The Critique of Subjectivity Or Why and How to Resist Mandatory Attendance

The question of attendance as a system which imposes oppressive structures on the subject whose being and presence is in prison by the ‘dictatorial dictat’ of the VC is also a very real situation which has to be understood in its ideal as well as its actual course of development. The VC, even in JNU campus, is absolute authority, and so long as it does not have objective knowledge of its subjects (students), it has no power to exercise upon us. The power he enjoys comes from the repression of the students as subjects under the objective system of control by the institutional authority of the VC . But the structure might appear as something leading to objectivity of ‘lived experiences’ and perception as the ultimate reality. Does perception live out of lived experience? Lived reality dwells too much upon the idea of the subjective. The present world schematism is such that the subject loses its place in the objective reality. If we see the case of students, their lived experiences are more generally so diverse that there always would be an incorrect definition in relation to the contradiction between a social group and a class. You could argue of either of the two. Between the student and the student community, the contradiction takes shape. For the administration, students are objects with substance but not essence. The very purpose of education has become the reproduction of ideas divorced from practice, in a manner, that we do not mostly realize what we study if we do not practice and what we actually practice is majorly a negation of our theoretical education, if we try to clearly understand it, by understanding reason as a notion of reality. The subjective notion of reality mostly celebrates the differences of lives of students, one from the other, while the administration has quantitative as well as qualitative understanding of students which is more actual and factual. The memories of lived experiences as objective data  come into conflict with fundamental laws imposed upon the subject that leaves no room but to find reason in  the objectivity and immediate actuality of practice. In a university, for the students, the administration is not much more than a mechanism and for the administration the students are not much more than organisms that it can and has to  affect because the environment has definite social construction governed by fixed laws. The truth is in all our lived experiences we have a subjective notion of reality in behaviour. There is a theoretical need to define objectivity as a higher stage of unity, a stage of absolute where it is almost possible qualitatively, where it ceases to be a mere stage wherein or upon which objectivity is achieved but the course of development of the movement.. On the one hand, there is the fact that all students come from similar and different social groups and classes, the bone of contention is how their lives are governed by reason manifest as the theorization of an actual phenomena, a scientific law because on the other hand the assault upon the classes antagonistic to the interests of the ruling  class. Can such a scientific theory, one that is realistic enough to materialize a longstanding movement, a dialectical movement wherein we can negatively realize the totalitarian tyranny of the VC be possible and subsequently to  act upon it as one?

Let us consider the case of DU where attendance is not only compulsory, as a form of subversion of subjectivity, but also the conditions of necessities and well as conditions of possibilities.  When a student goes to the class, s/he finds it overcrowded, along with a major chunk of students who feel completely  and have different opinions because of the disconnection of day scholars from the extracurricular work in college that should necessarily be a possibity of their objective existence. Just as work and no play makes one dull, similarly trying to become political or the trend of expectation that we can continue to resist in our own ways will never result in any realistic action. To gauge student activity as collective and objective as a social group would reveal the fact that objectivity is inherent in the structure and the fundamental contradiction of a capitalist society is such that through propagating that ideology, they are alienating the individual from the collective. By collective, I mean the rank and file of our elected officials in the union and the so-called ‘class representatives’, and the alt-left student group with other students. We live in an age where reality is negative and possibilities are positive but not material, and the self is split. The necessity of attendance is so real a phenomenon in the lived experiences of students that few would take the freedom to craft their own course and study it separately under the guidance of the University (or not!). While that would not only be a subjective notion of study, it would be a self-serving notion of subjectivism. The students expect  too much from the student organizations, and not all the student organizations deliver, especially when it comes to politicizing the students upon social issues to raise consciousness, they fall in the trap that the students have set for them. They have become subjectivists. We need to understand that the students are being subjective in their demand, because they are living in a negation of the power they have as a united force, but the manner in which the struggle is taken forward has a very subjectivist attitude. In practical terms, networking, alliances are essential tactically but what is good for the students in the university is what is good for the development of productive forces in the societies, if the activity or the struggle of the students is both pragmatic and prognostic and in the larger struggle is also the kind of unity to fight fascist authoritarianism in the whole country. The body and the mind cannot be separated from each other and only a scientific diagnosis and solution to the questions raised on the struggle against the subjective and the objective situations at play and only the highest unity between the Student masses, between the body and mind of the subject can be achieved. The best ally, the best friend of the students and the most productive force for the students is the union. Well not because they are in power, but precisely because they are not, and if we as students, do not look out for the interest of our union ‘friends’ who are actually struggling and getting served notices but we who study as students think consciously against the system of attendance and do not have a definite objective course planned for it. What is important for us is to actually struggle, not as intellectuals, but as students, learning in society how to make friends. Some friends would stab you in the back. Why? It is in their interest; but why should the student look at anyone differently? The student does not live in a life-and-death struggle. For them, most things are symbolic, as to a large section of youth in our country who are willing and able to work but the state has no employment to give.. Similarly, certain organizations have hoodwinked the students into believing that the students did not do their part in the disappearance of Najeeb and also the larger discourse of how ‘traditional’ vanguards become like the institutional police. These things the BAPSA cannot and will not understand, because they decentre the politics from the subject when they talk about the marginal and its impact on identity and consciousness. Their activity is for students who sit and pontificate on matters of discrimination and marginalization while themselves never consequentially being the voice of the voiceless also not considering a party of the most opppressed which is the propertyless laborer and by that they essentially create the subject in absence. The absent subject cannot speak for itself, therefore becomes an object to be spoken about, not an objective notion that caters to the lived experience of students as political activity. Working class politics then loses all its historical terminology and in the hands of petty bourgeois intellectuals becomes a method of propagating subjectivism. We should understand that fundamentally things can be objects about which one can think of anything. We can think about the attendance issue as another issue that is an objective necessity of our student life that is as structural or systemic oppression, which would obviously be a subjectivist compromise which students in JNU have often been making when they compare JNU to IIT and demand for the same possibilities in JNU at the same price. This is a demand which does not even sound good in the hallowed walls(!) of JNU, haunting us with the ghost of Chandrashekhar on the one hand and Najeeb on the other, wondering whether under the union of the former, the latter would have been the case with a student. Such questions are anyway futile, because nostalgia for/with the history of JNU is a bad trait, and against the interests of the subjectivists.

Who are the subjectivists? Those who think that proclaiming “Insha Allah” is a form of freedom (of expression) and thinking that it is in the interests of the minority, and by addressing the minority, we can really address the difference between a theory of political practice, that is not only a lived experience such as the practice of Islam rather than transforming the objective reality of being born into a Muslim family. Life is essential for the human species, and to ensure the prolongation of life, it is imperative to understand the laws of nature in the objective development of human society, and how certain subjects became backward or forward, and unequal or different not just in cultural respects but also in terms of the institutions they are in. In DU, students had stayed the continuation of the FYUP because the objective conditions were affected by the development of the various forces, particularly AISA, associated as another form of saffron terror in JNU, with the development of the student masses participating in that movement. If its defeat was the implementation of CBCS later, its victory was being repealed and setting up a model for the scientific method of struggle. The students have to be real actors in this movement not from the point of view of the subjectivists, but from the side of the union. The union is not just a collection of popular people, nor it the ‘Marvel’s Avengers’ or DCs ‘Justice League’, but the very apparatus of the union must be first put into its full utility before we ourselves as students transform it, hopefully by boycotting the Lyngdoh when the student movement of the JNU students reaches that stage. If a situation is reached wherein the negation can itself stand for the justification, the question in place of the answer, that has happened, not in the name of political polemics (which is negligible) but as the political line which they take to the masses, would you find it absurd or natural? If the question is hard to figuratively think about and definitively answered, what basis is there for catering as students to the interest of the subjectivists whose interests is to serve their own interest, but not to objectively participate and create movements that have lasting impact upon the masses and the student community. What remained the most dominant and decisive factor in the FYUP movement was precisely this lasting impact, when an academic issue became a mass issue for the student community about which organization and the students have the same definitive opinion. AISA knew the part DUSU would play after the elections as an apparatus and how as a mass organization to put pressure along with a variety of different groups of student and teachers who only shared a temporary alliance with the union. Now in JNU, when no student organization can boast of winning the elections for the union single-handedly, and with subjectivists frustrated in equating red terror with saffron terror because they are stuck naturally in their own lack, or rather the contradiction of the state and subject, to which the only essentially scientific resolution would be to be more practical and accept the logic of oppression inherent in the system but still not lose the subject. That can only be ensured when the people who represent you will be responsible for your political action and should so hold you accountable for it. Communication is necessary but lines must separate interest and the students must see for themselves the differences in political lines as separations. Wherever such is the case, the differences between the political constitutions of the students must not be antagonistic to the union and to themselves. This much is clear about the situation of political resistance in JNU.

