing courses. Fortunately our student community is becoming aware of this situation and is not averse to paying higher tuition fees when quality education is provided," says Dr. Surendra Pratap Singh, principal of the National Postgraduate College, Lucknow which has an enrollment of 4,000 students.

Down south where traditions of scholarship are well established and there is greater respect for teachers, student militancy is relatively rare and tempered. There is an implicit social contract which ensures that the divide between small-town and metropolitan institutions of learning in terms of funding and administration is relatively small. Moreover in most towns and often in rural areas, the presence of ‘self-financed’, i.e privately-promoted colleges, serves the purpose of benchmarking for government education institutions.

For instance in Tamil Nadu (pop. 62 million), the number of self-financing colleges (297) outnumber government and government-aided colleges (193). "Government colleges in small and district towns in Tamil Nadu tend to have almost as good infrastructure and teaching standards as their metropolitan counterparts, although they may suffer in terms of labs and libraries compared with self-financing colleges. Moreover the quality of education provided even in small towns in this state tends to be superior to that of other states. A contributory cause is that students tend to be mature, tolerant and responsible. There has not been a major incident of student violence on any campus in the state for over a decade. Perhaps the only difference between small-town and metro college graduates is that the former tend to suffer in terms of communication skills in English. But even this problem is being addressed by the state government and universities," says Prof. S. P. Thyagarajan former vice-chancellor of Madras University.

However in the neighbouring state of Karnataka (pop.57 million) where education is way down at the bottom of the list of the state’s hyper-competitive politicians, and thriving private sector education institutions are the happy hunting grounds of its notoriously bribe-hungry educrats, the qualitative gap between small-town and metro (i.e Bangalore) colleges is wide, and growing. According to Education-World’s special correspondent Srinidhi Raghavendra who journeyed to the small town of Mandya (pop.1.7 million), 90 km from Bangalore, the Government First Grade College for Boys which provides arts, science and commerce undergrad study programmes to 950 male students, suffers on counts of inadequacy of funding and infra-structure in comparison with its metropolitan counterparts.

"Although GFGC has mysteriously been conferred autonomous status by UGC recently, it suffers very obvious resource constraints. Classroom furniture is rickety and broken and the college’s 12 laboratories hardly contain any equipment. The large library is locked tight as a prison, with students not permitted to use it for reference purposes. And shockingly while staff rooms have toilet facilities, no toilets have been constructed for students. The sole income source of the college is a Rs. 6 lakh annual grant from the state government," reports Raghavendra.

"The Rs.50-60,000 collected by way of rock-bottom fees of Rs.500-600 per year isn’t enough even to paint our buildings. Against this the annual grant of St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore is Rs. 1 crore," Prof. A.R. Satyanarayana, a chemistry postgraduate of Mysore University who took charge as principal in July this year, informed Raghavendra.

Yet if India’s small-town institutions of higher education which constitute a majority of the country’s 17,700 colleges are dispensing useless, obsolete education instead of providing meaningful learning and life skills to the small number (10 million) of the nation’s youth who enroll for tertiary education, the higher education regulatory system is much to blame. Astonishingly, of India’s 17,700 colleges countrywide, only 5,500 are acknowledged by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission as fully-fledged institutions of higher learning worthy of receiving development grants (for capital expenditure, new departments, research etc). In effect UGC admits that the remainder 12,000 collegiate institutions of India don’t quite qualify as institutions of higher learning.

Therefore to persuade and motivate them to upgrade their infrastructure and teaching-learning standards, in 1994 UGC promoted its quality assessment subsidiary NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council), a Bangalore-based rating agency which awards universities and colleges alphabetical ratings ranging from A+++ (excellent) to C (satisfactory). But for reasons best known to UGC and its parent, the Union ministry of human resource development, NAAC evaluation and accreditation is optional. Unsurprisingly, only 3,000 of the country’s universities and 17,700 colleges have volunteered for accreditation. And no prizes for guessing that Madhav College, Ujjain isn’t one of them.

This widespread tendency within academia to fudge or side-step vital issues for fear of crossing powerful politicians, is glaringly evident in the reluctance of academics to take a stand on the issue of English as the medium of instruction in tertiary education. Although there is informal acknow-ledgement that English fluency is the pre-condition of academic, government and corporate upward mobility, the language of learning in tertiary education is a grey area. For instance in Madhav College, Ujjain where Prof. Sabharwal was done to death by student leaders on August 26, no clear answer is advanced whether Hindi or English is the medium. The standard answer is "both". But it is patently clear to even the most casual visitor that the overwhelmingly dominant language of discourse and instruction is Hindi. This wouldn’t be inimical to education if even half-decent textbooks written in Hindi or regional languages — especially science and technology texts — were available to students.

"There are no serious books or journals available to them (faculty and students) in the subjects they study or teach. A large proportion of them have never read anything other than cheap student guidebooks, many of which are in turn written by poorly educated people. Consequently most of those who have MA’s and Ph Ds to their names, especially those from small-town universities, are so poorly educated that they cannot write five correct sentences in the language in which they have to submit their thesis. Not surprisingly high status scholarly conferences on Indian history, politics, sociology and even Indian religions are mostly held in American, British, even Australian and German universities, rather than in Kurukshetra, Patna or Meerut universities," writes Madhu Purnima Kishwar, senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi in the Indian Express (September 15) in a devastating indictment of pervasive policy fudging in higher education.

Ex facie the tragic death on campus of Prof. Sabharwal in Ujjain — a quintessential small town of the Indian hinterland — was caused by politically incited militant students who are on the march countrywide. But the deeper cause of rising student disaffection in small-town India in particular, is dozens of seemingly minor acts of omission and commission at policy formulation levels.

Stranded in shallow and miserable tributaries of mainstream metropolitan India which is experiencing the euphoria of unprecedented job opportunities even as annual rates of GDP growth hold steady at 7-8 percent, the huge army of unemployable graduates churned out by India’s small-town colleges and universities is brimming with anger and resentment and could well run amok. That’s the real message of the recent death by murder of a professor in a small town of shining India.