E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes: The high-power committee in search of a vice-chancellor for the University of Mysore was busy doing what it is supposed to be doing: searching for a suitable vice-chancellor to head the once-great University.
Finally, out of sheer exhaustion, the chairman of the committee, standing atop Crawford Hall with high-powered binoculars in his hands, sighed in defeat: “I can’t see a single candidate in the whole of Manasagangotri who can take the place of Dr Shrimali, Dr Pannikkar or Kuvempu. We should tell our chancellor to enlarge the scope of our search.”
“Why can’t we look around and shortlist some candidates from our neighboring States?” asked the junior most member of the committee. Though wet behind his ears, the junior had come up with a simple but workable solution. It would have been an excellent QED, but it was met with a cold triple negative.
“We can’t take anybody from Tamil Nadu. They are against Kannada getting classical language status and naturally we won’t touch anybody from there. Moreover, if rains fail next year and Tamil Nadu demands its pounds of flesh, er, its tmc of Cauvery water, a VC of Tamil origin will be a security risk in our campus. Any professor from Kerala will be a Leftist and we can’t have Karl Marx going about as VC. Andhra Pradesh is a strict no-no after the hungama created by the nomination of a Telugu member during Governor’s Rule.”
The junior wouldn’t give up yet.
“Why don’t we zero in on somebody from industry? Somebody who has some prior teaching experience?”
“We just can’t sell off our ideals to a fellow who is always looking at the bottomline. Most of them are reverse-engineers or body shoppers who serve western countries. Even if a starting software engineer gets 3 to 4 times our salary, can there be any pride in that sort of work? He might have been a teacher once but by now he would have thrown his principles out of the window. Industry is out.”
Our young professor was just not giving up. He was like M.S. Dhoni with a ‘never say die’ attitude.
“What about a professor from a foreign university who has made a name in his field? Somebody from Mysore itself may want to come back?”
“Why should we fall back on someone who ran away years ago to earn a few dollars more? Clearly, he had no interest to serve his country like the rest of us. We will lose self-respect if we now call him. Moreover, he will be an insufferable snooty snob with a matching funny accent. It will only harm our great university and put us back by several years.”
“Why don’t we look at our own Legislative Assembly? After all our Prime Minister himself taught at London School of Economics who has done very well, of late, as Prime Minister. We could ask our CM to suggest somebody suitable from Vidhana Soudha.”
Junior was again pointing at the bright rainbow, but sitting in their comfortable seats, the standing committee members would only see the dark clouds.
“We should do no such thing. First, our CM will think we are useless and will dissolve the Committee. I don’t want to lose this job. Second, he may suggest some Brahmin which our senate is against. Third, even if he suggests a non-Brahmin, say somebody from the schedules castes and scheduled tribes, most of our teaching staff will object to it even if the clerical staff will be delighted. We will be opening a Pandora‘s box of caste which we should avoid at any cost.”
“Then what’s the solution?”
“Even if we select someone meeting all the criteria, our chancellor is sure to reject our choice. So let’s go slow on this and take our own sweet time. A vice-chancellor’s term is for five years. We have an acting VC. There is no fixed term for an acting VC. We should let sleeping dogs lie. No point in speeding up things unnecessarily,” concluded the senior pro.
***
Help the “High-Powered Search Committee”. Who do you think should be considered for the post of the vice-chancellor of the University of Mysore? Name names. Join the debate.
Just thinking alond. How about Mrs. Sudha Murthy for VC?
“alond” doesnt seem to be a good way to think…
Sudha Murthy is an excellent choice. Let us go for it.
Five years term for the Vice chancellor…not at all, only FOUR years.
Mrs. Sudha Murthy…it can only be another they also ran. Running a software industry is altogether different from heding a University, THere are many academicians who are also good administrators who may head the University of Mysore. If people who are associated with university administration do not bring the caste factor in the selection then definitely many people will come forward to head this prestigious University.
PooChanThe wrote that Kuvempu’s tenure as the VC was comprised of two things mainly — files and piles.
Crawford Hall which once housed Representative Assembly meetings(at an age when politicians were perhaps tolerable) still carries politics as its legacy.
I would not wish Mrs. Murty to be subjected to this horror.
University of Mysore needs a VC who is sensible enough to think beyond creating only brick and mortar structures in every possible space available.