The communication should be official and factual and the union in this case, has the only objective data, and as for the political path of the movement against mandatory resistance, it is negation of negation, the ultimate struggle for a higher for of political freedom has that has always been under the danger of an attack because university is still an institution run by the ruling class with a fascist government as the objective authority.
In the end then, since the development of subjectivity in the consciousness cannot be under the sole subjective question of identity, because an assault on the participation of students in classroom is a normative practice that now the administration wants to see as an objective criterion for the recognition of identity. The political pursuit of identity in the sphere of socio-economic reality cannot be dealt in isolation from the functioning of consciousness and the reasons for which attendance is made mandatory for the students so the kind of subjectivism that capitalism has led to in order to cover its contradiction is very evident in the reality that has made itself manifest in the actual body count who quantitatively and qualitatively stand for the administration and against the interest of the students and also the existence of individual identity outside or in the margins of the capitalist system. The student is reduced to the subject whose existence is under question, at most outside the classroom and the reason behind this is the reason given by the administration and the resultant silence on the part of the objective factual realityof the students and their rational demands for a more liberal administration.

 What we should strive to achieve as students therefore is the right to be members of a society divided by hierarchies but still united in the pursuit of concrete knowledge and scientific theories representative of the real field of study we undertake ‘for a living’ and in that living to overcome the hierarchies and reduce divisions to their minimum function. In order to live productively, we dwindle between sometimes good or bad and sometimes more or less. Such is the uncertain fate of subjectivity which destroys the unity of the student masses, like the Ramjas incident in DU has capability of mobililize thousands when a united activity is practiced and observed conscientiously by the students and the masses are diligent and vigilant about the issue and the politics of the enemy. The course of the development of history is always objective and that is what differentiates it from memories and remembering. In remembering and reminding ourselves of goals that ought to be achieved, the most definite is to repudiate both the “mandatory” as well as the man who enslaves students like the Roman empire in Coliseums to battle with each other and the loins of competitive struggle for existence , without the hope the next VC will be the same as previous. The objective task of the students and the necessary course of action of the students is to not fight ourselves, tame the lion and unleash it upon the despot. 

Bastar and the Revisionist Left- Humanist and Maoist

In a quite ceremonious and inescapably subversive manner, the situation at Bastar was discussed by writer activist Bela Bhatia chaired by advocate Sanjay Hegde in the third annual Shahid Azmi lecture. Shahid Azmi was a lawyer who fought cases for Muslim youth falsely accused under TADA and POTA then, which is UAPA now, and got them acquitted. The movie ‘Shahid’ starring Raj Kumar is falsely based on him. The topic of the lecture was ‘Democratic Rights and Political Responsibility in a Conflict Zone. Ganesh Hegde opened the session by giving a short account of Shahid Azmi, giving a brief glimpse into his past and laying down the principal ambit within which the matter of the talk was to rotate. The general line of the lecture was precisely that of affirmative action, but on a level that ought to engage the larger level of civil society. The words ‘battle’ and ‘fight’ were thrown around a lot of times during the entire lecture. The liberalism of the entire lecture could be gathered by the emphasis of both the speakers, each on their level, about the power, sanctimony and the supreme justice of the constitution. They decried the state, its corporate nexuses, the Maoist insurgency but they hailed the constitution. Lawyers and civil rights activists were termed as soldiers of a constitutional democracy and the written law was seen as the source and site of struggle.

The Ambedkarite belief in the battle for the enactment of constitutional provisions for the citizens against a colonial state which used historic laws like sedition to put innocent students behind bars was a resonant tone in the voice of both the speakers. Both the speakers attributed this shortage to the shortage of time in the venue which was a hall in the Indian Law Institute, not JNU mind you, and the mood of the audience was mellow and that is why there was no real engagement with the issue at hand, the democratic responsibility of Indian citizens in Bastar. The colonial terror and the subsequent rebellions in Bastar was historicied by ela Bhatia since the Bhumkal rebellions in 1910 and the bloody assassination of the tribal king Pravir Chandra Bhanj Deo by the then Congress government in 1966. The war of the state against ‘the people of Bastar’ was rightly characterized as a fascist, authoritarian and a totalitarian one on the part of the state. The characterization of the CPI (ML) People’s War cadres coming to seek shelter among the tribal people for their operations in Andhra shed no pragmatic light into the program of the then underground party which later merged with other parties to form CPI(Maoist). She just mentioned that some development models were put into place by the dalams to ensure the sustenance, not even clarifying whether the methods put into place were revolutionary or a mere economist measure to secure revenues for the sustenance of the party at the cost of the native. The scope with which the present scenario was looked at in the lecture was unapologetically short-sighted. According to Bela Bhatia, the Bijapur movement by the insurgency fizzled out due to inner party strife. While this holds true, one has to also keep in mind the variance between the tendencies of the different outfits and organizations that came together to form the Maoist party also noting that the state always uses a whopping number of statistics to fool the public through media about Maoist surrenders. For this reason, Bela Bhatia chose to talk about organizations that are pitted against each others such as the Salva Judum movement, which pitted pro-Maoist adivasi groups against a united and state funded organized armed outfit of different adivasi groups. She also talked about the misrule of government especially in the way they handled and executed the counter-insurgency operations. Probably the strategic tact of the Indian executive machinery was heartache for Bhatia as she links a part of it to state violence upon the people and the other to the structural violence evident in any insurgency.

The situation of Bastar is no less than a state of war. Around ten thousand foots soldiers of the Indian state forces and private armies are deployed in the area to deal with the Maoists arousing people for a New Democratic Revolution which has led to effective eradication of the traditional means of livelihood and the provision of state support through public services and schemes. This really brings to question the intent of the Maoist cadres fighting in the jungles for a cause that is almost lost with a romantic fervor strong enough to influence intellectuals like Arundhati Roy and G.N Saibaba and students like Naveen Babu and Hem Mishra braving the inhuman torture and still standing tall for the emancipation of the adivasis. As it seems for ground reports and journalistic narratives, the people in Bastar or the people in any conflict zone for that matter are made to follow special form of citizenship, a citizenship where political allegiance is tantamount, and political reality becomes almost an existential reality, so much so that you can be abducted from the hamlets in Kumma and bus stops in Jagdalpur and killed for your political beliefs since any political belief system becomes a pragmatic and categorical social reality especially under the purview of the militarized surveillance state apparatus. Civil war in Bastar has claimed and wreaked havoc on such an extent that no amount of nationalist justification can render the actions of the state valid.

Tribals are beaten up when they demand justice the most primary information about their deceased and since 2015 social justice groups have tried and succeeded in bringing a large number of people for protest; however, due to their reformist and revisionist methods, an active investigation is never taken up by the state authorities. It should be noted that as long as the struggle of the adivasis in Bastar is alive, it will, as it should be, a struggle to seize state power and use the state machinery for the development of the toiling masses. It is quite obvious that the present state, a bourgeois parliamentary one, has closed its doors and denied the local people of Bastar their fair share of justice, according to the narratives furnished by Bela Bhaita. The scenario is so bad that even Devati Karma, the wife of Congress leader Mahendra Karma, could not fight for the rights of the people under the democratic ambit of court. If we look at the conflict from a class angle, we can see that it is the poor who are dying while the rich are making money from the mineral mining and other underground resources. The CRPF is in such a deplorable condition that if one serviceman is killed in the line of duty, another from the same family takes his or her place. On the one hand, social groups like Samajik Ekta Manvh are banned and on the other hand the saffron fascist regime is creating one vigilante group after another to mobilize the non-affected section of the population along the lines of their Hindutva ideology. These local vigilante groups enjoy direct as well as indirect support by state forces such as Koya Commandos and District Reserve Guards

With the appointment of a new IG in Bastar, things have taken a turn for the worst and democratic spaces have been drastically reduced; right-wing people can now openly talk of killing democratic political activists rather graphically and gruesomely. The language of violence has been embossed in the modes of communication between the people of different districts in Bastar in an attempt to diminish the space of dialogue and defame the activists in public.

She also went on to give a structural model conceptualizing the key players in the political process there. As we have seen earlier, there is the state with its corporate nexus n administration firstly and secondly the Maoist party with its party cadres, armed guerilla units, tribal militias and adivasi sympathizers. Thirdly, we have the groups in the interstices, the bourgeois parties not enjoying state power but desiring it to fill their pockets, opportunist shifters who may also be victims of Maoist program, and fourthly we have market apologists there to earn money through proper utilization of resources which can be acquired only through the dislocation of tribal communities and grabbing their lands, and the defectors from the Maoist cadres who surrender and are politically rehabilitated in the state apparatus through government jobs.

