By Justice Markandey Katju-
(Justice Markandey Katju is a former Judge, Supreme Court of India, and former Chairman of Press Council of India. The views expressed are his own.)
I was motivated to write this article on reading this link.
A University is an institution of higher learning, in which knowledge is not just transmitted from teacher to student ( that is also done in primary and high schools ) but in addition to that, the boundaries of knowledge are extended, by research.
Frontiers have been made in many Universities of the world in science, history, economics, and other subjects, which have extended the branches of knowledge. For instance, great discoveries were made in the Cavendish Laboratory of the Physics Department of Cambridge University in UK, in which great scientists like JJ Thompson, Rutherford, Niels Bohr ( who propounded the modern atomic theory) and others worked. The same happened in many American, German, Russian and other Western Universities.
The Vice Chancellor of a University is the head of the institution, and he should be an eminent scholar, renowned for his knowledge and learning. Apart from his administrative duties, the Vice Chancellor is also the head of the selection committees for selecting professors and other teachers in various departments. These professors and other teachers should be appointed on their merit, not on political or other extraneous considerations, for only then can high standards be maintained in the University.
In my own Alma Mater, Allahabad University, which was once known as the Oxford of the East, there were at one time eminent Vice Chancellors like Dr Ganga Nath Jha and his son Dr Amar Nath Jha, who were renowned as outstanding scholars.
Later, standards fell, and we started having mediocre persons as Vice Chancellors, so much so that at one time Allahabad University had a Vice Chancellor who was a teacher in an intermediate college and was made VC only because he was close to a state minister of UP.
In most Universities in India Vice Chancellors began to be appointed not because they were eminent scholars, but because they were close to influential politicians. The result was that standards declined in Indian Universities, and academic rigor was greatly diluted.
In Central Universities ( Universities under the Central Government e,g. Jawaharlal Nehru University, AMU, Jamia Milia, etc) the Vice Chancellors are appointed by the Central Government and hence are often political appointees.
Under BJP rule, all institutions have been ‘saffronised’, including educational institutions. So VCs of Central Universities in India are nowadays not appointed because they are outstanding scholars, but because they have leanings towards the ruling BJP.
As regards state universities, I may give a personal example. Under section 12 of the UP State Universities Act, the VC of a state university in UP is appointed by the Chancellor ( the Governor of the state). There is a committee of 3 persons, a High Court Judge appointed by the Chief Justice, a person nominated by the Chancellor, and a person nominated by the Executive Council of the University. This committee has to submit a panel of at least 3 names to the Chancellor, who could select anyone in the panel, and appoint him VC.
I was a Judge of Allahabad High Court and had been appointed to the committee by the Chief Justice of the High Court.
What I found was that in every meeting of the committee, the Chancellor’s nominee suggested that each member of the committee should recommend one name to be on the panel, but every time the Chancellor appointed as VC the person suggested by his own nominee out of the panel submitted to him, and invariably he was a person close to the ruling political party,
Realizing that I was being used, I resigned from the committee.
Many American Universities have half a dozen Nobel Laureates in their faculty. On the other hand, Indian Universities have produced only one scientist who was an Indian citizen, CV Raman (3 other scientists of Indian origin won Nobel Prizes, though they had become US citizens ).
Australia with a population of 26.6 million has 180 FRS ( Fellows of the Royal Society), while India with a population of 1430 million has only 18.
As already stated above, the fundamental difference between a high school and a University is that in the latter not only teaching to students is done but also extending the frontiers of knowledge by research.
The quality of research in Indian Universities is abysmal, and much of it is plagiarism. Such ‘research’ is only to get a job, not to extend the frontiers of knowledge.
It is only when our scientists go to America or some other Western country that they achieve anything.
This is the truth about Indian Universities and their Vice Chancellors.
