Academic underworld: heading towards mediocrity
SANJAY KUMAR
The spectre of mediocrity is haunting Indian universities. Universities are supposed to be the breeding ground for talent and teachers are supposed to provide role models for society. But the way academic world has been functioning doesn’t augur well for the future of our country. It is no longer in a position to maintain its holier than thou approach as the mask of hypocrisy is falling very fast. In many universities, selections are made very often before the vacancies are announced.
Interviews are held as stage shows to project a few favourite candidates where the selection committee indulges in the crudest form of sadistic pleasure by torturing “other” candidates with ridiculous questions. Sometimes specialisations required for a post is manipulated in such a way that only one particular candidate will fit into it. Others are automatically eliminated. If that doesn’t work, then selection is cancelled on some flimsy grounds. Techniques of this dishonest practice vary according to different past masters of the art of rigging interviews. Interviews are no longer level playing fields.
Lack of transparency
Some academic goons have hijacked the sacrosanct academic space and have been consistently promoting their own protégé who in turn inherit the skulduggery to contribute in the formation of a clique. In the selection process and meritorious candidates with a far more teaching experience, research work and publication are rejected in favour of mediocre charlatans who distinguish themselves by their loyalty to a particular academic gang. This immoral practice is accompanied by a discourse justifying the “extraordinary performance” of a particular candidate witnessed by a few within four walls. Is their no other parameter for judging the most eligible candidate for a post — qualification, teaching experience, research experience or publication? Those who do not possess the essential qualification of unconditional surrender of their soul to academic Mephistopheles are demoralised, harassed and left out.
Some senior lecturers are rotting at the same post as a punishment for their upright posture. Let us accept that the essential qualification to get selected for a university post has become the wheeling and dealing and the serious academic work has been pushed to the back burner in many central universities.
Intellectual dishonesty
Interviews have become the battle ground of different political parties. Many genuine scholars and reputed teachers keep on working without any permanent position till their dreams are killed or they commit intellectual hara-kiri by staying silent in the backwater of the academic life. In most of the universities, there are academic gangs who organise seminars and conferences in order to extend their clout. The culture of free debates and discussions is getting replaced by flourishing intellectual stooges who gain positions and power by surrendering their critical faculty.
Intellectual dishonesty is the order of the day. There have been several cases of ghost writing where senior professors publish works in their own name even when the substantial part of it has been done by one of the research scholars under their supervision doing M. Phil. or Ph. D. These research scholars abstain from raising their voice as they fear vindictive moves from their all powerful supervisors. But those who deliver sermons on democratic values and talk about ethics on the stage and read research papers on ideological commitments must pass the litmus test of honesty for without honesty there can be no ideological commitment whatsoever.
As long as we talk about democracy in public and practise fascism in private there is no respite from the fast growing epidemic of mediocrity in Indian universities. Lecturers and professors, whose dreams have been killed by this corrupt system should come out openly against this seeping decadence and voice their concern.
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Open Page
