The suicide, or self-immolation, of a girl student at a private autonomous college in Balasore, Odisha has come as a huge shock to the academic community and the people at large. The self-immolation outside the Fakir Mohan College gate took place after the 22-year-old’s complaints about sexual harassment and academic manipulation by the head of the B.Ed department failed to wake up the higher authorities up or stir them up to take punitive action against the perpetrators. Hints are that more faculty members were involved in the harassment. The arrest of the main accused and suspension of the principal came only after the grim suicide attempt, apparently under the pressure of the snowballing public anger over what went wrong at the college. Notably, the heat of the sensational and abhorrent rape incident at the South Calcutta Law College, last month, which involved a student leader linked to the ruling Trinamool Congress, is yet to die down. Put together, the higher education sector across the country is a state of shock and disbelief. Sexual harassment of a similar nature, involving also some loosely-run managements in the private college education sector, are said to be quite common. A lack of positive response from the college authorities and even their attempts at saving the accused by virtue of their influence are more shocking and highly condemnable. The suspension of a principal or the arrest of the faculty by itself would not be enough. Chances are that they get back to their roles after a while by claiming innocence as and when the protests die down.
The higher education sector in the country has undergone massive transformation in recent decades, with the private sector increasingly digging in, starting colleges, charging high fees, and not necessarily adhering to the ethics of higher education. The UGC itself might not necessarily have much of a say in disciplining these managements, also because many of these colleges, or even autonomous universities, have been started and run by influential politicians or their sidekicks. The established, government-run universities themselves have lost much of their reputation in recent years due to lack of effective oversight by the UGC. Many private colleges are employing a whole lot of temporary lecturers, labelling them assistant professors and paying them a pittance as salaries even while the UGC-prescribed salaries for regular teachers have risen in recent decades to fancy levels. Flushed with funds, teachers are losing their interest in academic pursuits, and instead are more keen on enjoying their lives. All these are having adverse effects on the higher education sector, evident in the fact that there’s hardly any Indian university or higher education institution that figures in the first 100 among the world’s best.
The land of Nalanda and Takshashila, universities of yore that excelled in scholastic pursuits, have ended up in such a pass. The general fall in both standards and professional upkeep is reflected amply in the situations as unfolded in Balasore, the educational hub of north-Odisha region.
