Speak up for Bangalore varsity

Speak up for Bangalore varsity
V RAGHUNATHAN
The Economic Times

OF LATE, Karnataka in general and Bangalore in particular have been in news, mostly for the wrong reasons. Notwithstanding the good and pleasant people of the region, unfortunately, Karnataka has figured among the four most corrupt states of a country, that itself ranks among the most corrupt and the most difficult of countries in the world to do business in — a distinction both Karnataka and India could well do without.

And Bangalore has been attracting flack from the industry for its crumbling infrastructure. Its woeful power situation, its pathetic and narrow roads, the time it takes to commute shortest of distances, the time it takes to build the shortest of the flyovers, the clogged drainage, haywire traffic, absent sidewalks, and open sewers, have all gone to wrinkle the noses of not just the IT czars as widely reported in the press, but of the common man as well — a fact much less reported.

There is something else that the state of Karnataka is embarking upon, that is perhaps much less known at the national level. In fact, the state is taking a leaf straight out of the hands of the Centre. We are all by now familiar with the Centre threatening to undo or actually undoing what the Supreme Court does through Bills and Ordinances. Well, the state is quietly doing just that, as reported in the local press, except that the move is so insidious and invidious to the cause of education in the state that it must give goose pimples to all the right thinking people. If ever a government showed the middle finger to its students, its people, its institutions, its judiciary and the very democratic processes and traditions, this must stand as a tall and sturdy metaphoric finger. Here’s why.

A few months ago, one saw an upright vice chancellor of Bangalore University, in a rare intrepid display of intellectual integrity rejecting five of the six candidates that the state government had stuffed the University’s Syndicate with — who by no stretch of imagination could be called “eminent educationists”. That the state government had the power to nominate so many of its hand-picked politicos to the Senate was in itself probably the doing of the Karnataka State Universities Act, 2000, giving way too much power to politicians to manage the universities in the state. Even at that time, the few voices of sanity that warned the then government of the dangers of this move had fallen on deaf ears.

The high court quite rightly admonished the state government over its ‘political nominations’ and declared the nominations void. So what does the state government do? According to reports (TOI, September 17), it is planning two amendments to the KSU Act 2000. One, it will replace the section that requires all the six nominees to be “eminent educationists” to one that will require them to be “anybody who is into education”. Now you know that every politician in this country and his dog runs ‘educational institutions’ and no prizes for guessing what this “amendment” is supposed to achieve. The second amendment, according to the press report, pertains to the section that quite reasonably restricts any nominee to a single term, so that the same Caligula’s Horses could be sent back to the Senate repeatedly.

There is an obvious need for children and parents alike, not only in Karnataka, but nation-wide, to be concerned about this blatant assault on an already seriously impaired educational system. One wonders how much more battering can the system take.

Public memory is fleeting and not many may remember today that merely two decades ago, national advertisements for jobs often used to say, “Students from Bangalore University need not apply!” This was when colleges in the city fiddled around with the university’s examination system to award First Class first ranks to students who had barely scraped past their higher secondary examinations! It took a lot of doing for the university to change that image. And now, this!

Yeah, sure, the problem may not involve you and me. It merely pertains to Karnataka and not your state. So why worry? But didn’t we hear those famous lines by Pastor Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

(The author is the CEO, GMR Varalakshmi Foundation and was former President, ING Vysya Bank and Professor at IIM, Ahmedabad and IIM, Bangalore. Views are personal)


• The Karnataka State Universities Act, 2000 has given the government the power to nominate politicos to the Senate
• The Bangalore University VC rejected five of the six candidates to the Senate as they were not ‘eminent educationists’
• The high court upheld the VC’s action. But the government is trying to undo the court verdict by amending the KSU Act.