Then she began talking about the violence from the Maoist ends, starting with the brutal way in which they kill police informants and sometimes even their family members. To this point she was questioned by someone who claimed to had done investigative fact-finding works in the villages whether the narrative of the people about Maoist violence, or even state violence can be trusted because according to his political experience there, the people liked to tell the stories that these individuals associated with civil rights activist groups were primarily interested in, and many of these stories may be skewed or vague. Whatever may be the political case, we can see there is a deep and dangerous rift between the theoretical principles and the political praxis of mostly all the groups involved in the conflict which has left the common people dissatisfied and dismayed at the lack of a scientific progressive political alternative. It is also important to see the desertion of Umar Khalid and his clique from the revolutionary politics of DSU that students have begun to develop their own agenda to use educational institutions as a site of class struggle so much so that they even cease to understand the Leninist need for a revolutionary party for bringing about a revolution.

Bela Bhatia also stressed on how the Maoists have maintained a hard-line stance when it comes to questions of ideology and have defended their acts of crime and violence as imminent for a greater social transformation. “There is no room for dissent in Maoist polics”, according to her, and she is saying this though she is conscious of the fact that the CPI(Maoist) only managed to surface by uniting the fragmentary groups of the CPI(ML) and local militant groups such as the MCCI. She was very optimistic about the struggle waged by CPI and the triumph of their trade economist trade union movement against Tata Steel. She ended by calling for an open battle, an open form of struggle in which people can participate on a much bigger level.

While we understand the need for an open struggle, one has to also analyze the history of the transformation of theory and practice of what Charu Majumdar termed as ‘Mao-tse Tung thought’ to Maoism. The movement in Naxalbari  spread like forest fire in the different states of the country while the movement in Bastar is probably the last recourse for Maoists now. Instead of a people’s war, they now fight a contracted guerilla warfare where the state will have the upper hand in terms of both the technology and the manpower. The Mao Tse-tung thought of Charu which also lost its essential elements of people’s war when the mass base of the movement shifted from peasantry to adivasis. The guerilla tactics of the Maoists took an influence also from the focoism of Che Guevara to rely more on a band of armed romantic revolutionaries than the armed masses through mass raids as forms of social protest to seize ammunition. A broad unity of working class is needed at this time when fascism is at its peak and the fighting forces are slowly dying off. New villages with new insurgencies have to be liberated from where the struggle at Bastar can be made more strategic and beneficial for the people. It would also help developing cross-economy between villages. The fight for tribal rights in Bastar should lead to more peasant movements with participation from a larger section of society but it is only through an anti-state class struggle backed up by the armed peasantry can we truly ensure that the land belong to its rightful owner and all justice prevail. It is only when the party of the proletariat seize the means of production and state power that we can see India develop in its secular, socialist vision. Let humanists like Bela Bhatia be content with 'self-rule'. We say 'combat self interest, criticize and repudiate revisionism'. 

The Subject of Political Education

In the current scenario, the Marxists are confronted with a huge question in the case of India, especially with the successful rise of petty-bourgeois politics and its indoctrination in various classes other than the petty bourgeoisie, i.e. also a huge section of the proletariat, about the nature of political education to be adopted and also its means.

In the twentieth century, political education was largely based on political mobilization of the masses. During the presence of the Soviet Union and the ‘revolutionary’ People’s Republic of China, the political mobilization of the Marxists was more or less successful so much so that communists were able to build up strong bases in various parts of the country, both in urban as well as in rural areas of Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra (in case of trade union politics) and even as far as Punjab and Rajasthan. Even with the outset of splits and the specific case of infighting between the CPI(M) and the CPI(ML), a huge section of people were still able to conceive a socialist future and were willing to politically work towards its creation with devotion and honesty. This characteristic was well established in the Indian intelligentsia and academia and a considerable remnant of that past relic, aided by a few contemporary communists able to hold their ground till the twenty first century-first century still mobilized considerable consent of the young students and budding intellectuals to a Marxist doctrine.

However, with the disintegration of Soviet Union and the revisionism of CPC into an un-Marxist Communist party posed a problem for the communists to give a working model of socialism. This fall was exacerbated with the immense rise of cultural capitalism which took various forms, including religious conservatism and then fundamentalism to tap the basic archaic ideological-personal constructions and this facilitated the petty-bourgeois parties such as BJP to mobilize a considerable mass of people into their camp. Their victory in the Lok Sabha elections should in no way be seen as a success of their propaganda and political education. The structural changes that took place in the present Indian society and the fine tuning of the petty-bourgeois parties to the petty-bourgeois ambitions should rather be seen as a factor of their victory.

Indian parliament has always been run by dynasties; earlier it was the Gandhi dynasty and now we see the rule of the Sangh dynasty. This is not to say that the masses are more or less politically inactive. If it denotes anything, it denotes, only to a mild extent, the trend of petty-bourgeois masses in the strict structure of the parliament. When we set the problem in this way, we see that it is indeed a very marginal consent. Further, this consent is not the result of thorough political education of the petty-bourgeois but a lack thereof. In the Indian parliamentary trend, we see not a political vote but a commercial, or rather an economic vote where the masses vote a party which they feel offers certain incentives, like ridding the country of corruption, or simply because the party in power has been there for too long. We do not see an ideologically driven voting pattern in the Indian parliamentary system. This is a very revealing insight into the impact of capitalist forces on the socio-political aspects of the Indian masses. Religion, more than any other social force, has become the most insant tool for the petty-bourgeois parties.

The reason behind the politicization of religion is that religion is the basis of petty-bourgeois morals, civilization and their subsequent share in the hegemony of the ruling class. Religion creates a hierarchy that manifests itself through the process of deification. Elementary forms of religion were formed purely for the purpose of elementary division of labor. Work was considered, and to a great extent, is considered, as a religion, but only for the working class. The petty bourgeois interpretation of religion produces phantoms, rituals, devils, and purges of the soul at the same time obscuring the idealistic purity of the absolute God, the creator of the universe and consciousness. From a materialist point of view, the Marxists proudly proclaim that it is food, or more precisely matter, that is the basis of our existence, with the association of senses. Therefore, Marxists do not need to appeal to petty-bourgeois religious sentiments because they are armed with the scientific truth about the non-existence of God and its doctrines.

The subject of political education should indulge in a radical polemics with backward religious sentiments and the forces that use religion as a social force. We should shun all religious institution that convert or transform the inert nature of religion into a political force so much so that we should work to banish the belief of religion from the hearts and minds of the masses. As Feuerbach stated, ‘the real unity of the masses consists in its materiality’. Communism is the struggle for a higher social existence, with the evolution of individuals into a rational and scientific unit of the glorious working class. This can only be ensured id we raise the level of intensity of our political education in order use the development in modern philosophy and science to empower ourselves and our society. Communism serves as the only structural ideology that can accommodate the most progressive social and personal ideas if it can be imparted to the masses with sincerity and clarity.

It is therefore important that the fideism of religion should also be challenged through the most advanced refutations produced by dialectical materialism for it is the most advanced branch of the theory of science and knowledge. This subject of dialectical materialism as a theory of knowledge should be the epistemological tool for every Marxist who wishes to carry on the task of political education.

The other aspect of Marxist political education is the propagation of internationalism or international humanism. For this purpose, it is necessary that we see primarily set ourselves to finding out the factors that espouse the prejudices which lead to sectarianism in the Indian society. The greatest factor of this sectarianism in the present context, especially with the coming of the religious fascist BJP government is undoubtedly religion. We have discussed above ho we can combat the parasitic growth of religious fundamentalism in India. The polarization of Hindus and Muslims in India not only strengthens the BJP government but also irrevocably harms the little unity, communal harmony, fraternity and collective reason that our society had managed to learn over the past.

Since the politics of the ruling BJP government is also fascist, it needs an external ‘other’, an enemy in order to mobilize collective consent for the integrity of the nation. The problem with this kind of artificial unity lies in its very sectarianism and the fact that it needs to victimize and exploit the ‘other’ or the minority, to strengthen itself. The Indian government creates consent to victimize and wreak violence upon the minority by inciting popular rage and hatred (which is purely sentimental and baseless) and creating domestic and foreign enemies which do not really pose any reasonable threat, such as Pakistan and China. The Modi regime has so successfully politically brainwashed the masses through media institutions that the masses are charged with a jingoistic nationalism which is fascist in its fervor. The chief feature of this nationalistic fervor is to ‘purge’ the unsafe’ and ‘dangerous’ elements that threaten ‘our’ society without reason and purely based on bigoted judging. 

