Press Release, 12.5.2013

“The DUTA General Body expresses strong criticism of the Four Year Undergraduate Programme and unequivocally rejects the model and its implementation on the following counts:

1. The Four Year Undergraduate Programme is against the National Education Policy.
2. It will place students admitted to DU at a disadvantage in employment and postgraduate educational opportunities.
3. It will make education more expensive and adversely impact the marginalized and disadvantaged sections of society, including particularly, women students and those students from SC, ST, OBC and Disabled categories, and students coming from rural areas. This will undermine the goal of social justice in higher education.
4. The multiple-exit points will legitimize drop-outs.
5. The structure is ill-designed: In its attempt to combine academic pursuits, vocational skills, and parts of school curricula, it will produce students who are proficient in none.
6. The structure will create a fluctuating workload for teachers and drive away talent from the teaching profession.
7. The students of the School of Open Learning, who were part of the mainstream, already find their options reduced after semesterization, and the Four Year Undergraduate Programme will further increase this disparity.
8. The Programme has been hurriedly passed without wider debate and consultation with teachers, and by undermining the responsible functioning of the statutory bodies of the University.
9. By diluting the quality of teaching-learning in one of the larger public funded universities, it will encourage the forces of privatization and commercialization in higher education.
10. The Four Year Undergraduate Programme is against the Government’s own inclusion policy of Reservations for SC, ST and OBC teachers by subverting the 2006 UGC Guidelines on Reservations at all entry-level posts. A large number of the 4000 plus teaching vacancies that are not being filled due to unstable workload are reserved for SCs, STs and OBCs and there is a real danger of these backlogs not getting filled in the foreseeable future. 

The General Body further notes that no provision has been made for additional infrastructure and teaching posts, and the VC has flatly refused to start the process of filling up the 4000 posts lying vacant for several years. This threatens and renders uncertain the lives and careers of thousands of adhoc teachers currently working in DU. This General Body rejects any talk of “reform” before these posts are filled.

The General Body rejects the position taken by the MHRD and the UGC that halting the perverse and hasty decision undermines the university autonomy. Not allowing free and fearless exchange of ideas in the university and refusing to engage with serious and fundamental criticisms made by a wide cross-section of the academia, intelligentsia and various sections of society amounts to arbitrariness and not autonomy. If the Government remains insensitive to the fate of a large number of students and is not willing to allow a nation-wide debate before the implementation of FYUP, it will confirm the apprehension that this insidious restructuring of Delhi University is being carried out at its behest.

This DUTA General Body resolves to campaign against the Four Year Undergraduate Programme and combat its forced implementation by undertaking all forms of agitation in the coming days.”

 “This DUTA General Body condemns the DU Vice Chancellor Prof. Dinesh Singh, for his insulting and defamatory remarks in an interview to The Times of India about Delhi University teachers in general, and the School of Open Learning in particular. In an unprecedented display of megalomania, Prof. Dinesh Singh has spared neither eminent educationists who have questioned the wisdom of the FYUP nor the Parliament where several questions on this issue have been raised.

There has been a continuous assault on democratic spaces and freedom of expression in DU of which the denial of the Ramjas College auditorium is the latest example, coupled with many brazen attempts to destroy DUTA, the legitimate representative body of teachers.

Prof. Dinesh Singh has also brought shame and ignominy to the University and ceases to hold any moral or ethical right to continue as the VC of DU. This GBM of DUTA unanimously demands his immediate dismissal.”