Go for Mrs Murthy’s husband. He passed securing 4th rank ( if my memory serves me right) in his EE degree of the then Mysore University which was no mean achievement. He knows education establishments well, has master’s degree in computer science from IIT Kanpur, taught at the management school at Ahmedabad for atime, and perhaps knows all the VCs in India and a few presidents of universities abroad.
quick response to mastar bevu bella.
sudha murthy and her husband wrong choices.
why nrn bad choice? bcoz there is a serious and grave danger of industrialization of education. that they could not find anybody in gangothri is itself an damning evidence of this. already people are talking about computers in primary schools. which is non-sense. education has nothing to do with computers.
VC i dont think is an adminstrator of an university as much as he/she is a saarathy.
now if NRN is proactive enough to publish his statement of vision and if that statement goes beyond computers and mebbe talks of PhDs, grants, research, reforms etc then perhaps. but otherwise just based on what he did as a student in IIT and what he did as a industry leader, no-no.
I heard that Narayan murthy backed out when University refused to pay him remuneration as dividend rather than salary!! Narayan murthy has got used to simple and noble living on a small salary and large dividends. Dividends incidentally are tax free!!
what one gets out of it is secondary. what he gives back to the system is primary. half the reason why things are the way they are is because there is nothing in it for anybody to work for the system.
we tend to look for godly characters. we want people to sacrifice their own self and their interests for greater good. will not happen. has never happened. i myself sweep my yard and dump the dust on the street. there might be a handful of people in entire history, but in between the epochs when such people happen, the system has to be manned by ordinary mortals. if you want the system to move in a certain trajectory then you better incentivize people to work towards that.
TS:
In-bred VCs mostly turn out to be bad. that has been the Saga of Mysore University after KL Srimali. Education everywhere including USA, Europe and India is industrialised. The Cambridge University would welcome an industrialist who can be its VC. The Vice Chancellor of Imperial College London ( which is now a university) who recently retired was a CEO of Smith-Kline more than what he was as a scientist. Hence Industry leaders can’t be bad. NRN knows how education functions at all levels, was chairman of IIMA.
“what one gets out of it is secondary. what he gives back to the system is primary. half the reason why things are the way they are is because there is nothing in it for anybody to work for the system.” TS, this sounds like if I may say so. the words that former US Secretary Rumsfeld uttered!!
Surprising it took so long for churmuri to take notice of this impasse !
The present system of appointing the Acting VC is ridiculous and irrational.
Even the process of appointing the search committee itself is biased . The previous Search committee should be criminally prosecuted for ignoring the statutory mandate to select a second panel.
Look at the pattern of appointment of VC . It is generally based on cast basis. Posting of IFS officers as Registrars make sone think whether our Universities have anything in common with Jungle Raj. Karnataka University Act should be scrapped and the Universities should be made autonomous and elect its own VC’s partly based on assessments which are being carried out already on the Professors performance and partly on some kind of a system by which a Pope is selected.
Crawford Hall housed Representative Assembly meetings? I thought it was built for the university. Moreover, I also thought the Praja Parishad (which is what I assume you are talking about) met in Bengaluru.
The only two VCs who had any clout were Panikkar and Srimali. Just before and since the rest were pygmies and yes men.
Kuvempu university a few years ago appointed Kuvempu’s son-in law. Many argued he was qualified, may be so, but even then there is something called ‘propriety’. There is no propriety in anything Indians do these days.
Jeevaratna:
“Karnataka University Act should be scrapped and the Universities should be made autonomous and elect its own VC’s partly based on assessments which are being carried out already on the Professors performance and partly on some kind of a system by which a Pope is selected”.
Holy Ghost! Trade the current system for the Vatican system? The latter is more corrupted than the former! The Pope’s patronage is more powerful that anything the Karnataka CM ar the education minister can wield. The Cardinals will be drawn aside to say who the Lord Jesus wants as the Pope! The election of Cardinal Ratzinger as the Pope was so much expected in Europe that bookies did not take bets. This old person with a Nazi youth background was preferred to other strong contestant who was associated with Opus Dei. The non-Italian cardinals did not want an Italian Pope either. Like Gowdas not wanting Lingayats! Cardinal Ratzinger was the obvious choice and voting followed!!! We have now Pope Benedict!!
I
BB, how many years did Prof. Panikkar was the VC of Mysore? History tells that Mysore Uni had such great men likeBrijendranath seal, E C Metcalfe, N S SUBBA RAO, etc. Though all might not have been very successful in their efforts because of many reasons yet their contribution cannot be set aside.
