Appeal to Students, students’ unions and students groups to join the DUTA-FEDCUTA Rally

Dear Friends,

Today, every “reform” and scheme in higher education is a push towards commercialisation and privatisation. Grants for infrastructure maintenance are being replaced by loans from HEFA on the one hand and on the other hand fancy schemes like Tripartite MoU, Institution of Eminence, and Graded Autonomy demand institutions to expand primarily through increase in students’ fees. The recent 900% fee hike of MTech courses in IITs and enormous fee hike in JNU are results of these policies.

The DUTA has always counted on students as equal partners in movements. Even as you gear up for the semester end examinations, we appeal to you to participate in the ongoing movement to save public funded education from being completely dismantled. This Children’s Day, we appeal to you to join the *DUTA-FEDCUTA Rally “Reject NEP, Save Education for All” from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar, New Delhi, on 14th November, against the Draft National Education Policy.*

At a time when over 50% of the country’s population is below the age of 25 and  is aspiring to better opportunities of education and employment, the recent  “reforms” and restructuring pushed by the Government aims at selling education as a commodity. Instead of strengthening and repairing the public funded higher education, the Government is hell-bent on privatizing and commercializing education through the National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 which is slated to be placed in the Winter Session of Parliament.

For universities with a federal structure like DU, the NEP prescribes a systematic dismantling of the same by way of autonomous institutions to be governed by private bodies (Board of Governors) with little control of any kind over them. The delinking of colleges from DU will also devalue the degree given to the students. Higher education will be pushed out of the reach of the socially and economically disadvantaged, that is of the vast majority of the people of this country, and simultaneously the quality of public funded education will be downgraded. The service and working conditions proposed for teachers including contract appointments, longer probation period and differential pay system, will adversely impact teaching profession and in turn have a bearing on the quality of education imparted.

It is shocking that even as the wide sections of society including unions of teachers, academicians and researchers submitted their feedback on the Draft Policy, the Government has chosen to ignore it completely. The DUTA too had sent its feedback to the Government pointing out concerns about the effects of commercialization and privatization in an institution like ours that attracts students from across the country.

In this context, we seek your participation in this Rally which will be joined by students, teachers and karamcharis of DU, JNU, AMU, JMI, IGNOU and other Central Universities. We appeal to you to share this message and poster widely on social media.

We can win this battle to Save Education for All only together.

In solidarity,

Rajib Ray President, DUTA Rajinder Singh Secretary, DUTA