Only be addressing the addressing the surface of the issue, the ruling forces, using this ‘nationalistic fervor’ falsifies the facts underneath and project it to the masses in the same distorted manner. The question of rural empowerment, women empowerment, social security and economic equality remain unanswered and the Modi regime projects new problems for their citizens, namely the ‘threat’ to our society by the ‘dangerous’ terrorists. With the propagation of this idea, as the political line of the government, Modi shifts the focus to defense and investing heavily in this department while at the same time cutting funds from important sectors such as health and education. This brilliant is pulled off by the Modi regime as he diverts the attention of the masses to foreign affairs and yoga. It should come to the minds of the readers that it is not these measures that lead to the development of the nation but the development of the citizens in holistic manner by providing them jobs, by investing in social security and education, can a nation and its people truly grow to become a great power. So what really poses a threat to the nation is Modi regime’s total foolishness when it comes to the country’s economic security. Therefore the paranoid politics of Modi’s government and its underlying state sponsored terrorism is what is truly dangerous. Far from strengthening the integrity of the country o the country and its security, it will lead to a riotous situation throughout the country between the Hindus and Muslims o which Modi himself gave a glimpse in his ‘shangri-la’ Gujarat in 2002.

There is a stark middle-class character in this exclusivity, and is contrary to the temperament of the working class. The temperament of the working-class is the same everywhere, be it China India or Pakistan because in its essence as well as in is character, class is a borderless entity. Borders are created by the lapdogs of the ruling class to safeguard their surplus which they have snatched from the hands of the working-class. The working-class is divided not by its inherent prejudices, but the prejudices imposed upon them by the ruling-class and its apparatus. Indian state and its ‘democratically’ elected government is one such apparatus which divides the working class on the question of statehood as well as nationality. In the name of nationalism, the propagate chauvinism. 

One might be tempted to ask, pertaining to such one-sided jingoism so greatly in favor of the ruling classes, that where was their patriotism, or rather, where was the patriotism of our esteemed and honorable ministers when Vijay Mallya, the multi-millionaire from India, a Rajya Sabha member(!), fled to America with our taxpayers’ money? Why is he investigated and followed by media like Dawood Ibrahim? Why is there no siege of his assets, which he has left behind him in India, most notably, the Company Kingfisher? Is it because he is a Rajya Sbaha member? If this the case, then the readers should see the parliament as a hollow institution, and the parliamentarians, as corrupt pigs stealing the hard earned money of the common people.

The truth is that neither our elected ministers work for us nor will any democratically elected regime in the present socio-economic structure. All forms of governance that try to, or even promise to bring reform in the present structure, will be reduced to yet another exploitative force with a different name, and the people will always be under the boot of oppression as always, liking its soles in order to feed their stomachs.

This brings us to the third subject of political education, which is revolutionary class consciousness. This revolutionary class consciousness, in order to achieve its political aim should exclusively be class consciousness. It is the task of the party of the proletariat to create necessary consciousness within the working-class, in both rural as well as urban areas, pertaining to class struggle and the exploitation that is brought upon them by the ruling class through the apparatus of the Indian state. It should be stated here that in this essay, we only deal with the broad political tasks of the revolutionaries and do not go into the tactical and military aspects of insurrection and rebellion.

It is important to understand that the working-class is already aware of the wretched condition of the present structure, a consciousness that is absent in the petty bourgeoisie. It is their unorganized nature followed by the rigorous attempt of the ruling class and its forces to keep the working-class in captivity, coupled with the lack of any contemporary revolutionary organization working among them that they have developed a somewhat reconciliatory attitude towards the system. They are forced to work within the system, wherein they are exploited and from their personal experience they develop a primal class-consciousness also, but due to their sheer indolence and utter deprivation, rather than giving it a revolutionary fervor, they use the experience and the shared history of oppression and their class character, to outdo the system and incite disjointed micro-rebellions inside the system that, while they lack the strength to completely disrupt the system and pave way for a proletarian revolution, these disruptions help the individual of the working-class in gaining a larger share of his or her production. The working-class is reduced to such crass individualism because of the lack of organization. As Lenin said, ‘without organization of the masses, the proletariat is nothing. Being organized, it is everything.’

From here, we move to the last but equally important task, that is, to build up an organized revolutionary mass. This is only possible through conducting constant research of the conditions, both objective as well as subjective, base the propaganda along those lines and go to the masses armed with this propaganda and with the objective of organizing the masses. Regular public meetings should be conducted, small fronts should be created like study groups, cultural organizations, newsletter groups, magazine boards, book reading groups, etc. Such works would increase the awareness of the masses as well as help the revolutionary cadres build a connection with their respective localities. The end goal however, of such organizations, should be revolutionary and all such organizations, no matter how splintered from each other in nature or in their method of work among the masses, should be coordinated centrally and should be guided by the principle of Marxism, i.e. of dialectical materialist analysis of the present situation and crises in order to come to a revolutionary conclusion which rests with the interests of the working-class. 

Politics and Culture in Delhi University

I

The prime question of a student and the way in which his/her student life is to be destined is determined solely by his/her adherence to a form of culture. When a student leaves behind his home and school, he leaves behind a huge chunk of his/her culture (which is also true for students living in Delhi though they do not leave their homes completely) and the student’s most important need becomes culture. The student might have a prejudice on the question of culture and might have his/her own ideas about culture but seldom is it realized in true material reality when the student becomes a part of the university. Why is it so? This is precisely because the university campuses in general and the University of Delhi in particular have no culture. The phenomenon that gives rise to a collective culture in Delhi University has not yet been formulated. There are many reasons as to why there is cause for the phenomenon of culture in Delhi University which we would deal with later.

First, we must concern ourselves with the epithets of culture (and one can only call them epithets of culture in that they are stereotypical) which is imagined to be the case not just by the students but by the enterprises that concern the students as well. There is a relation between “student culture” and “youth culture” which I have no qualms with but it is often seen that in most cases one is forced upon the other, i.e. the student culture is forced upon the youth culture and vice versa and the source of these forces are the very enterprises that concern themselves with students. What enterprise am I talking of? Any and every body, group or conglomerate that does the job of inducing capitalism into the student masses. These “enterprises” (which are increasing drastically in number) enforce the larger “youth culture” upon the more precise and different  “student culture” which can be seen and should be seen as detrimental to the space of the university, and the University of Delhi has become the fertile ground for this eutrophication  of weeds which is killing the more independent “student culture”! ‘Why do they do so’, one might ask, and the obvious answer to that is the general motive with which every capitalist enterprise works- profit. And as to the question of ‘why the case of Delhi University in particular’, the answer is that unlike JNU or Jamia which are closed campuses, the colleges of Delhi University are scattered around the city and make easy targets as the students are mostly undergraduates who aspire more fun and materialistic satisfaction than the contentment of their basic plight and issues. But as I have already mentioned, since there is no inherent culture in DU, these packets of commodity culture easily find its way into the main nerve of DU students like an injection of heroine. It is not mere coincidence and is very surprising indeed that the residing areas in the vicinity of DU colleges have an exorbitantly high rent such as Patel Chest, Vijay Nagar, Mukherjee Nagar and in South Delhi, Satya Niketan, Munirka and at the same time scores of high-priced and “modern cafes” open up, as is seen on the lane opposite to Sri Venkateswara College. This vicious treatment of students as cash cows is not “modern”, but feudal, backward and absolutely abhorrent in its economic oppression. And what’s more, not only do the philistine students (a minority that projects itself as a majority) is silent on these issues to a mum, they even enjoy the bourgeois illusion without the slightest hint of disillusionment. This perverse copulation of ‘student culture” and “youth culture” is a lethal poison to the intellect of student life which has been visibly on the decline. However, this intellectual degradation does not show and on the other hand, a rise of standards and civilized outlook is seen as a result of this in “youth culture”. The youth culture is a characteristic and an outlook of people of ages from seventeen to twenty seven which also brackets the average age of students but is not limited to it. Besides students, it also includes uneducated people of that age, educated and employed people of the aforementioned age bracket as well as drop-out students. As the population strives for educated members in society, there is also a quest nowadays for “capitalist composure” or so called “professionalism” (here we leave aside the much larger debate about social culture which includes religion, domicile, etc. as a factor). The proletariat characters are shifted to the realm of the counter-culture (for example, the kurta, jhola outlook which is also well exploited by enterprises like Fab-India owing to its attraction among the elite pseudo-socialist bourgeois liberals and winnable revolutionaries). Thus the youth, that is not the student, aspires more and more to be a part of the student culture to pass himself or herself as a member of a higher class, i.e. the intelligentsia. Therefore the question of outward appearances should be completely disregarded in the “student culture” as giving it a place will mean giving the monster of capitalism a place and I have already hinted to the fact as to how it is detrimental to the idea of “student culture”.

