Stop functioning like a bureaucracy: JNUTA tells management

The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) has given a seven-day deadline to the university administration to “stop functioning like a bureaucracy” and take concrete steps to solve all their issues. The move has come a few days after the Vice-Chancellor responded to their earlier “21-day” deadline to meet their demands which range from the system of promotions to the problems of plagiarism and lack of traffic management in the university despite recent fatal accidents.

“Although the Vice-Chancellor responded to our earlier charter of demands, we find that he is continuing to stall the process so we have demanded that he respond within the next seven days with some positive action,” said Arun Kumar, the JNUTA president, adding that the V-C needed to be proactive and show leadership to the teaching community by resolving long-standing matters with a firm hand since the lack of leadership was the major cause for a variety of problems plaguing the university.

“The entire top administration is so busy dealing with routine work that it has little time to play the leadership role it ought to play,” said the letter to the administration, in which the teachers have emphasised all that is wrong with the functioning of the university as well as what should be done and why everything is being stalled.

The letter stated that the response to their demands has no timelines and is instead a “bland statement of the duties of various departments and officials”. The JNUTA has also stated that the administration’s failure of not meeting deadlines and refusing to decentralise administrative work is at the root of many issues that have cropped up in recent times.

“My door is always open, I always meet the faculty and listen to what they have to say,” said Vice-Chancellor S.K Sopory, while responding to the charges that the JNUTA has made.

“There have been cases where the budget of a project has not been approved for months and the project has been delayed or where sanctions have not come for long. This is a result of slow decision making since the top administration is busy with routine matters that could have been resolved at the lower level,” said Prof. Kumar, while giving an example of the “Project Cell”, which has not been functioning very efficiently.

The JNUTA has also alleged that the university was unresponsive and late to take action against serious charges of plagiarism which had been proved by the teachers.

“A case of severe plagiarism in a dissertation was brought before the V-C in June. No action has been taken in the matter even though it was urgent.”

A Traffic Planning Committee Report which was submitted a long time ago has also not been looked into. “The matter has been repeatedly raised in the JNU Court and Academic Council but little action has followed. This is in spite of the increasing number of accidents and problems of pollution and difficulty of access for the disabled. When some students died recently, then the idea of setting up a Committee was revived but again there has been little action for the last five months,” added Prof. Kumar.