Sathya,
If you have read carefully what I said, you would realise that I was not referring
to those VCs who served Mysore University those years you refer to.
Here is what I said:
“The only two VCs who had any clout were Panikkar and Srimali. Just before and since the rest were pygmies and yes men”.
I was referring just before KM Panikkar and KL Srimali and later. Also, even my aged relatives who knew the VCs you refer to said to me, in their opinion Panikkar was the VC with the most clout they came across. He was specially invited to be the VC of Mysore and he came after getting the assurance of non-political interference. That never happened in Seal, Metcalfe or Subba Rao’s time as the Maharaja and Dewans at that time had ‘hands on’ influence on the
affairs of Mysore University.
About KM Panikkar’s short tenure. His death was shrouded in mystery to put it mildly. During that short time, he brought in many excellent professors and there was for a time no caste-based promotions.
KL Srimali arrived after his tenure as education minister at the centre. I knew that there was no political interference and his stature saw to that.
Agreed. Being an insider has watched the developments keenly. I donot know what you man be clout. Political interference , may be, to a certain extent. But caste played a very dominant role and the tug of war amongst different castes many times made VC’s helpless. Sometimes extraneous forces also spoiled the atmosphere.
Gokulam 3rd Stage,
Mysore had a elected Representative Assembly(was it called Praja Parishad?) and they met in the present convocation hall of Crawford hall, IIRC, till 1956.
Lt. Col. Crawford donated the land to build an educational institution for women but the hall was built for assembly meetings.
It’s supposedly the inspiration for the front part of Vidhana Soudha too.
Sathya:
In this context, ‘clout’ means having the power to get jobs done whatever they are. It means the buck stopping with the VC. In my experience of working in the university those days, it was not ” Political interference , may be, to a certain extent”, but the means to specific ends. Only Panikkar and Srimali were able to resist, the former fully and the later to a great extent, the combined forces of political interference and caste.
Mysore university, like all educational institutions in India, is a caste-infested swamp ( in central institutions infestation is broad with SC/ST, linguistic, regionalism etc..) in the case of Mysore university, the degree of infestation is very deep, very visible and very stinking.
I am in the running. Cannot wait to get my hands on the grant of one hundred crore waiting to be spent on non-functioning departments and irrepairable equipment. I have a whole bunch of unemployed nephews and nieces with fake Ph.D.s from all over the world. There are thousands more of my caste who are jobless and are willing to share their salaries with me.
The only foreign country I have visited is Nepal, and that was at my own expense. I want to attend at least one conference of Vice-Chancellors of Commonwealth universities where my faulty English is better understood than those of other representatitives.
I swear I will make Kannada the administrative language of the university. The non-Kannada IAS, IPS, too, officers deputed to the university will be given a whole bunch of Kannada speaking personal assistants. The money such personnel owe me will be discretely deposited in the bank accounts of my daughters and sons-in-law in the U.S. and Europe.
I will right the many wrongs perpetuated by this ancient university. The first order of business will be conferring honorary doctorates on every member of the Haradanahalli Gowda family (after all, the university was after KVP intended as a safe haven for Vokkaliga intellectuals). When the showcase elephant Balarama retires from his profession of littering the streets at Dasara Festivities, I will provide a permanent home for him on campus and arrange for “Ramayana Darshanam” to be paraded on his capacious back once everyday with Guru Javaregowda in tow. There will also be a “theppothsava” for the great work across the Kukkarhalli lake from Gangotri to Crawford Hall every week, weather permitting.
A couple of decades ago, the university took the revolutionary decision of declaring everyone above thirty-five years of age eligible to submit plagiariased work for a Ph.D. Now I will go further than the suggested move that anyone in possession of a bachelor’s degree be afforded the same opportunity. The SSLC will be the minimum requirement for registering for the candidacy for the degree. Such a program will allow every position in the university to be staffed by people holding the highest academic degree.
In a democracy, everybody should have a chance to add the doctoral prefix to his or her name. Our revered swamis have already led the way by showing a mere “Jagadguru” is not sufficient to command the veneration of their followers. To make it easier for our IAS and IPS sages in Karnataka, in cooperation with the Open University and other universities without indoor plumbing, I will make it possible for their assistants to cobble together just one chapter for their masters’ canonization as doctors of philosophy. Weekly convocations will be held to expedite the process, with the dissertations being centrally evaluated by scholars chosen by the candidates themselves.