One might think that the subject we are dealing with here, that of fashion, is more or less trivial to the idea of culture nothing can be far from the truth than this assertion. Fashion is the source of all the glamour that “plagues” Delhi University. Yes, I use the word plague in its negative sense of the term precisely because it hinders the creation of a more basic student culture due to its superficial nature. If one wants o be fashionable, one can very well join a modeling academy and relieve himself or herself off the burden of being a student, because being a student requires following a certain code which is in the best interests of the student collective. This argument that I have just made might seem a tad bit orthodox (and some would even say fundamentalist) and due to this very supposed accusation on the issue that we need a student culture that rises from the basic needs of the student which remains unanswered. As a result of this, and as a result of the added capitalist exploitation especially targeted upon the students, it becomes a need for the student masses to banish fashion from the campus because an average student is too riddled with basic issues of sustenance to be worried about how to dress for college. And only those people will have a problem with this after my explanation who are either materialistic, superficial students made idiots by the bourgeoisie propaganda of addictive commodity fetishism or pseudo-intellectual liberals and hippie morons who talk of abstract freedom without realizing the ground reality and the oppression that it holds within. Both these groups represent a useless minority who do not suffer the pangs of financial oppression in student life. Although they are a minority, they are the most visible section of the student crow solely because they are a part of the much larger youth culture (which is also a fallacy and a giant solely created by media and advertising) and have derailed from and defamed the tenets of student culture. 

As a result, they eclipse what is supposed to be concrete student culture.

What should be the ideal case for every individual student is for him or her to be distanced from his individuality to be a part of a larger progressive (in proletarian terms) collective of students from the ground up and not by any external force because any external force, no matter how progressive or liberal, will be a capitalist force and hence exploitative and profit-oriented in nature. Egalitarianism (or even socialism) in the framework of capitalism is a mere illusion and a dream from which the student majority has to wake up. Equality under capitalism is a farce and students strive to be equals to their fellow students. Students are therefore the strongest collective after the collective of workers as they are united both in their workplace (that is, the universities) as well as in their ideology (that is the circumstances which gives rise to their consciousness). There is neither room nor time for a reformative action because every power system, be it the market forces which the students will face once they graduate from the university, or the administrative (bureaucratic) forces that reside in the university are antagonistic to the interests of the students. In simple words, everyone is against us and the only ones we can trust are fellow students.  But herein too, lies a problem that some students or student groups valorize administrative power as opposed to student power (the power of the student masses in the university) and use the administrative framework under the guise of a student group. We will deal with such student groups and the negative impact of such student groups when we deal with the political nature of Delhi University.

First we must aid the argument of the detrimental effect of the lack of culture (i.e. student culture) on the students through a psychological critique of a student in Delhi University. Primarily, a student studying in Delhi University is a “DU student” only before the ignorant public unaware of the structure of DU. In reality, a student studying in DU is a Ramjas student, or a Hnasraj student, and an RLA student, or a Venky student and is seen and characterized accordingly. Each college imposes a signifier (or simply a psychological symptom) on a student which is in no way cultural in nature. And because the signifier of the college is imposed on the student with no underlying culture (or a complete base which results in the manifestation of the psychological symptom), the signifier gradually loses its meaning on the student (and not for the student). What this essentially means is that the student becomes a part of a psychological process over which he or she has no control. Those familiar with epileptic seizure might understand what I am trying to get at, which is that a student has no control over the time he/she spends in college. He or she is unconscious (for the most part) only of the time when he/she is idle, or with friends an at that time what prevails among them is not a form of student culture but a brooding mundane discharge of non-intellectual blabbering (i.e. useless discussions and gossips inconsistent with the larger student collective). It does not mean that the average DU student is a fool but that he/she is rendered unconscious about the surroundings due to a lack of culture. You cannot call them fools in the same way that you cannot call epileptics insane.

The students of Delhi University are becoming nihilists, and not just nihilists in the classic philosophical meaning of the word. They are becoming technocratic nihilists. It means that their activity is in an outer dimension and does not materialize to form a complete psychological process. An example to ferment my argument is that the students of DU enjoy the most invigorating college festivals, and their parties sometimes overwhelm the workaholic IITians. Also, DU students can be seen in most of the clubs in Hauz Khas and yet the mood of any DU college is like a Gothic novel; bland and dismal, and without any color or hope. What this teaches us resonates throughout my essay, and is the central line of my argument; that the University of Delhi has no unified student culture.

II

The Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung wrote in his essay “The Culture of New Democracy” that ‘a given culture is the ideological reflection of the politics and economics of a given society. This statement also holds absolutely true when applied to the student society. The student culture in Delhi University is meaningless (non-existent) because the political and economic situation of the students in the university framework is absurd. Politics is the focal point of any form of culture in a society because politics decides how to address the needs and characters of a society. Politics involves within it an entire shed of tools ranging from popular opinion, nature of collective consciousness, the extent of reactionary force, the power of administration to even matters such as censorship. DU witnessed the use of the lattermost tool of censorship when the ABVP-led Delhi University Students’ Union banned a play by the Hindi dramatics society of Khalsa College because of its content. What we see in this sort of an execution of power is a regression and a lack of political aim. Let us, for one moment, move to JNU and examine its culture of putting up posters, politicized wall-painting (on the walls of the Central Library of JNU), of the night of presidential debate during the students’ union elections that factors into JNU’s “campus democracy”

The “Ganga dhaba” of JNU is lively with conversations that pertain to political issues, social issues, historical and literary discussions and is always the centre of polemics. The bookshops of JNU offer a variety of texts by eminent scholars, rare writers and authors, magazines of all kinds and novels in Hindi, English as well as regional languages (of that there are a few though). Compare this with Delhi University where even the main campus (North Campus) does not have a proper bookstore (let alone a good bookstore such as the ones in JNU). Why is this so? It is not that North Campus has such a shortage of space that it cannot put up a book kiosk. The problem is the students who will be unwilling to buy the books (under the present cultural conditions) or simply will not be able to afford it (under the present economic condition of the students). But even if DU overlooks the above mentioned conditions to compete with JNU, there is an added political dimension due to which DU would not want to do so.

The mechanism that I mentioned at the start that creates the culture is not politics per se. Politics is a means of generating the mechanism that creates culture. The mechanism that creates culture and is generated through politics is consciousness. The axioms that can be derived from this premise regarding student culture are the following:

1)      A conscious student is a cultured student and vice-versa.

2)      A political conscious student is a cultured student

3)      An unconscious student is an uncultured student

4)      An un-political is an unconscious student and therefore he/she is an uncultured student.

5)      A political student is a conscious student and therefore a cultured student.

This is the most basic point of my argument about politics and culture in Delhi University. Moving on to more advanced points, politics is a necessary discipline to raise the consciousness of the students and give rise to a student culture. But how is its worth to be determined?

Here I would like to expand n the point of student groups and the negative impact of student groups that use the administrative framework under the guise of student groups. These groups rely on students as unconscious masses and they seek to make them political without the necessary step of raising consciousness. According to my derived based on a proper and objective premise, we can conclude that the political activity of these kinds of student groups are responsible of propagating  the popular discontent among the students who then hide behind fashion, parties and technocratic nihilism student politics aims to rid the students of. Who are these political parties that work against the interests of the students? These parties are always the parties in power, holding one or more seats every year such as the National Students’ Union of India and the Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad and other parties along their line. Of all these parties, ABVP, Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad, an autonomous registered party working along the lines of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) boasts of having an ideology. An ideology is necessary for the cultural development of consciousness so there might be confusion as to why ABVP is included in the list of students’ group that harms the student. However much the ABVP talks of its Hindutva and Akhand Bharat ideology, it has no impact whatsoever on the issue of student culture precisely due to the reason that the students have seen their unprecedented reign in DUSU wherein nothing of significance has changed. As a result, they failed to play the part of integrating ideology to practical affairs of the university to bring about a systemic change. A systemic change can only be brought by a revolutionary force which is communist in its ideology. A communist ideology entails the surrender of power to the people (working class) who are the revolutionary masses realizing the correct nature of their consciousness by meeting the counts of oppression that has been dealt upon them. Parties such as the Students’ Federation of India, the All India Students’ Federation and the more popular All India Students’ Association will serve as the organized focus and constitute the necessary politics and ideology which will help to develop a student culture (as is the case in JNU by the effort of AISA-led students’ union there). ABVP practices a system of rigorous administrational procedure in its working, participates in delinquency and violence (which since they are in union is akin to state-sponsored violence) and follows the advice of political leaders of the BJP. Their organization is bourgeois and so their ideology is fascist in nature, much like the National Socialist Party of Germany, better known as the Nazi party. Therefore, with ABVP in power, we see a neo-imperialist and feudal culture in Delhi University. For this to end, we need a siege from the collective majority of students who will use the means of popular violence (As was the case with the Commune of Paris) to quell their state-sponsored violence and ensure the dictatorship of the proletariat. In terms of the university space, this means that the students become the proletariat (working-class) not by the virtue of their actual class conditions (their family background, their economic class) but by the virtue of the socio-economic oppressions they face, such as fee-hikes, high rent of accommodation, insufficient food etc., uninformed changes in the education system (such as the introduction of the FYUP, CBCS and the passing of the Central University Bill). The common students need to seize power over the university by any means necessary, either by electing a pro-student body like AISA, or by the violent overthrow of anti-student bodies like NSUI, CYSS and ABVP.

