Teacher's strike

The Central university teachers are on two-day strike.

The pay commission panel for UGC teachers was headed by Prof Chadha, the ex-VC of JNU. The report has been slammed by the teachers from the day it was released. For one, though the panel had promised substantial pay hikes nothing of the sort was recommended in the report. In fact, whatever hike we get is quite nominal. The professors, I think, were promised parity with Joint Secretaries which did not happen. The college teachers have been demanding for a long time that there should be professor positions in colleges which too has not been fulfilled. The maximum a college teacher could reach before the pay panel was that of a reader. In the pay panel an additional cadre of senior reader has been recommended. The professor position has been split into professor, senior professor, and professor of eminence. No, don't ask me the difference. It seems to me to be all about semantics.

We, at lecturer/assistant professor position had our own share of demands. Though recruitment at lecturer position does not require a Ph.D degree (whether it is in college or University- undergraduate or postgraduate teaching), most of us in sciences not only have a PhD but minimum 4-5 years of post-doc experience. If in university, then we are required to maintain an active research career. A college teacher usually has an M.Phil, if at all, and has no research responsibilities. Yet college teachers are treated on par with University teachers and both of us have to undergo something called an orientation and refresher course. The idea is to refresh ourselves. Which is ridiculous because when one has a research career one has to learn new ideas/techniques all the time. So a section of us have been saying that this orientation/refresher nonsense should be scrapped off for teachers in Universities who have an active research career. Of course, it has not been done.

Today's strike is all about scrapping the inequalities in professor position and redressing the grievances of college teachers. Neither the FEDCUTA nor the teacher's association in my University is interested in listening to the woes of the science faculty.

So what are we doing today?

Oh, it is business as usual.

Classes are going on because we are already behind schedule. The students vanished off for Dusshera and are planning to take off for Diwali. As attendance is not mandatory it does not matter to them. For the faculty it is rush time as extra classes are scheduled in to finish the course. The exams start in the last week of November and there is just no time.

A colleague of mine put it succinctly:

We are such a small group of teachers in our University that our presence or absence makes no difference. So why not have classes as usual?

Then he warned me:

Just do not call it class. Tell the students that you are going to have a discussion.

As I said earlier, it is all about semantics.