By Patricia Mukhim
Guess which are the most widely spread advertisement campaigns you see in this city? Shillong is strafed with billboards about schools, colleges, universities, technical institutions of every conceivable name! The claims are over the top. Each of the educational institutions promise the moon and, of course, a sprawling campus as if that is all that matters. If one were to go by the Gurukul system which to my mind is still the best because it is a system of mentoring as opposed to the system of teaching, then a campus or a state of the art classroom is the last thing you need. And teaching as it is done today which is talking down to students who are assumed to be cretins, is what has taken education to the abyss. Most schools, colleges and universities today forget to ask themselves what outcomes they look for from their students. They think institution and want name and fame for having produced the top ten achievers while sending out the rest to wallow in their pygmy-sized self worth. Don’t the under-qualifiers deserve some counselling? Those who don’t the cut because of their marks are already deemed failures. Is this a good way of admitting students? Granted that institutions, especially the “prestigious” ones want to provide a competitive edge, but at what cost?
Speaking about the chaos surrounding the closure of CMJ University, many enlightened citizens are posing a series of questions for which they find no ready answers. One is about the curious case of the absconding Chancellor Mr Chandra Mohan Jha. If, as his lawyers claim, Jha is not culpable and that things are in order then why is he afraid of being questioned? But more than that one is foxed by the answer given by the senior police official of the crime branch. When asked why CM Jha continues to evade arrest the answer given by this worthy cop is, “We will arrest him in at the appropriate time.” Pray, when is that appropriate time Mr SK Jain? And do you always arrest offenders and criminals at the appropriate time? Appropriate for whom? For the offender? Or for the police? If this is the kind of policing that is going on in Meghalaya no wonder so many cops are turning offenders. They know the complacency of their seniors and they also know they will get away with even heinous offences like rape. It took the personal intervention of the Home Minister and her intransigence to get the files for suspending the offending cops moving. It’s a dreadful system obtaining here and the lawlessness in Garo Hills is in direct proportion to the incompetence of the police department.
CM Jha has a history of alliances with influential politicians in our State. I recall that even the intelligent and pragmatic politician, late TH Rangad also got carried away and became a member of the infamous North East India Trust for Education and Development (NEITED)promoted by CM Jha. Mr DD Lapang continues to be the patron of this Trust. If he is no longer a member then he should declare that publicly. Later Mr Rangad resigned from the Trust after he came to know of its shady activities. Jha is not a new offender. In April 2011 the CBI had filed a charge-sheet against him as the NEITED secretary along with two others for their involvement in the alleged misappropriation of public funds. The funds were released by the North Eastern Council for implementation of a scheme titled “Integrated e-education and Tele health programme for ten schools in Meghalaya”.
Apart from Jha, the others who have been charge-sheeted in this case include Global Telemedicine Healthcare Network Foundation (GTHNF) chairman Dr AK Verma and one A Shylla of Mawlai Iewrynghep. According to the CBI official, the utilisation certificates submitted by Jha for the Rs 1.49-crore scheme to be implemented through GTHNF during 2006-2009 were found to be fake and the scheme was not fully implemented. As many as nine schools did not receive items which were shown to have been supplied to them. The scheme could not be made operational even after submission of the project completion report.
Besides submitting fake bills in the name of non-existing firms in Shillong, the GTHNF was also found to be non-existing in the given address. Dr Verma of the GTHNF had submitted fake invoices and payment receipts to show expenditure of Rs 1.59 crore. The CBI report further revealed that Jha opened an account in Vijaya Bank, Shillong in the name of M/s Techno Associates by using photographs of A Shylla impersonating her as “Bibiana Pyngrope” and proprietor of the Associates. The firm was shown as one of the suppliers of the project while Jha made the payments from the scheme fund to the fake account of Pyngrope and the money was subsequently withdrawn.
All this news is in the public domain and CM Jha had, by that time, already got what he wanted, which is a University in his name so that he could manipulate the system. The CMJ University Act was passed in July 2009 by the MUA Government. It is not difficult to comprehend how and why CM Jha got his work done. He had a patron in the then chief Minister, DD Lapang. And we are told that the Bill was passed without much discussion, since the opposition too did not make mincemeat of the issue. The problem is that every politician (ruling and opposition)has a vested interest in getting a private university opened in Meghalaya. Some of them might be fired by altruism but the rest certainly by dodgy motives.
I have one very important question to ask the CID honcho here. Is his dithering over the arrest of CM Jha intentional because the guy might spill the beans and some top politicians here might also need to be arrested for being patrons of a fake (?) University? Like the CBI, the CID too is known to be loyal to the Government, never mind what happens to powerless citizens. And I am also not sure whether a University which was started with the blessings of the State Government and passed by no less a body than the State legislature can be called fake. That would imply a certain infirmity about the very nature of the Government and the legislature. But is this not what has been happening for several decades? We have had all manner of dubious institutions set up here with no accountability mechanisms in place. If we start looking hard we will find skeletons hidden in stinky closets.
So if CMJ is not a fake University then what is it? Well, like every institution with an ignoble objective, CMJ is out to make money by selling degrees. Otherwise how can it offer a PhD to undeserving applicants and promise the certificate to them in 3 months? What sort of PhD do you get in three months? It takes a minimum of 5 years of rigorous research after which a draft paper is put up for peer review and critiquing by the guide/guides. Then follows the long process of writing up the findings! CMJ has been advertising about the easy availability of PhDs in reputed newspapers in this country from north to south and east to west. And now that the bubble has burst all those who got sold by the promise of a purchased PhD are crying, “treason.” What were they thinking when they enrolled? Did they believe that a famed University would award degrees so easily? It was a risk they were willing to take. Now that things have soured, it would be wrong to blame everyone, from the Governor to the State Government. Of course the State Government can be blamed to the extent that it had not set up an oversight committee to detect these flaws in time. And believe me CMJ is not the only doubtful university. There are others and they merit serious enquiry.
About the college students who claim to have been duped by CMJ, one is not so sure that they and their parents could be so gullible as to not know the risks they too were taking. If something similar were to happen to any of our students in some dubious, private University/college in Bangalore would we expect the State Government of Karnataka to come to their rescue? A private university has some liberties and can do without government interference. Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Oxford and other top universities of the world are privately funded and do not tolerate government interference. There are other oversight bodies such as the UGC to do the needful. So why then is the ball thrown into the Government’s court to rescue the so-called victimised students? Those students from other States should look to their Government for a rescue dinghy. Period.