By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, July 22:
The turmoil in the DM University in Imphal is cooling down with the Manipur Government responding to the demands of the students and announcing the long-delayed Selection Committee results for appointment of Faculty and Non-Teaching Staff; I am using the term of Manipur Government rather than DM University Authorities for reasons of clear absence of institutional autonomy. While the non-faculty staff may join sooner, the Faculty, who have been in the service at other educational institutions, may take three-four months to shift to the DM University after completion of the normal official procedures; it is normal.
I am writing on the DM University for the understanding of what a university is like is still very poor, and there certainly is an imperative to be clear on this. There are also ample signs that the Minister looking after Education in Manipur Government is “disabled” to play his role fully out to give a direction and an envisaged meaning to the institution. On 14 July 2024, the Registrar of the institute came out with a Press Note responding to the agitation by the students on some very critical issues. One of the paragraphs of this note writes: “Dhanamanjuri University is a State University which runs with major financial support from the State Government. Its revenue collected from students and constituent colleges forms only a meagre source of its funding requirements. Therefore, the views of State Government relating to new appointments need to be considered by the University, including declaration of results for recruitments.” This would make any individual anywhere in the world and who thinks about higher education lose his/her heart. I can assert in emphatic terms that this principle is not applied to any university anywhere in the democratic world. I was not a student of D M College. But I must hasten to add that she was a nationally prestigious college. But now the College is no more and there is no University yet either.
The reality is that Manipur cannot afford to sacrifice DM (it is the only institution where this shorter form is more than enough to stand for the identity) for reasons of historical legacy and the role she can play in the continual transformation of Manipur. So we should not destroy the institution by quasi conversion to a university. We have to see to it that the institution is enabled to play the social, the political, and the economic role through intellectual capabilities.
The thinking centres and evolution of foundations of Affirmative Action were the Universities whether in Europe, Americas or Asia; even in the case of India, we cannot imagine contemporary India without the First Three Universities at Bombay, Calcutta and Madras. We can go through the vast literature talking of the role the Oxford and the Cambridge universities had played in the civilisational transformation of England.
This is what Elizabeth Goudge writes of the Oxford University in her novel Towers In The Mist: “’It could not be real, he thought. It was a fragile city spun out of dreams, so small that he could have held it on the palm of his hand and blown it away into silver mist. It was not real. He had dreamed of it for so long that now, when he looked down into the valley, the mist formed itself into towards and spires that would vanish under the sun the moment he shut his eyes … He shut his eyes, opened them, and the towers were still there.” Similar is the case in the United States of America, with the Harvard playing an exemplary role. In contemporary times, look at Thailand of the 1970s and compare it with today’s; it is impossible to capture the full picture without Chulalongkorn, Mahidol and Thammasat Universities amongst others in the transformation which had taken place.
Contemporary world is increasingly knowledge-intensive in its functioning and the endeavours for dynamism. Johan Olsen and Peter Maassen (2007) wrote some time back when knowledge was increasingly becoming the core foundation of social transformation: “ The “solution” is to a large extent based upon causal and normative beliefs that are taken as givens, that is, it is in general not necessary to argue for them. The main assumption, in simplified form, is that more complex and competitive economic and technological global environments require rapid adaptation to shifting opportunities and constraints. This, in turn, requires more determined university strategies and a strong, unitary and professional leadership and management capacity that matches those of modern private enterprises. University management needs to control available financial and human resources and the power of the executive and the central administration of the University has to be strengthened….. [G]overnment and politics should have a less prominent role in the governance of universities as well as in society at large. Universities should have more autonomy and greater distance to government. Intervention by public authorities should be at arms length and not go beyond providing a “leveled playing field,” clear mission statements and accountability mechanisms for the results achieved. Universities should, however, be better integrated into society, in particular into industry and the business community, and should be governed by bodies that reflect a wide range of stakeholders. Third party evaluation and quality assurance should be organized through a variety of university-external bodies, such as research councils and accreditation agencies.”
While the international thinking has been more along these lines and which is coupled by the contextual inevitability of Manipur to focus on education (as the socio-economic foundation is still undiversified), the scenario is still hazy. Though the appointment orders in DM University have been issued under the authority of the Bureaucrat looking after the charge of the Vice Chancellor, it would have been more appropriate and normal nature of things if the Government concentrated on the appointment of the Vice Chancellor. In that case, the VC could have taken things up with the idea and knowledge of the scheme of things to be followed in the next few years to come.
The Manipur University at Canchipur was given the shape and behavioural qualities of a university by Prof K J Mahale. The experiences under the first University of India (Bombay University) coupled by vast experiences in French institutions equipped Prof Mahale with the knowledge and understanding of what a university should be like.
I would end by asserting that there is an immediacy to correct the absence of knowledge of what a university should be like at both the government and the DM university levels. Knowing about what a university is like cannot be taken as easy for to acquire this understanding calls for large scale exposures to institutions around the globe; just completed the higher degrees and been in a university for some time are definitely inadequate. Further, any government with all its bureaucracy can never perform the qualitative functions of attending to the prosperity of a university. There is a deeply shared poverty in these dimensions in the case of the DM University.
