INDIA
Academics at one of India’s most prestigious universities have voiced anger over a plan to make them subject to Central Civil Service (CCS) rules, saying the move is “against the spirit of a university”.
The academics on the staff of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) say the rules, which have already been imposed in media schools such as the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, are a backdoor way of muzzling criticism of the Government.
The JNU Teachers Association said the rules were designed to apply to “administrative officers in the Government” and their extension to universities such as JNU would take away the institution’s social benefit.
“A university produces new knowledge and teaches it,” the Association said.
“To do so, it needs independence of thinking and the freedom to dissent and act on that dissent.”
It said the CCS rules would remove those freedoms.
Surajit Mazumdar of JNU’s School of Social Sciences said that, under the rules, economics professors could be punished for discussing economic policy, political scientists could be punished for discussing politics, environmental science professors could be punished for discussing environmental policy, and so on.
He said the routine academic work of writing and publishing papers would become a violation of service conditions.
Rector of JNU, Chintamani Mahapatra dismissed the concerns as “rumours”, saying CCS conduct rules were applicable only on issues where the university’s internal rules were silent.
He said these internal rules supported “free and frank opinion” by academics participating in professional meetings, seminars, conferences, and making contributions to knowledge.
New Delhi, 7 October 2018