We have entered an age when institutions of higher education have to demonstrate their commitment to social improvement everyday. Nobody knows better than me that our enlightened political parties need the help of college students to spread the idea of equality far and wide across the land. It is therefore unconscionable to keep them confined to their classrooms six days a week for nine months out of the year. I will get the syndicate to promulgate a rule that will allow them to prove their student status just by having submitted an application for admission to a given program. In such a liberalised situation, our professors will be happily able to pursue their interests without the obligation to show up for lecturing and the students will be able to support our political parties by taing part on a daily basis in morchas, demonstrations, and destruction of public property, which is one of loftiest ways of holding government accountable for its misdeeds, no matter what party is in power.
These are the barebones of my vision. Help me. I first need a document showing that I was born into a SC/ST family.
Agreed Bevubela. Feelings expressed by Pulilishi the Last is the last word. Expressing the innermost feelings with saracasm.
BB,
I am no authority to say, how corrupt the papal selection is ? II do feel neither are you . Yet it works !! Except that it is life long .
What i said was, that presently there is a system by which Professors performance is assessed . But those selected as the best never make it to the panel selected by the Search Committee. It only means the parameters for the selections of the search committee itself is based on political and cast overtones.
Then again in the case of Judges, it is the collegium of Senior Judges.
So what i suggested is a system, which will free the selection of VC from the clutches of the Political system and is based on a system where merit and consensus among themselves.
How about appointing some retired bureaucrats or serving bureaucrats of merit? They will bring order to the funtioning of Mysore U. I am thinkng of officials like Manivannan, Sridharan (Delhi Metro), or any distinguished judges. If you appoint a professor as VC that man or woman will start handing out favors and screw up the U even further. We want somebody with a strong moral backbone and one who cares for the University.
TS–
I also promise to ban computers, paper, pen, ink, labs, and intellectual activity in anything associated with the university. My manthra will be, “Jaathi, money, and kutumba.” I will create satellite campuses in Ilavala, Thonachikoppalu, Nanjanagudu, Belagula, and outsource all of them to NRN or his likes.
If Sudha Murthy ever competes with me with all the power of her billions, I will get the KRV to start a state destroying campaign to point out that she is originally from Pune or at least her family lived there for a while and that her knowledge of Maraathi disqualifies her from holding the exalted position. That she happens to be the consort of a Brahmin–“haaruva” in the parlance of some Vokkaliga intellectuals– will only act as a further disqualification.
I have other plans as well. Since the Constitution prevents me from rushing Brahmin teachers at the university into the wilderness of retirement, I will do everything to force them into voluntary retirement by enlisting a host of reservation students to accuse them of jaathi nindane. That way they will lose their jobs as well as go to prison. I wish I could do the same to Lingaayath profs, but it is their government and Lord Basaveshwara himself is on their side, not to mention the myriad Jagadgurus and Maathe (Talk) Mahadevi, but where there is a will, there is a kill.
Sathya thinks I am sarcastic. I am dead serious. We need a new way of thinking, which at first will appear as violence but later prove to be the only just means of achieving equality. The end of elitism is near at hand. Let Maisuru, My Sore, nanna sooru lead the way. I am ready. Are my people?
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2007/11/12/survey_college_president_salaries_rise/
“I am no authority to say, how corrupt the papal selection is ? II do feel neither are you . Yet it works !! Except that it is life long .”
I can say I do know a bit more about the Papacy and the system, through my friends who work in Vatican. It is they who said Cardinal Ratzinger will be the new Pope, even before the college of cardinals met. When I visit Rome each year they tell me tales which I can’t repeat. Sound similar to those we hear from Mysore U!
We also know by now the Chinese System works. The Singapore System always works. For these systems, you need determined men who do not hesitate to banish the opposition for ever. That is why, Singapore a democracy by name works very well. Just look at the National University of Singapore.
Mysore University is not unique in terms of its problems, I worked in IITs before moving to the West. I can give a few stories, but in stinking terms an oder of magnitude less than what I experienced in Mysore university. I am hearing they are becoming worse there too.
