The Delhi University Teacher’s Association (DUTA) General Body Meeting recently declared that it would extend its strike, which is part of a series of disturbance that has to sway the University since the beginning of this year, to the 8th March. One of the main requests of the strike, which included a march from Mandi House to Jantar Mantar, is normative of Ad Hoc faculty.
According to UNESCO study, an interesting example to analyze the issue of normative with is gender. Female depiction in higher education has historically been immeasurable in India, with gender equality in admissions equalizing up as recently as 2016.
Devika, an Ad Hoc faculty who has been shifting between colleges constantly over the past 4 years owing to her Ad Hoc status, alleged.
The contractual appointment of Ad Hoc faculty takes place for a period of 120 days, following which a new recruitment process is kickstarted. Ad Hocs, on account of being contractual employees, are also subject to fewer benefits than the permanent faculty. These issues escalate into huge obstacles along their way, especially when women are concerned.
According to a report by The Hindu, data collected from 34 of the 80-odd DU colleges shows that out of a total of 4,242 teachers, the proportion of permanent and ad hoc teachers is 57.35% and 42.64% respectively, a clear abuse of the University Grants Commission norm of the latter not exceeding 10% of the overall staff strength. This is the pattern that the University, which has over 1,00,000 odd regular aspirants and over 2,00,000 other aspirants, has been following for over two decades much to the chagrin of those who aspire to get into academia.
Ad hoc, due to the lack of permanency, are unable to command the courtesy of the students in many cases. Aspirants, who realize that control lies with the permanent teachers, many times, maintain a nexus with them to further conquer ad hoc. Namrata was disappointed at the repetition of the pranks played on her.
Harassment often takes horrifying turns too.
