DUTA Memorandum to MHRD, 10.2.2016

10 February 2016

Sub: Urgent appeal to set up the UGC Pay Review Committee

The DUTA as well as the FEDCUTA and AIFUCTO have on several occasions drawn your attention to the inordinate delay in setting up the UGC Pay Review Committee for Teachers. In the past, this Committee was constituted well before the submission of the Central Pay Commission report, and with good reason, since a separate and specific focus on teachers’ service conditions is required in order to ensure that the profession is able to draw the talent necessary for it to be able to carry out its responsibilities towards the students of this country. The Seventh Pay Commission has already submitted its report in November 2015 and the Government has set in motion the process of implementation. Yet there is no news of the UGC Pay Review Committee being set up. Teachers are therefore greatly and justifiably anxious and concerned.

Our concerns have been aggravated by the fact that the 6th Pay Revision left a legacy of severe and glaring anomalies that have still not been redressed despite innumerable representations. These anomalies have, in fact, undone the basic principle accepted by the UGC and the Government of parity between teachers and the All India Services of the Government, a principle established to ensure that a reasonable share of talented students join the teaching profession (see enclosed Note). The principle of parity can only be ensured with a higher entry pay for teachers, given their higher qualifications and later entry, as well as three assured promotions up to Professorship. The anomalies effectively minimised and then wiped out the higher entry pay and widened the gap with each promotion, thereby increasingly downgrading the teaching profession vis-à-vis the All India Services. They also introduced irrational and discriminatory differences in pay between teachers. That senior teachers, who fell behind juniors consequent to the last pay revision, have still not been stepped up (something that earlier always automatically followed pay revision), has further increased the sense of alienation amongst teachers. If all these anomalies are not redressed before pay revision, their adverse consequences will be greatly compounded. This is an issue that needs urgent attention by the UGC Pay Review Committee.

The other issue that needs urgent attention is the completely unacademic and irrational Points System (API/PBAS) in the UGC Regulations 2010. The Nigavekar Committee was set up to look into the many concerns expressed by teachers about this system but there is no information about whether it has submitted its report. The Points System, introduced to evaluate and therefore encourage better performance by teachers, has in fact had the opposite effect. It has had an extremely negative impact both on teaching and research and therefore needs to be completely abandoned.

In addition to these issues, teachers of Delhi University have had even greater injustice inflicted on them. Following the rollback of the FYUP, two vindictive decisions were adopted in the Executive Council at the behest of the former Vice-Chancellor, one on pensions and the other on promotions. In regard to pensions, the University decided to challenge the relief given by the High Court on CPF-GPF and to stop payment of pensions to a large number of retired teachers and non-teaching employees. It also stopped processing of pension cases of those approaching retirement. The hardship and anxiety caused by this action among people who have served the University for decades can only be imagined. In regard to promotions, an utterly irrational decision was taken to suddenly make the Points System retrospectively effective from 31.12.2008 for promotions, although it was only notified by the UGC on 30.6.2010 and adopted by Delhi University on 17.8.2013. This has effectively denied promotion to most teachers. 

Last but not least are our concerns about the thousands of ad hoc and guest teachers who have kept the University going during the long period in which appointments were not being made. This is a widespread and shameful phenomenon across the country, which undermines the very basis of a good education by treating teachers as wage slaves to be hired and fired and denying students any long term relationship with their teachers. The process of appointments may have begun in Delhi University, but a decision to introduce Screening Criteria based on the Points System for screening applications has made many teachers who have been working on ad hoc or guest basis ineligible to even be called before the Selection Committee. In fact, the Screening Criteria effectively undermines the UGC Regulations by insisting on additional qualifications. Moreover, ad hoc and guest teachers have no facilities for leave or time for any concentrated academic work apart from their teaching, as they live from semester to semester, from ad hoc to guest basis, in constant anxiety and fear about the continuation of their employment. 

We request you to take note of the concerns outlined above and ensure that the UGC Pay Review Committee is set up without any further delay with the urgent task of redressing these concerns and enabling the teaching profession to fulfill its responsibilities to the students of this country. You are aware that young people across the country, particularly from the large sections of the deprived and underprivileged, are deeply troubled as they feel increasingly denied the right to a good education due to rising costs and insensitive administrations. It is unfortunate that this is driving some of them to chose the path of suicide. Such tragic ending of young lives cannot be stopped without enhancing Government spending, opening the doors of higher education to a much larger number of students and recognising the central role of the teacher in any such endeavour. We appeal to you, therefore, to take urgent action. We also request you to grant us an urgent appointment to explain the above mentioned issues.