Minister accuses college principals of absenteeism

In her inaugural speech, Trivedi, who herself has been a college teacher, said that college campuses nowadays gave almost a deserted look as if there was students strike because there were very few students coming to the colleges and attending classes. This, according to her, was due to high absenteeism of the college principals and teachers themselves.

Indira Nityanandam, former principal of the well-known Navgujarat Arts College, who was the first to speak after the minister, said that people had high hopes from the new political dispensation at the Centre and expected sweeping changes in all areas making India to take over all other developing countries of the world.

However, the minister had already left when Nityanandam began to speak.

Stating that the people expected the new dispensation to realise the dreams of former president APJ Abdul Kalam turning India into a superpower by 2020, she said that “these hopes seem to be destined to crash as lip-service has become the order of the day,” she remarked.

Claiming that she did not want to politicise the issue, the educationist strongly criticised NDA government’s announcements about “rewriting history books, claims about India having expertise in plastic surgery in ancient times and drawing similarity between astrology and astronomy”. It may be mentioned here that it was Prime Minister Narendra Modi who, in one of his speeches a few weeks ago, had made the claim that India possessed the plastic surgery technology in ancient times giving reference to the elephantine head of Lord Ganesh, one of several gods from the Hindu pantheon of gods and goddesses.

Further criticising the NDA government’s alleged bid to centralise everything from admission to curriculum in higher educational institutions, she said it would adversely affect autonomy of these institutions that contributed to excellence. “IITs and IIMs were far above the state universities mainly because they were allowed to function with more than enough autonomy,” she explained.

Referring to a bid in the past by the Gujarat government to have a common university act when Modi was chief minister, she said that the act was like a Damocle’s sword that was left hanging threateningly over the universities in the state till recently.

She was also critical of NDA government’s announcement to have one IIT in each state. She said that it would result in compromising over quality and also result in losing out the autonomy which resulted in excellence.

“We talk of excellence and world standards, we imagine India at the top but what is the reality in higher education? Is autonomy the answer? Is privatisation a better option?’’, she asked, saying she herself had no answer to these questions.

Rajkumar Mahajan, principal of MMD DAV College at Giddarbaha in Punjab, focussed on branding of the Indian higher educational institutions and making research as an integral educational culture of all colleges and universities, including those in the rural areas, with a view to taking Indian higher education to the global-level.

Pointing out that the present system of education was more theory and classroom oriented than market or practice oriented, H.A. College of Commerce principal Sanjay Vakil, said that there was an urgent need to make higher education more practical under the present scenario.