The seizure of power will only be complete once a single pro-student body, a proletariat vanguard of the students takes complete control of the university and is at its epoch. A democratic process such as the elections is a bourgeois technique by way of which the bourgeois pro-administration student bodies take control and wreak havoc upon the student majority by massive fund frauds, small-scale riots, racial altercations and most of all preventing the genesis of a proper student culture. The current political scenario in DU needs radical reforms such as a centralized vanguard party which is ideological in nature and through which the members of the students’ union are elected. This will ensure a pro-student and working-class ideology practiced from the top down. Such a centralized system is required because the student community in general and the student crowd of DU in particular is facing an assault on all fronts in the form of rent-mafias, big franchise restaurants, by the propagators of “youth culture” guised as student culture, by the dictatorial force of the university administration, and lastly by the corrupt Indian State (the government) which has lost all regards for its citizens. In such a case, we need a fortified vanguard from where we can defend ourselves as students and rid the university of all oppressive forces that seek with a blindfold our political consciousness. A single pro-student group will ensure the entry of ideologically correct conscious students as its representatives who will not only be the guardians of student rights but will also ensure the organic development of a student culture in Delhi University which has for long been in dire need of change in the university. Only by ensuring such a political and cultural change can we ensure the legitimization of the claim that the university officials make about DU being the best university in India. Only when the students can raise themselves to become wholly conscious (both socio-politically and culturally) that there will be a uniformity in the prestige of colleges in the true sense (and not in the perverted sense that the Central University Bill promises) and the students themselves will make the University of Delhi a premiere institution not just in India but all over the world.

A Critical Note on Ambiguities and Anomalies in CBCS guidelines (14/08/15) issued by DU on Grading System

(Prepared by Saumyajit Bhattacharya, Assoc. Professor, Economics, Kirori Mal College)

Before we discuss how DU has implemented the grading system let us understand the professed advantages (advocated by supporters) of the grade based assessment system over the conventional marks based assessment system.

a) Grading considerably reduces inter and intra examiner’s variability in marking. The same answer particularly in subjective papers may get even 10% (or more) variation in marks. For example, examiners may give anything between 15 to 18 in a 20 marks question for an excellent answer, according to one’s predilection. However, while grading one is most likely to give A plus.

b) Often these marks differences get cumulated for individual students in a biased manner (that is the variations don’t necessarily cancel out) and substantial differences may appear between two students with similar potential and performance in their final result depending on which set of examiners corrected their papers. Putting students of similar performance in same assessment bands (grades) minimizes these aberrations in assessment techniques.

c) This becomes particularly pronounced in cases where students opt for different electives, some of which are supposed to be more scoring than the others. It has generally been observed that science courses (or even economics) have much higher average marks than humanities courses and in a situation where students can opt from a range of courses variability in marks can itself become a basis of choice of an optional subject. The grading system avoids such perversity in choice of course because now irrespective of the nature of the course an excellent answer gets A plus, a very good one A and so on.

d) Grading system also reduces undesired and unsound comparison of small difference of marks and also unhealthy competition regarding that.
However, the grading system can be implemented in two different ways. An ideal one removes any marking scheme and each answer is graded rather than marked. This is particularly relevant for subjective papers. Alternatively there can be a partial grading system where even if answers are marked, the total marks in the paper is converted to a grade and what is most pertinent here is the students get a grade for the paper and not marks (i.e. the marks that constituted the grade is not revealed to the student). Whereas the issues relating to point a above is not taken care in this scheme, the issues relating to point d or even point c (if a scaling is done) get taken care of in this partial grading system.

However, what DU has implemented is a marks system cursorily dressed up as a grading system. Whereas it may appear that DU has chosen variant 2 actually neither of the two variants of grading system has been implemented. The basic understanding that is there behind any CGPA grading system has been completely jettisoned. Let us examine what DU’s so called grading system entails:

All papers are to be marked in 100 (75+25) and the passing marks remains 40. These marks will show up in the student’s marks statement. Because the passing criterion is based on marks it seems (though it is unclear) that two parallel evaluation records – a marks statement and a grade statement will be issued to a student after every semester (and a consolidated one at the end). So irrespective of whether two students get the same grade in a semester, they can and will be compared according to their marks difference, defeating the very purpose of the grading system.
More pertinently, the guidelines are entirely silent on how marks are to be translated into grades. Whereas a table has been provided to indicate how letter grades are to be translated to grade points, there is no mention how marks are to be transformed into letter grades. This is a gross neglect as evaluation will take place entirely in marks.

Curiously the grade points stop at 4 (P - the passing grade point). Anybody who fails gets 0 grade point. This can cause a serious anomaly, given the annual passing rules based on marks. Consider the following situation: Suppose a student has 8 papers in a year spread over two semesters. The promotion rules are that if the student gets an overall 40% in all papers together (separately in theory and practicals) he is promoted to the next year.
So for example a student who gets 38/100 in 7 papers and 54/100 in one, gets 320/800 and therefore she passes and gets promoted according to this rule. However her letter grade will be F and grade point zero in seven papers and she may get B (we are not sure because there is no marks to grades table provided) in the other. Her cumulative grade point will therefore be [(0*7)+(6*1)]/8]= 0.75, which is much below the passing grade point 4.
Consider another example a student fails to secure 40% in 3 papers and gets 35, 37, 38 but she gets 40, 40, 40, 45, 46 in the other five. Her overall marks are 321 and she passes. But the grade points will be 0,0,0,4,4,4,5,5. So the CGPA (assuming equal weights) will be 22/8 = 2.75 i.e. Fail – because it is less than 4.

This serious anomaly occurs because the grade points stop arbitrarily at 4. When marks are to be translated to grades students who have obtained say 30% or 20% cannot be given 0 grade point. They should get 3 or 2 or something akin to this. Further and more importantly this anomaly may not vanish even with this. In marginal cases the mismatch between grading pass point (4) and marks passing score 40% may arise. Therefore it is necessary to have passing criterion entirely in grade points (and not in marks percentage) in a grading system. The students should only obtain grades in each paper (and not marks), however these grades are arrived at in the evaluation stage.

A further ambiguity in the guidelines is about the passing rules itself.
Rule 12 (1) (a) states that "If a student has secured an aggregate of minimum 40% marks taking together all the papers in theory examination (including internal assessment/project, wherever applicable) and Practical exam separately, till the end of the third year, i.e. upto the end of the VIth Semester, then she/he shall be awarded the degree in which the student has been admitted."
…
So here it appears that the student needs to get 40% in aggregate (not in each paper) at the end of her programme (overall in all the six semesters) to get a degree.
But Rule 12 (3) (a) states: "A student who passes all the papers from Semester I to Semester VI examinations will be eligible for the degree."
Here it appears that the student has to pass all the papers. This is a direct contradiction with Rule 12 (1) (a) above.

A further problem arises due to dual nature of assessment (marks and grades). Since each paper is 100 marks, how are 6 credit papers going to be differentiated from 4 credit ones in terms of overall marks. This is easily done in terms of CGPA. But in terms of marks are we supposed to multiply the marks obtained in these papers by 6 or 4 respectively. This was earlier done by variations in total marks (50 0r 100 marks papers). Now because all papers are out of 100, multiplication should be the only way out. Otherwise there will be an anomaly in calculating there overall percentage. This means a student securing 70 in a 100 marks 6 credit paper should be recorded as having scored 420/600 and correspondingly 280/400 in a 4 credit one. The total for each student should be aggregated similarly and this will imply that the maximum aggregate will be 19600 !!! It is of course feasible, but does it make sense to do this? Anyway, the University guidelines are totally silent about this.

