DU teachers march barefeet against ‘reforms’

Hundreds of students, and teachers marched barefeet inside Delhi University campus on Thursday. Organised by the Delhi Uuniversity Teachers’ Association [DUTA], this was an attempt to call attention to the reforms agenda of the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

According to DUTA, ‘they are pseudo-reforms through which higher education in India is rapidly being made inaccessible for the common man.’

The march was accompanied by slogans and the revolutionary songs of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger.

‘Government’s aggressive promotion of private interests and FDI in higher education betrays the tall claims it has been making on the Right to Education. Dependence on the private sector to give a push to the gross enrollment ratio in higher education is utterly wrong as the exponential increase in fees will ensure that the largest sections of the society. The lower middle class and the poor shall be kept out of quality education. Since the greatest demand for higher education is among the people of these classes, the Government is fooling the people when it claims that private and foreign investment is beneficial for the expansion of higher education in the country,’ said a DUTA member.

The students and teachers of Delhi University called the bluff on Kapil Sibal’s hollow rhetoric by describing his agenda as pro-imperialist.

Meanwhile, students of School of Open Learning staged a spontaneous demonstration to protest against the Vice Chancellor’s sudden and inexplicable orders to withdraw the flexibility of time given to students to complete their degrees.

The DUTA concurs with them and feels that the idea of open learning is defeated by such decisions. The DUTA also holds the VC responsible for not ensuring that SOL results are declared in time. The results of the May 2012 examinations have not yet been declared.

On Wednesday, the VC, Dinesh Singh, had issued a notice, through the registrar, to the DUTA terming the tent that put up as ‘illegal’ and accusing it of using electricity without authorisation.