MAFIA IN COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES

           I never thought my satirical note ‘Facebook Vacation’ will, in this pachydermic academic world, sting someone. I come to understand that it did. Though it is a story of a single mosquito biting an elephant, it has some lessons to teach. After the bite, the metaphorical elephant seems to have expressed its anger furiously trumpeting that in another ten days it will do away with the mosquito.

         If I must use plain speech, a Principal of a college after reading my quip, swore in front of his cronies that he will do away with me in 10 days. He is furious at me for exposing his fraud under RTI. Three days are already gone. Just seven more days to live! Isn’t this fatwa issuing Principal, an interesting joke?

   Then, what is the lesson we learn from this mosquito-elephant story? Why a professed academician must in the first place commit a fraud? Why then when his critic uses his pen, he thinks of using his gun as a response? He can jolly well use the social media or tell the Information Commission/Court the plain truth and establish that he has not committed any fraud.

        Dishonesty, corruption and violence associated with education, have a long history in India. Today, however these felonious elements have joined in different permutations and combinations to completely undo the system. They have indeed crossed certain threshold level. The present stage of decay I would call as mafiaization of education. Before I explain my concept, let us take a look at how the decay happens at different levels.

LEVEL-1: ACADEMIC DISHONESTY

       This is an ever present malice in the system. This ranges from classroom plagiarism and copying in assignments to producing cut and paste PhD theses. Internet has now created tremendous facility for this. Indian universities and colleges till date have been quite insensitive to this issue. India ranks highest in plagiarism. No university has effective code to contain this.

LEVEL-2 ACADEMIC CHEATING

       This is about several forms of examination malpractices which involves both teachers and students which range from copying in exams to award of marks/degrees by teachers and administrators for pecuniary consideration. Many universities turn a blind eye to this as many of its own faculty and administrators are part of the racket. Today, PhD guides in several universities run ‘cut-and-sell’ PhD shops where a thesis sells anything between Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 100,000/-. They are prepared to give any kind of certificate on payment.

LEVEL-3: COMMERCIALIZATION AND PROFITEERING (Systemic)

       When India did not manage to put up an honest, clean, accountable system of education in its first 50 years of independence, the neoliberal policies opened the floodgates for private operators to develop education as they did with Highways, coalmines and failed public sector industries. All kinds of black money flowed in as capital. Black money earned by corrupt politicians, real estate sharks, apkari contractors, even corporate houses entered education with motives which were totally inimical to educational objectives.

       Compare this with the nationalist minded philanthropists, private operators, caste/religious associations who started private institutions before and after independence.  If this yester year private operators were committed to some social/political cause, the present private operators are committed to only one cause: MAKE SUPER PROFIT AT SUPER SPEED BREAKING THE VERY ETHICAL FOUNDATION OF THE NOBLE SYSTEM. Unlike in the past, where even when philanthropists made huge personal investments in education, they treated education sacrosanct and left its management in the hands of educationists. They never seriously interfered with the work of Vice-chancellors, Principals and Headmasters they came to appoint.

       Now, every joker who puts in money wants to be a Pro-chancellor or Director or in the broad sense, wants to be a kalvithanhai. Big capitation fee, corruption in placement, appointment of sub standard staff in order to make profit and absence of academic ambience have come to rule many campuses. We also shamelessly tell ourselves that less than 20% of our graduates are employable.

       We are happy as long as we can buy and sell education and stakes related to education. We, without any qualms tell that a college lecturer’s job is available for 30 lakhs and Vice-chancellor’s job for 1 or 2 crores. So, education has become an easy source of money making. Corruption in education is the order.

LEVEL IV: MAFIAIZATION OF EDUCATION

       Many of us did not think seriously about commercialization and wholesale corruption in education. We simply gave a broad brush treatment that corruption in education would promote only mediocrity. Neither did we try to understand the meaning of mediocrity nor the systemic damage it would bring.

        Corruption in the first place brings unqualified/ undeserving/fraudulent/ average and below average people into the system. As long as mediocre persons are less in number, they try to hide themselves and find their existence in the margins of the system. When the magnitude of corruption increases, the number of mediocre persons increases in terms of every rank and position. Then they capture the system forming a network or syndicate.

        Since mediocre persons develop a strong sense of intellectual inadequacy and inferiority, their first attack is on the order of merit in the system and therefore, anyone standing for merit. As a logical corollary, they de-sanctify the system and dismantle its institutional fabric. Freedom, democracy and individual dignity become serious casualties. They increasingly use extra constitutional means, the logical extreme of which is violence. A college or university becomes a system of servitude and evinces only the silence of the grave on real issues.

        Use of violence is possible only when these men and women in power form an unholy alliance with corrupt politicians, policemen, and underworld goons. They silence their opponents within the academia by not only using vindictive administrative measures like denial of promotions, suspensions, dismissals, foisting of false cases etc. but also by employing criminal intimidation and violence. Anyone who gives public support from outside is also handled violently. Madurai has good number of examples.

