Tunnel Vision

Andre Beteille
TOI, January 14

The central universities, which include the best ones in the country, are facing major changes in their character and composition. As they adopt numerical quotas in favour of the backward castes and communities, they will have to expand their intake substantially over a short time. Such a large change in the scale of the university will necessarily be accompanied by changes in its organisation and functioning. Central universities were caught unprepared when the government decision came, although quotas had been in operation in the state universities in peninsular India for decades. Many within them feel aggrieved that they were not consulted before the axe fell. The government in its turn has taken the view that universities took hardly any initiative to make themselves socially more inclusive when they knew that this could be done. Making universities socially more inclusive while maintaining or even advancing academic standards through imaginative programmes of affirmative action is an achievable objective, but our universities did little about it, and now they will have to pay the price. It must not be thought that everyone within universities takes the same view on quotas.

There are both opponents and supporters of quotas, although in central universities, the opponents probably outnumber the supporters. Opposition to quotas is based on a variety of considerations. Some of it at least is due to the manner in which they have been imposed without any consultation with the universities. There are, of course, 'hardliners' who are opposed to any policy of affirmative action because they believe that merit and merit alone should count in admissions and appointments. But there are also those who want universities to become socially more inclu-sive, but do not believe that the present policy of the government is a good one. They are for affirmative action but against numerical quotas. Many academics belonging to various castes and communities now argue that fixed numerical quotas alone can make our universities socially fully inclusive. They simply do not trust academic committees to make admissions and appointments in a fair-minded and socially responsible way. Affirmative action, on the other hand, seeks to make universities socially more inclusive without sacrificing academic standards too much. It leaves it to each university not only to devise its own particular policy but also to apply it in its own particular way without continuous surveillance by the govern-ment. It is based on respect for the autonomy of the university and trust in its capacity to act in a just and socially responsible way. An autonomous university devises and implements its own policy of affirmative action; a university which is made to adopt numerical quotas fixed by government has lost a part of its autonomy.

University teachers everywhere in India declare themselves strongly in favour of auto-nomy. They are on the whole tolerant and accommodating people, but if someone wants to speak against the principle of university auto-nomy at a gathering at either the University of Delhi or Jawaharlal Nehru University, he will have a hard time of it. If there is one subject on which university teachers of all political complexions are in agreement, it is the desirability of more autonomy for the universities. While university teachers are strong in their support of autonomy, they also support some policies that have the unintended consequence of weakening rather than strengthening university auto-nomy. The pity of it is that such a consequence, though unintended, can be anticipated if only we give a little thought to the matter in advance. The admission of students and the appointment of teachers are two of the basic processes through which the university maintains its identity and continuity as an institution. These are complex and delicate processes whose successful operation requires the adoption of good rules and the exercise of sound academic judgment. Nothing could be more detrimental to the health and well-being of the university as an institution of teaching and research than to whittle down its freedom to exercise academic judgment on the ground that such judgment is bound to be arbitrary, subjective, and socially biased.

At the height of the agitation for adoption of the merit-promotion scheme in the mid-eighties, I was told by many teachers in the University of Delhi and other universities in the country that open-ended schemes for the promotion of teachers would not work because the selectors were bound to victimise candidates on personal grounds. The only fair procedure according to them was one in which each teacher would be promoted after serving for a specified period of time since that would rule out discrimination on personal grounds; it did not matter that it would also rule out discrimination on academic grounds or grounds of ability and performance. Supporters of numerical quotas within universities, including well-meaning upper-caste academics, want quotas because they have no trust in the capacity of academic committees to act without caste bias. Numerical quotas, by making universities directly accountable to the government, will ensure that bias is kept strictly under control. Such academics may well be right. Paradoxically, the very academics whose social conscience deters them from putting their trust on the committees of the university are among the most ardent advocates of university autonomy. But what justification can there be for the plea for autonomy where there is no trust in the institution's capacity to fulfil its obligations in a socially responsible way?

The writer is professor emeritus of sociology, University of Delhi.