By Aroon Tikekar


Hon’ble Chancellor,

These days, every time a new vice-chancellor is to be selected for the University of Mumbai, anxiety grips me. One reason for this — apart from several others — is the experience that the previous VC of the university invariably appears better in comparison with the new one.

As a person who has studied the lives and contribution of successive vice-chancellors while writing a historical account of the university from its inception, I have a growing feeling that the political apparatus in the state presently has some blueprint to de-institutionalise the varsity. So often are its good and healthy norms violated that I wonder whether the university really deserves such humiliation from the state government.

Despite its distinguished history, the University of Mumbai, the second oldest in the country, is being reduced to any other department of the government, thanks to the unrestricted official control of education. My purpose in writing to you, Sir, is to request you to save this once reputed institution from the clutches of bureaucracy and to allow it to breathe freely once again so that it can regain its academic health. I am not against a healthy relationship between the university and the state as well as the Central government —indeed, taking proper care of the academic health of universities like that
of Mumbai has become absolutely necessary in the wake of foreign universities displaying an eagerness to set up branches in India. But a give-and-take relationship is one thing, iron control another.

The last two decades in the history of the varsity have been its most turbulent. Almost every organ of the university needs a revamp. However, I shall restrict myself here to the issue that is currently vexing the alumni and faculty alike — the selection of a new vice-chancellor.

You will agree, Sir, that it does not speak too well of a university if, even after 153 years, it has no fixed norms for selecting its vice-chancellor. Each time the position falls vacant, the Government of Maharashtra comes out with some new norm. It is true that the minister of higher education and the departmental secretary both change their portfolios faster than the five-year term of the VC. But must both of them, jointly or severally, be so eager to leave their mark on the system of higher education and by their short-sighted decisions leave behind a legacy of confusion?

To come down to specifics, the criteria of eligibility for members of the search committee — which selects the final five candidates in the VC race —keep changing. Why? This year, it was specified that the chairperson had to be the recipient of a national honour ! From whose fertile brain did this suggestion originate? Haven’t national honours lost their credibility? How national awards are distributed or any high position is obtained is public knowledge now; the single ‘criterion’ that is relevant is proximity to
the powers that be. And only those candidates who know this open secret vehemently defend the system of applications for the VC’s post — an abomination that was begun this year — as ‘democratic’ and ‘transparent’.

Hitherto, the selection of the VC was by appointment, not through application. The process was not transparent, true — but the system of applying for this distinguished post is no solution either, given the political lobbying that is bound to take over the process. The one who strives the hardest wins the race to the coveted position. If only you knew how the applicants run frantically from political pillar to post! There are instances where a target is set, political friendships are cultivated and the unabashed ambition is fulfilled at any cost. Would you, Sir, call this system healthy?

Genuine scholars who aspire to the highest post in the university have to totally bury their self-respect before applying. The new criteria tempted about a hundred applications this time, each candidate trying his luck, as the new criteria suited him or her perfectly. The trend is likely to grow, and the search committee may in future find itself bogged down by the sheer weight of applications.

The education secretary has enormous powers in the selection of the VC —this year, he drafted the eligibility rules for aspiring candidates and search committee members and was put on the search committee as well ! How does he, with an IAS tag but with little experience in the field, qualify as an education specialist ? The education secretary is the epitome of power
without responsibility (with the maximum punishment of a transfer to another department in case of a faux pas) but his contention and attitude is that the vice-chancellor is and should be subservient to him. The education minister, who may be an expert in playing political games, is either innocent or ignorant in educational matters, and the secretary’s chicanery can
easily fool him. This combination is playing havoc with higher education.

Moreover, the coterie of self-appointed advisors that collects in your august office, Sir, may not always correctly advise you on educational matters.
Another grouse: Why does the higher education department feel that the norms of appointing a search committee become inadequate every five years? Is it so difficult to decide them once and for all and apply them resolutely so that they will not be tampered with for the next five terms of VCs ? Moreover, when the education secretary himself becomes a member of the search committee, what kind of ‘transparency’ can be expected ? It is well known that politics starts at the education secretary’s office. Who
is trying to fool whom? I appeal to your conscience, Sir, to give your word to the academic community and to concerned citizens of Mumbai like me that real transparency was followed this time in selecting the new VC.

After the last chancellor left, and you came in, you changed the search committee which appoints the VC (it was sad to see how a sociologist of the eminence of Andre Beteille had to suffer vilification for some technical lapse in the earlier committee). But how and why was a person, who himself was an applicant to the VC’s post earlier and who is believed to have failed to make it to the top five contenders last time, suddenly appointed chairperson of the new search committee? Is there such a dearth of good, competent people in the country? If somebody now questions the VC’s appointment in court, will it be possible for you or your office or the education secretary or the minister or the chief minister to defend the appointment ?

Real transparency could have been said to be followed if the curriculum vitae of the top five applicants listed by the search committee were made public. The decision of inviting applications has started a race of stretching one’s CV to 30 or 40 pages by bloating achievements, making tall claims and even arrogating the credit of others. Do the search committee members have competence to verify the claims made ? My teachers, whose CVs never exceeded a single page, would today have been rejected summarily ! Some of them, however, have been accorded the status of all-time greats by the silent majority of alumni of this great university. We still remember them fondly and respectfully.

This growing politicisation is an attack on the autonomy of the university, and every sensitive and sensible person is feeling increasingly uneasy about it, because the difference between genuine scholars and charlatans is being deliberately sought to be wiped out. Have you ever tried to find out why competent and first-rate teachers are losing interest in the profession ? If you care to interact with old and retired professors of the university, who still frequent its rich library, you would get to know some of the ills that plague it. They may never be able to swallow the fact that the new VC, fearing a legal stay on his appointment, took charge of his office at night like a nocturnal bird. Why couldn’t he do it the next morning ? Why wasn’t he prevented from doing so ? Is this transparency ?

Sir, should we not treat our scholars and intellectuals in a more dignified way? Inviting applications not only keeps those academics who have self-respect out of the race, but the process reduces the search committees work to sifting through those applications and overseeing presentations of applicants — work that can be done even by a deputy secretary in the
chancellor’s office.

The state of affairs at the university appears to have touched rock-bottom. May I request you, Sir, to urgently take steps to mend matters, considering the commotion caused by the new appointment ?