Corruption cancer destroying Indian academia
A deadly strain of the corruption virus is debilitating Indian academia. Mind-boggling reports of apex level academic corruption from every state of India’s sub-continental landmass are beginning to register on the collective conscious. Dilip Thakore reports Having developed resistance and immunity for decades within its shady groves, a deadly strain of the corruption virus is sweeping Indian academia. Years of politicisation and open, continuous and uninterrupted maladministration of post-independence India’s heavily subsidised 355 universities and 17,600 colleges have prepared fertile ground for corruption in its over-hyped higher education system. The corruption virus has debilitated Indian academia which is unable to deliver at a critical juncture in the nation’s history when the economy is growing at an unprecedented 9 percent-plus per year, and there is an acute shortage of skilled and trained manpower countrywide. Mind-boggling reports of apex level academic corruption from every state across India’s sub-continental landmass are beginning to register on the collective conscious. In the southern state of Karnataka (pop. 57 million) the vice- chancellors of the Karnataka State Women’s University, Bijapur; Tumkur University and the Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences are currently under investigation for official corruption by several commissions and the Central Bureau of Investigation. Simultaneously a deputy registrar of the massive Bangalore University, reputedly the largest in Asia with more than 400 colleges affiliated with it, has been placed under suspension for helping a student upgrade his marksheet following a sting operation by a television channel. Moreover as if this spate of shame and scandals within the state’s groves of academia aren’t enough, Karnataka’s JDS (Janata Dal Secular)-BJP coalition government which has been ruling in Bangalore for the past 15 months has revived the controversy of nominating cronies and political lightweights – instead of “eminent educationists” as required by law – to the governing syndicate of Bangalore University (BU). On April 14, the state government submitted a list of six nominees to Dr. H.A.Ranganath the newly appointed vice-chancellor. Among the nominees is the name of A.P. Ranganath, a small-time lawyer whose name was rejected by the previous vice-chancellor, Dr. M.S. Thimmappa in 2005 forcing the government to withdraw the entire list. Now the new vice-chancellor has accepted the six government nominees – including A.P. Ranganath – into the university’s syndicate. The 22-strong syndicate chaired by the vice-chancellor is an empowered body which inter alia appoints lecturers and professors and significantly, sanctions all construction activity and purchase of capital equipment for BU. The row which has broken out over the JD(S)-BJP government’s attempt to pack Bangalore University’s governing body with individuals of dubious antecedents provoked a lead editorial in the country’s most widely read (7.34 million readers per day) English language daily, the Times of India. Recalling the bad old days of the early 1980s when an “apocryphal story” to the effect that job advertisements carried statutory warnings that BU students need not apply did the rounds, the venerable daily (estb.1838) warned there is a clear and present danger that Asia’s largest university could take a great leap backwards to the time when…