It is also pertinent to note that the guidelines nowhere state the internal component of the internal assessments. Two different variants are in place in the current 2nd and 3rd years and we are not sure which one are we to follow for the 1st year batch.

A Detailed critique of the CBCS in Delhi University

I

The Choice Based Credit System is underway in the “prestigious” University of Delhi and when I use the term underway, it is in the sense that it is going through both theoretical and implementation phase, i.e. it has already been implemented without the necessary theoretical base. What is the Choice Based Credit System and what is its use in Delhi University which had been doing comfortably well in the semester system just after the immediate roll-back of the Four Year Undergraduate program? Why does the university confuse itself with the third year in the revised FYUP program, the second year in the classic (not so classic) semester system and the first year batch in the newly introduced CBCS program? It does not take a trained psychoanalyst to come to the conclusion that the Ministry of Human Resources Development (MHRD) and the University Grants Commission (UGC) along with the Delhi University officials in general and the vice chancellor in particular (whose stay in DU is rather short-lived, mind you) is in dire need of an educational reform, almost to the point of anxiety. Here another question arises that why only the rulers of the university (and the educational policy of the state) are in need of such radical reforms while the student and teacher community has whole-heartedly dissented against the former educational reform in the form of the FYUP. So far as the case presents itself, the mere introduction of the CBCS (let alone its implementation, which I will address later in depth) has rendered all prior structures, i.e. the revised FYUP, the semester system and the CBCS into one entangled loop which hangs over the neck of the entire student population of Delhi University and will result in its slow and torturous death is nothing is done soon. These couple of years will most probably go down in the history as the worst years of DU. The university has reduced itself to the point of being a mere political playground where games are played at the cost of the common students’ future. If one thinks of this statement as exaggerated or superfluous, let me remind him or her of the anti-FYUP struggle which attracted so much political attention that the parties contesting for the Delhi State elections had to address the issue in their election manifesto. Since we are not looking at another state election for some years, the students have to gauge themselves to a political struggle that would bring Delhi Government to a standstill. I will address this point in detail in the later part of my essay.

The Choice Based Credit System is both fresh and apparently nothing new in theory. In fact, the grading system has been working well in certain other universities like JNU, IIT, NIT  and some state universities as well as private universities but only because the grading system had been present in these universities since thee past. The problem with appropriating a grading system like the one they have in IIT or NIT posits a problem because DU does not just offer sciences or commerce courses. It also offers arts courses where a percentage of 60 is much reputed. Now, if we appropriate this 60 in the ten-point cumulative grade point average given by the UGC, it comes to a measly grade of B which is just “above average”. It is no problem, or maybe little problem for science, mathematics and commerce courses but the CGPA system fails in its implication on humanities courses. If sixty percent makes a student merely average, how will he ever, in the current scheme of things prove himself or herself to be very good (i.e. eighty percent, which is out of scope for the marking scheme of humanities courses) or outstanding (ninety to hundred)? So if it is applied in DU as it is, the humanities student will always be just above average or in the rarest cases, good (even though the student is actually outstanding for his/her own course), and the student of sciences or mathematics will, on an average basis always be a very good or even an outstanding student respectfully proven so by the grading system.

Both in its principle as well as its implementation, the grade point system is highly flawed. In JNU, the grade point average works on the basis, and on the premise that it only (or vastly since there is a science as well as a mathematics course) caters to a population pursuing a liberal arts degree. The science (microbiology) and the mathematics (operations research) courses offered by JNU appropriates to the CGPA system by the virtue of them being masters’ courses. It means that the amount of work done corresponds more to practical and research work as well as laboratory tutorials is much more than the final paper. That is not the case in the undergraduate science courses in DU where there already exists an infrastructural problem relating to lab facilities in almost each and every college.

Having briefly discussed one evaluative aspect of the CBCS, we move on to the crux of the matter of which there are two, namely the “credit” and the “choice”, The choice theoretically relates to the American major/minor model and it is indeed its worthless mimic and so the DU officials and the UGC shamelessly try to pass it off as original inventions by merely changing the name of the “minor choice” to “open elective”. What basically happens in the American model is that you can either choose to indulge in a minor course, while doing your discipline honors or do a supportive paper, or credit that links to your discipline course. The problem with its implementation in DU is that it follows a British model of education, much like Universities such as Oxford and Cambridge where there are different colleges following the same syllabus. In the British system, there is no mobility and the student is to do his or her course in his or her college. He enters as a student of, say for the example of Oxford University, Balliol College or Exeter College and stays in the college to complete his or her college degree. The chosen subject is then taught in depth and with great attention to the idea of pursuing the chosen discipline further academically. On the other hand, a student getting into Harvard University is appointed to a school or a centre but owing to the nature of the university, the student can apply for courses, or certain paper outside of his or her discipline in other centers or schools. This is not possible in DU, as it not possible in Oxford or Cambridge because the colleges are not enclosed but are scattered all over the city, and because the college is specifically responsible for a degree and cannot afford to take on itself the burden of furnishing options. This problem is even more exaggerated in Du where the necessary faculty is already lacking. Furthermore, the DU syllabus for the honors course has been diluted from the earlier 18-20 papers to just 14 honors papers simply to accommodate the so-called choices. This is not the case even in the American credit system because the very idea of compromising a discipline paper for optional papers is ludicrous, even more so as the students do not get the choice to elect more papers for the discipline courses. It is like robbing Peter to pay Paul as the CBCS, instead of giving the rightful extra credit to the student for taking the effort to choose an open elective or ‘discipline specific elective’, the program only creates the illusion of doing so while it robs the student of his or her credits that are already designated to the student for his or her honors course. So theoretically, the choice is one of no-choice and on top of that it is against the very choice of the honors course that the student takes when he or she joins the college. There is also the fact to be considered that there will be no added gradation of the opted choices and no provision to change the course or do a dual-major that are the prime characteristics of the American credit system. This is because the university is not equipped to handle such arbitration in terms of giving out a degree.

The practical implications of such a theory, that is already exposed to be a farce is even more farcical because the student is not allowed by DU to take a “discipline specific elective” till his or her fifth semester! In the classic semester system that was/is prevalent in DU (and we hope that it will be), the discipline specific optional papers are given as choices in the third semester itself! So, instead of providing more choices than the semester system, the CBCS takes away the choice of a student to study his or her discipline deeply till the fifth semester and the average student is compelled to take the mediocre generic electives. The real purpose of the generic course is hidden in its very name. The word “generic” seeks, in this case to create a uniformity of ideas or give way to education means applicable to an entire class or group. In this fashion, instead of doing the noble job of cultivating new ideas, the generic elective course seeks to breed conventionality or conformity in students. This opposes the very purpose of the university. The term “choice” therefore does not apply in the true sense and hence can be replaced by what I think more appropriate, i.e. “ordered directive” as the individual colleges of DU hold the right and hence the “order” over the choices.

The second problem with the choice in the CBCS is that of practice. In the generic elective courses, many new inter-disciplinary papers have been introduced along with many core elective papers as well. The core elective papers are discipline centered papers like Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, economics, English, etc. The problem here again is the philosophical “choice of no-choice” or rather the economic inflation of choice. To put it in simple terms, a student of economics, commerce sciences or English will seldom take courses such as Hindi, Urdu or Punjabi and will choose correlative disciplines like economics or English over the former. This will inevitably lead to a crunch of choices wherein on the one hand the introduction of some choices will be futile and on the other hand, some choices will have a massive subscription that would disrupt the proper student-teacher ratio required o hold a functional class properly. The manifestation of this choice of no-choice will be in the form of discrimination in the allotment of choices by the college based on meritocracy and marks of the twelfth grade, which should not be a factor in the taking up of choices in the college, and it is certainly a practical fault of the CBCS which outright reveals its false promises.

Another problem lies in the papers newly introduced such as Global Politics and the UN (which in my view is a neo-imperialist celebration of the US hegemony worldwide under the guide of the UN) and academic writing. The interesting and controversial thing in the introduction of both these papers is that even though they need an inter-disciplinary approach, only one department will be responsible for the implementation of these papers. A paper such as Global Politics and the UN requires not just a political understanding of international relations (which is already taught to students of economics, political science, sociology and history in one form or another in the present semester system) but also a knowledge of nation-state sociology as well as the historical and economic development of nations into global powers. A mere Department of Political Science would be highly unequipped to teach such an emphatic (supposedly emphatic) paper. The same goes for academic writing which is headed by the Department of English. Academic writing is a practice of not only the humanities students but also of the science and mathematics students. English Department might be able to cope, in case of research based writing and analysis, with literariness of the research paper since academic writing deals with the technique of writing a thesis or a research paper. An average professor of English literature is trained in analysis by means of social theories that apply exclusively to literary texts, literary theory, so to say. How will the professor then apply his analytical skills to society for teaching academic writing to students of sociology and economics, let alone to the students of physics, chemistry and mathematics who demand a mathematical proof rather than argumentative ones to substantiate their theses? Hence the notion of choice is flawed in every sense of its implementation.