Retired bureaucrats or even retired army generals may work. But then they are all used to taking orders from politicians. In the West, the universities are independent and its presidents and VCs are allowed to function without interference. For example, in Oxford University which has an ex-politician as its Chancellor (Chris Patten, ex-conservative minister), the VC and the Council is supreme and the function of the Chancellor is to get funding for the university from non-governmental sources, which he does well. Similarly in Stanford U, Prof Hennesy, a pioneer in computer chip development will not tolerate if Arnold Swazzeneger, the governor of CA interferes, not that Arnie, the Terminator knows anything about education!!
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A02E1DE1139F933A25752C1A9659C8B63
Pulileshi the Last:
Excellent! The entire Mysore U in these paragraphs!
Even Sir Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, the VC of Madras University for over 25 years, packed the university with Mudaliars, but the difference was that he was able to see merit beyond his Mudaliar bunch. After appointing a professor as the head , he never worried when that person packed the department with people with any caste, as long as there was a room for one more Mudaliar there!
Sir Mudaliar the VC kept the politicans at a distance. But he had his support in Bhaktavatsalam, a long serving minister in Madras government in Rajaji and Kamaraj’s cabinets, who was a Mudaliar. When the DMK took over, and Annadurai became the CM, it was said that one time some one complained to Annadurai that the great VC had weakness for caste. Annadurai simply replied ‘as long as it is Mudaliars’! Annadurai was a Mudaliar!
BB, Mudalliar or modalu yaaru? A few years ago in the Economics Dept of Mysore university there was a strike and a graffitti on the wall read like this .”Lingayitha Arthashasthra Vibhagakke Dhikkaara”9 Down with the Department of Economics full of Lingayats ” It may be statistics/numbers/facts…or all of them may be Economists of very high calibre. If Prof. Y P Rudrappa hadn’t brought the rotation system in the headship God could only could imagine the situation, though the rotation system hadits own disadvantages at least it gave hope to some . The situation may be true in other universities too. Till academic excellence is valued, politicicians omterfering the University affairs is stopped, caste as afactor is kept away higher education is bound to suffer.
Thanks, Bevubella.
Now our chest beating and sarcasm aside, just what the hell can we do to rescue the university from the hands of villainous special interest conclaves?
Self-proclaimed men of God cannot get past seeing the color of a Cardinal and feel compelled to elect a Nazi sympathiser as the head of the Vatican. I am reminded of the lack lustre performance of our athletes at the Olympics. Of the fourteen or so Cardinals from India, not one was in the contest. It was easier for Mother Teresa to be beatified than for an Indian Cardinal to speak to the need for a third world cleric to be pontiff.
The Pope is automatically seen as a direct descendent of Peter, the first archpriest and he takes no orders from anybody. Our vice-chancellors, on the other hand, genuflect to every mindless politician who will protect their interests. That a self-styled Gandhian like H. Narasimhaiah was willing to sign a Faustian bargain with Devaraja Arasu to become the V-C of Bangalore speaks volumes for the spiritual dangers the position sports. What a vice-chancellor needs is true autonomy, a commodity that will never be in evidence in India at any university.
Education is as much an area for adventures of the mind as it is a way of teaching students to make their way through the difficult gift we call life. Which one of our universities openly encourages the endless sanctity and creative genius of the investigations of the mind to come close to understanding the mysteries of life? We need to instill such idealistic visions in the minds of our children even at the primary school level.
Let us not blame NRN alone for commercialising almost everything in our national life. In the case of Karnataka, long before anybody else, the brilliant Ramakrishna Hegde paved the way for the creation of capitation fiefdoms which no power in New Delhi or Bengaluru can now annihilate.
Perhaps our greatest problem is not so much corrupt education institutions as the uncontrolled population growth which will keep our permanent underclass perpetually disenfranchised and help the fungal/bacterial proliferation of of setarian politics at our educational institutions.
Whether we like it or not, China and Singapore will eventually become our models when it comes to maintaining order in civil life. S. M. Krishna will be happy if he is alive to see the day.
Let us not fail to note the BJP’s success in getting its candidates from marginalised sections getting elected.
PK, well said.
For Heaven’s sake, the chancellor should not appoint anybody as VC of UOM from University of Mysore. Because all are a set of scoundrels, idiots and communal to the core. See what happened in the previous administration!! Unbelievable. God alone should save UOM.
rightly said mr. harischandra. even god can not do anything for this prestigious hundred star university like mysore university. people like rudrappa should come as vc.
hey how come it possible to get fake degrree from kuvempu ,,, as yu told ur nephew took,, its not posible.
kuvempu is best uni.