        A system that works on the mafia logic is established within the academia. Another tragedy is that a section of students and faculty are drawn into the fold of this criminal syndicate of the academia to be used as agents and informers on the basis of petty benefits. No wonder, Vice-chancellors and institutional heads are implicated with charges of cheating, fraud, attempt murder or murder these days. Corruption charges and CBI inquiries are mere mosquito bites for them.

        But the question remains; can an elephant kill a mosquito? Will my friend in town learn the lesson? Seven more days!

                                                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                                                                                   25.06.2014

CHINNARAJ JOSEPH

NARCISSUS GAZING AT HIS OWN

 After the Vacation...

I am back from facebook vacation. Like all other vacations, facebook vacations are important. First you stop showing your face, and then you stop seeing other faces. Seeing too much of your own face makes you a narcissist, that at one point, even you enjoy looking at your own image reflected from the wet bathroom floor or cesspool on the road.

 If you look at other faces too much, you become a ‘virtual- space crony’ (V-crony) or a compulsive voyeur and an ‘intellectual shallow’ ready to press ‘Like’ buttons even when you are not too very sure, and press ‘breast buttons’ when you are too sure that you dislike or differ from friends and foes. Unlike ‘Like’ buttons ‘breast buttons’ send dislikes, jealousies and hatred straight into your heart and make pickles inside. That is why heart attack rates are higher in facebook users than nonusers. My humble advice for both friends and foes is to tell your dislikes openly and often take holidays…

Now let me come to business… my facebook/blog idea is basically political.  Then what is the message? As I searched for a theme, what came handy is the reopening of colleges allover Tamilnadu today June18, 2014. I thought I can say something about vacation and reopening of colleges. The idea of vacation to colleges and universities once upon a time was to allow hard working students and untiring knowledge workers called teachers, some rest from their unceasing intellectual scraping of the brain. The vacation allowed physical and mental recouping of these strange men and women. When they returned to work, they were fresh to further scrape.

Is vacation relevant today? ‘Yes’ I will say, but the reason is different. As in the case of facebook, continuous exposure in majority of today’s colleges and universities, are intellectually, psychologically and morally damaging for both students and for well meaning (not all) teachers.

Colleges and universities can be easily compared to facebok. Say if you have a PC with net, you can start a facebook account. It is a matter of another PC to start a college or become a Princpal or Vice chancellor. That is, if you have the Personal Capital (PC) you can become another father or mother of education (Kalvi Thanthai or Kalvithai) after people like Rajaram Mohan Roy, Rabindranath Tagore, Radakrishnan and Kothari. Personal Capital can mean anything from money earned through bootlegging, real estate, large scale loot by politicians, religious business (what bogus swamis, corrupt bishops, TV preachers do) to right family connections to people in position. Madurai’s educational scene today suffers because of two noteworthy father-in-law connections. One was a wonderful Bisop who is no more  and another an Hon’ble former minister who is also no more.

Starting a college is not enough but as in facebook, showing is much more important. Kalvithanthais and Thais show everything - from baldheads to rose- powdered faces and from old fashioned suits to photos posed with VIP visitors and from advertisements of campuses during convocation thiruvilas to academic exhibitions. (one such overerexploited public face is poor Dr. Abdul Kalam). Now, you have to exhibit everything and how much you need to strip is your own choice. More you exhibit, more you reap as benefit. The only difference you make from the facebook is that there, you cause more people to ‘Like’ you and ‘Follow’ you, but here, you make solid business.

The consumer world has made life a show business whether it is your personal existence or selling cars, refrigerators or education. Facebook has taken care of personal showing (you can call it showing of your life style or what you consume in order to maintain that style). Colleges have taken care of public showing of consumption these days, by pompous branding of courses, building Hi-Fi class rooms with POWER points, making MBA students wear oversized jackets and make them look like circus jockeys and finally mouth loudly the magic word of success in education namely ‘placement’. Education is not only made highly visible but made seriously suffer a visual effect but no cerebral effect, today. Everything made visual gives too little a space for brain to reflect and you become shallow. 

 That is how our teachers, Principals, Vice-Chancellors have shamelessly perceive education to be and ae fond of even in wall posters. They think they need not even equip themselves for the job. Worse still, they might even lie as to the nature of their qualification and degrees and commit fraud on the system. If your Principal or Vice-chancellor is accused of fraud, what to expect from the students? Madurai, the cultural head quarters of Thamizhagam in this regard, has one Kalvithanthai and one Kalvithai who have shamelessly misstated their qualification to obtain coveted positions. Both Thanthai and Thai by some strange coincidence are now arrayed before the High Court. One at least I know has committed a big fraud in terms of his qualification.

So much of my facebook holiday was spent by me playing Sherlock Holms to catch frauds and taking them to the court.

For those secret Christians of our Great Campus who suffer under Thanthai, there is good news. Get ready for the farewell of the beloved. It is prophesied that God would arrive like a thief. But my dear friends, you don’t run away in fear and confusion like thieves! Unlike Bishops and policemen, God if at all He comes, HE catches only thieves. But the problem is HE is always on vacation! Because there have been too many faccebook 'friends request' for HIM. HE is scared! But He told me yesterday that HE is joining duty tomorrow June 19, 2014.

CHINNARAJ JOSEPH                                                                                               18.06.2014