One can’t help feeling sorry for the trustees of Ashoka University (AU), Sonipat (Haryana) India’s first crowd-funded university established at vast expense (estimated at Rs.2,000 crore) with successful members of the Indian diaspora mainly in the US chipping in Rs.5-25 crore each. Ashoka U generated great excitement within the country’s expanding middle class when it was launched in 2016. But ab initio overt and closet commies who dominate the academy and media were disparaging of this private varsity which spared no expense on architecture, infrastructure and on recruiting best faculty from around the world. They were — and remain — outraged that the fully residential AU levies the actual cost of education provision to pay for its globally benchmarked campus and faculty. Trendy lefties have a blindspot about calculating the actual cost of education of mainly middle class students in public institutions. Moreover, faculty and students are hell-bent on voicing opinions on sensitive political matters, even though they are no doubt aware that governments at the Centre and in Haryana are bulldozer raj administrations which have little time or respect for the niceties of democratic governance. Or for fine universities. Some two years ago, Harvard and Princeton alum Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a trenchant critic of the BJP government, resigned his office as vice chancellor of AU in high dudgeon, when advised to tread gingerly in his widely admired weekly column in the Indian Express. Angry student protests resulted in the trustees appointing an unprecedented ombudsman as barrier between the trustees and management. However, this didn’t prevent Sabyasachi Das, assistant professor of economics at AU from putting in his papers when questioned about a research paper positing that the ruling BJP had “manipulated” General Election 2019. And when Sunil Bhikchanadani, the billionaire (Naukri.com, InfoEdge) founder-trustee of AU opined that parents didn’t send their children to AU to indulge in andolan (agitation), he was roundly trolled on social media by the woke brigade. Alas, India’s finest university, innovatively funded with great expectations, is floundering in a sea of troubles.
