DU clears courses in record time despite dissent from some quarters

Updated on: Saturday, April 27, 2013

Delhi University's Faculty of Arts cleared over 40 courses - counting Discipline I, Discipline II and applied courses separately - governed by 13 departments in an hour and 10 minutes, on Friday. With the exception of courses by three departments, all others were cleared in less than 5 minutes, some in less than 1. Though the meeting went on for over two hours, only about half of it was given to the curriculum.

Amitava Chakraborty of the department of Modern Indian Languages said, "I noted the time each course was tabled and cleared at. Except for the syllabi for English (10 minutes), Hindi (21 minutes) and Germanic and Romance Studies (GRS, 20 minutes) departments, no course took more than 5 minutes."

A total of 15 members submitted written notes of dissent though Apoorvanand, Hindi department, saying they are "not being recorded." The teachers had not been given the courses before the meeting and neither were agenda papers. They were handed "big piles of paper," as Vijaya Venkataraman of GRS puts it, and were expected to comment on them at the meeting. As a result, most teachers have not seen, let alone critiqued, the courses they are supposed to have "approved." "Only the heads of departments were asked," says Chakraborty, "Why were we even called?"

The meeting began with teachers raising questions about "violations" of regulations that they say have marred the entire procedure. Apoorvanand raised the matter of Hindi department whose committee of courses (COC), he says, didn't have a single college teacher - made compulsory by university ordinances - because a "seniority list" wasn't available. Plus, he says, teachers were designing different parts of the course in groups and didn't get a picture of the syllabus as a whole.

Teachers from the English department reported that its COC meeting had two teachers from the same college attending - again, illegal. Dismissing the entire exercise as a "sham", Venkataraman says, "We pointed out that the faculty was never given the opportunity to discuss the structure, nor was our feedback sought and that the structure will have ramifications for master's courses. Then, in some departments, the COCs hadn't met even once. But we were told our agenda is to pass the courses and these questions should not be raised."

Whether they submitted notes of dissent or not, many requested for more time to consider the syllabus but were refused. The first course was tabled at 3.20pm, according to Chakraborty's notes, and the entire set was a done-deal as far as the faculty was concerned, by 4.34 pm. "I still haven't seen the papers (late evening)," says Venkataraman.

DU clears courses in record time despite dissent from some quarters

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