The second aspect of the CBCS is the issue of the “credit” system for which the UGC has the following definition for a credit:

“A unit by which the course is measured. It determines the number of hours of instruction per-week. One credit is equivalent to one hour of teaching (lectures or tutorial) or two hours of practical work/field work per week.”

 It should be noted right from the start that no university or college all over the world equates credit to the amount of hours spent in a class because the very meaning of it would be absurd. It would mean to earn, say two credits, one needs to attend two classes irrespective of the student’s academic output. The UGC guidelines remark that “the credit based semester system provides flexibility in designing curriculum and assigning credits based on the course content and the hour of teaching” but all it actually does is to confuse the teachers about the system of evaluation and how to “grade” the students. The UGC is in such a hurry to implement the CBCS in DU that it concedes in its own guidelines in the following manner:

“Presently the performance of the students is reported using the conventional system of marks secured in the examinations or grades or both. The conversion from marks to letter grades and the letter grades used vary widely across the HEIs in the country. This creates difficulty for the academia (in the guidelines it is misspelled as ‘acadamia’!) and the employers to understand and infer the performance of the students graduating from different universities and colleges based on grades.”

First of all, it concedes to the fact that the erstwhile percentage based evaluation was working fine and the problems only arose when certain universities (mostly ambitious universities like IITs, NITs and the private universities) turned to grading system feeling a colonial fetish towards the grading system of the New West. In the same tone, the UGC also concedes that students are to be made commodities of the market and sold as intellectual prostitutes when it talks about the difficulty for the “employers” (i.e. the capitalists) to weigh the graduates with a uniform scale similar to the ones used by the whites to evaluate the colored slaves. It can be said of the CBCS that it provides a “cafeteria” approach, though the cafeteria approach is not for the students to enjoy under this system but the capitalist employers for whom the mark sheets will serve as menu and the student will be the main course.

Another draconian implementation of the credit system will be dissolution of the honors papers by an alarming 25% (which we discussed in figures earlier) to facilitate the introduction of the inter-disciplinary papers. The introduction of the additional papers comes from the UGC as a part and parcel of the grading system. If the grading system were to be implemented without the credit system, it would be unwise considering the disparity between the average scores of the sciences and humanities students, but to add the burden of the “so-called optional papers” as instigators to the credit system seems to be the sum of all evils and an absolutely foolish act. With the increase in the optional papers, there will obviously be an increase in evaluations and with the coming of the grade system, the pattern will be that of the CCE or continuous evaluation meaning that the student would have to prepare assignments in order to gain the credits for each week. This would mean the students would have sixteen weeks to make fifteen assignments and thus all the promises of the UGC about the CBCS being a flexible course will go down the gutter and will only seem a distant dream. However, being exposed to this fact, the DU administration and the UGC will lessen the rate of assignments and consign themselves to the previous definition of credit as mentioned in the UGC guidelines which maintains the misconception that the number of hours spent in a class will constitute the number of credits earned by a student. If that will be the case, then there is another pitfall that the UGC and the DU administration will have to encounter, i.e. the issue of passing the students based on written examinations. The current CBCS program has a 50-50 internal-external evaluation pattern. So if the student attends most of his classes and earns forty credits out of fifty, and he earns just twenty in his written examinations, he gets an overall score of seventy which is “very good” according to the CGPA, but the fact remains that he or she has failed in the written examination according to the rules of the university. In his way, through the introduction of the CBCS, we see the crumbling down of an entire evaluation system, instead of a “fairness in assessment” for which the UGC has mandated its guidelines (a concession again!).

II

In the struggle against CBCS that is to come, one should be reminded of the anti-FYUP struggle in order to draw parallels between both the student movements in order to triumph over CBCS in the same way that the students triumphed over the FYUP. Comparing the nature of the program of FYUP and CBCS, one can say that the FYUP was a lesser oppressive course than the CBCS because under FYUP, a student at least had an extra year to cope with the additional papers. Therefore, in the process of the roll-back of the FYUP program, the foundation courses and other additional courses were fully repealed. In the struggle against CBCS, our demand should be the roll-back of the generic elective and other optional papers that are made compulsory to the students and hence are an assault to the discipline courses that we are supposed to study. So, if the critique is much less the same, our manner of approach towards the CBCS and our general sentiment for it must also be the same, or maybe even more radical because the students are not even provided additional time like in the FYUP.

The main concern to grasp for the students who were against FYUP was the loss of a year. The CBCS program boasts of its completion in the regular three year semester system but we are already aware enough to make an educated opinion from our given premises about the critique of the CBCS program that three years will simply not be enough to complete such a vast course (not that the students should feel the need to complete the course, as they will be studying lesser discipline papers than students from other state universities).

Since much of what is to come under the guise of the CBCS is kept in the dark, the teachers as well as the students should force the institutions and its respective administrations to make a stand on CBCS so that much of our criticism would be realized and we would be able to cite practical references. The students, in this case, if we are successful in making the stance of the administration about the CBCS clear, would be agitated and will begin to be disillusioned as the course reveals its true nature. The students should be ready to resist the impingement of the administration upon their lives in ways such as extra-classes, more assignments than the students are able to do, no room for extra-curricular activities etc y boycotting classes on a mass basis, talking openly about the dictatorial and abusive nature of the CBCS with other students, talking to the college union about the oppressions meted out on the first-year students and joining any protest on a university scale against CBCS.

In any and all cases, whether the agitation regarding CBCS is personal or propagated through the medium of protest should be to repeal all the optional courses for all three years, to shift the assessment system back to the ratio of 75-25 written and internal respectively, to shift from the credit system to the classic semester system and finally to shift the grading system to the percentage system. These are materialistic, achievable goals which when realized together form the most proper alternative to the CBCS program. In the present situation therefore, when we have realized both the immediate and the upcoming affects of the draconian program that is the CBCS, it is time for us students to take matters from the hands of the powers that be (state machinery, the UGC, DU administration, etc.) into our own hands. The time has made immediate extreme and radical measures not only important but also inevitable. It is times like these when the true intellect of students is put to test; intellect that is not only theoretical but also practical and providing the necessary force for the revolutionary transformation of society. For us students, the battle starts right at our very workplace, the university. DU has been passively passed around as a space of sensationalism, philistinism and glamour and it is about time that the University of Delhi builds itself up again as the centre of movements that lead to nation-wide discourses where students decide how the courses are to be formulated and taught and not a bunch of aged stalwarts (lackeys of the capitalists) sitting in the cabinet and ministry. Student majority from the first year up to the third year should be at the forefront of this struggle and prove to the world that it is the people who decide how the system should work as opposed to the system imposing its state ideology on the masses (which is the case with the UGC and MHRD regarding the CBCS program). The struggle will be harder this time as there is no state election in which the bourgeois parties such as the BJP, Congress, AAP and others can raise the issue for their opportunistic gains. Politically, the student movement has to come to so strong a point that its consolidated force will shake the foundations of the AAP government in Delhi and they will be forced to intervene and repeal the CBCS (which is a policy of the central BJP government), since the state government reserves the right to intervene in any prime decision taken by the University of Delhi. We should remember that the tactics we employ, strikes, protests, referendum, signature petition, etc. are exercises to test the strength of our democracy and broaden it. Protests are means of direct engagement of the masses into the formulation of governmental policies and hence are the most democratic means of public involvement. One should not shy away from resorting to these tactics or participating in such events because only by being a part of the greater whole can one experience and become an expression of social consciousness, and through the process, a social being. If the current structure represses our movement with police action and student union corruption (such as the corruption of the ABVP-led DUSU that is responsible for bringing the CBCS in DU!) we shall reject such structures in order to create a new one. The student community has to be uncompromising in its demand because we are drawing the last straw. Education is central to culture and society and a resignation to opportunist, market-oriented and dictatorial regime would mean that the larger society would very well be going in the same totalitarian de-humanizing prostitution of labor. If we, as the youth of the nation, do not take our stance now, then history will never forgive us. We need to do all we can to resist such an apocalyptic future and pay all in- body and soul for the will to fight and fight to win!