I had wished that the four-year undergraduate programme will not be implemented. But I had no basis for such expectation. Arun Jaitley of the BJP had expressed his fear in a speech that he delivered at a seminar on education policy last year where he asked us to be alert as the fresh attempts of the present government at opening up FDIs in the consumer market segment was definitely going to be the last nail in the coffin for the Indian manufacturing and other such indigenous technologically high-end sectors.

He had concluded that there was every possibility of India getting converting into a country of salespersons. A country of salespersons meaning thereby that this country will become a place where you would no longer require persons with great technical skills and instead you would require persons with a reasonable level of communication and presentation skills, having some mathematical ability, who have working knowledge of Indian history and geography, a little exposure to science, technical gadgets and philosophy and have an ability to keep peace with their mind, body and heart so that they can feel satisfied even if they are unreasonably asked to show performance disregarding the amount of effort they put in to achieve a target. A place where the manufacturing units are facing closure and only real estate and mall-culture is thriving, why the hell one would need accomplished persons with great thinking ability, deep understanding of issues and/or sound technical skills? They are required only in developed countries!

In view of the above requirement, this country needed an educational policy that on one hand would encourage good students to go to a developed country (read US) and on the other hand to encourage others to develop the abovementioned soft-skills and become drop outs as they would be required in our country to fill the appetite of our service sectors that is bound to see an explosion. Delhi University came ahead with a structure that fits exactly into this requirement. The structure indeed will slowly but surely discourage serious students from choosing Delhi University as the new structure will not offer what they would be looking for. These students will be disappointed to see that their favorite discipline is going to occupy them only for one-third of their class-time. Realising their mistake they would start looking for other private institutions where they are not likely to waste studying for so many disorientation-generating foundation courses. On the other hand, those who would enjoy studying foundation courses will develop fear for the last two years of discipline-oriented courses and will eventually exit the course to fall for lower-level job openings where they would realize their mistake of leaving their studies only after a decade but that too only if they were not good at grasping the lessons taught during the course named as “Integrating Mind, Body and Heart”. Only those who have nothing else to do would opt for continuing their studies. It is exactly the same overwhelming set of students that take admissions in the government schools. This prescription is perfect for converting our university with some excellence into the government school culture where teachers are kept busy with election-duties, census-works, mid-day meal arrangements and organising functions for felicitating local/non-local political leaders. Students who are serious have no options but to go for private institutions.

I just wish that this effort of Delhi University in developing a course especially for drop-outs is successful in reversing the existing trend of students opting for the Delhi University courses over many better degrees offered by private institutes running B.Tech./B.E./M.B.A./B.B.A/M.C.A./B.C.A. and other such higher-level job-oriented courses otherwise the university will be forced to take further such regressive steps! With requirements stated as above our education system that otherwise and urgently needed a change for better could not attempt at improving the quality of education to the set of students that choose to study in Delhi University.

The effect of the steps taken by Delhi University is that the university has already moved into a disaster-management mode. After witnessing the non-responsive character of the university during the anti-semester struggle, the moment our present vice-chancellor revealed his intention of implementing a four-year-programme, the university moved into this phase. The ‘task force’ got engaged in an exercise to minimse the after-effects of this time-bound (non-avertable) disaster. Originally, the proposal was to have one year of discipline-free course-structure but it was probably dropped only when the members of the ‘task force’ threw their towel down to make their point. The ‘task force’ was left essentially to suggest ways to control the damage as they had no authority to question the structure as they say - that the structure was an outcome of a three-day seminar wherein there exists no record of any discussion on the proposed structure in any of its sessions.

We know that the teachers can only be asked to prepare for the eighteen-odd lectures that they are supposed to deliver in a week, but they raise doubts only when they see a danger of delivering lectures to a non-receptive bunch of students or they fear to witness a nightmare of facing dissatisfied lot students who are otherwise interested in studies.

I am now preparing myself for facing the disaster as the University also has started enforcing frequent last-minute fine-tunings into the structures and their assessment on the infrastructure requirements that often exhibits their ever-growing panic level. However, despite the unexpected show of interest by the government, I am sure that we are not likely to get any respite as they are now in a win-win situation wherein for the first time they would not be blamed for the disaster. They are in such an enviable position that they are able to take an unprecedented stand of not resorting to interfere into the University’s autonomy (as if they have never interfered!). The Government is preferring to ‘enjoy’ through its ‘Dhritarashtra eye’ that has no fear of witnessing the arrival of a ‘Krishna’ this time as the University is continuously engaged in trying to pull off the sari of our education system.