What a university protests against defines it as much as what it accepts. The present protest is over the deletion of the essay by Ramanujan on the Ramayan by the Academic Council. As in every protest in the university, the agency and autonomy of teachers is cited. That is fair and legitimate.
But what about the agency and autonomy of the student, which is routinely, systematically and legitimately violated by the construction of a perfectly coercive system of 'attendance'. The requirement of 66% attendance of the total number of lectures given in a term, is a method anticipated to ensure that students attend classes. Those students who routinely earn this, are rewarded by 5 marks which is added to the marks their score in their exams. Loathsome system, but it works. On an average, this ensures that classrooms are filled with a largely mute and unwilling audience.
What it also does is that it reduces 'attendance' to a resource, and a commodity. It becomes a commodity because it has an exchange value, as it can be translated into an immediate raise of 5 marks in one's score sheet. That it is a commodity, and a scarce one too, is betrayed by the language used to invoke it.
"Attendance de dijiye" ('Give me attendance')
"Attendance mil jayegi na?" ('I will give it wont I?')
"Aaj ki laga dijiye" ("Give me today's)
The panic, the anxiety, the chase for a scarce commodity is palpable for every lecturer. This is reflected in the routine announcements to those who are 'falling short'. The university is correspondingly granted the constructed authority to those dissent and protest and refuse to attend '66%' of classes..discipline and punish? Very much indeed.And the dissent is dismissed as 'bunking'.
We need to debunk the practice of bunking...and ask ourselves the question: why are we frightened of scrapping this system...Are we frightened of a bewildered lecturer finding an empty classroom? Maybe we are.
What is not is that the we dont protests. We dont protest enough.
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