Contemporary Challenges to Higher Education in India: Issues of Democracy and Autonomy

Prof. M V Narayanan

Excerpts from the lecture delivered by Prof. M.V. Narayanan- renowned scholar, cultural historian, and former Vice Chancellor of Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit on the occasion of 7th Bhagat Singh Memorial Lecture, organised by the Concerned Students of Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

I pay my homage to the legendary martyr in whose name this lecture is being held. I would have liked to say that this is a pleasure, but it is not even a pleasure. Because we are not living in times where we can speak about pleasure, comfort, or even safety. We cannot speak in those terms, and today, when we are addressing the Contemporary Challenges in Higher Education: Democracy and Autonomy, we probably have to realise first and foremost that we are standing on a ground that is shifting with immense momentum today. So let me just put one simple idea that whatever is happening around us; the disenfranchisement of students, the loss of scholarships, the regular interference from the authorities. Desperate as things may appear to be, and occurring in very different times and locations and under the agency of different people and institutions, we need to realise that there is a certain rationality behind all this. There is nothing isolated, they are all interconnected.

This is to do with the litigation between the Tamil Nadu state and the Governor. A two-member bench of the Supreme Court judged that the Governor does not have the right to sit on the bills passed in the legislative assembly. Effectively stalling and delaying, thereby, analling the bills passed. This becomes important in a constitutional sense. The root of India is a union of states, and unless there are no states, there is no union. The union government is a product of a number of states coming together constitutionally and choosing to actually have a union government, which works in tandem with the state governments. But what is happening is that over and above the kind of legislation that is being done on the central level, is trying to be done through the central agencies like the UGC, like the National Disease Control Agencies. Different kinds of agencies have been created by Parliament. As secondary subordinate legislation, they are undercutting the powers of the state legislation to create their legislation. Thereby, the centre interfering and intervening gets into the province of the powers of the states themselves.

Governors are the best examples of this. A continuation of the colonial system where the provincial governors were the topmost officers or the chancellors of universities.

Governors are the best examples of this. A continuation of the colonial system where the provincial governors were the topmost officers or the chancellors of universities. This chancellorship has been awarded to the office of the governor by the legislative assemblies. But what the governors then proceeded to completely ignore the will of the people. They started to act under the instructions of the central government by subverting the will of state governments and universities. They appoint officers whom they like without any consultation with the universities or the state governments, or in some instances dismissing vice chancellors due to certain technical reasons.

UGC has only three powers as awarded to them by the Parliament- maintain standards in examinations, teaching and research. But from 2008 onwards, we see a radical change. The UGC is slowly crawling into the areas of university governance and university finance. The kingpin of this entire system came to be the governor – someone who has been imported by the central government and placed by the nomination of the President. So, in effect, the UGC has become the agency through which the central government wields its power not only in the central universities but in almost all the other state universities. UGC has become, effectively speaking, the instrument through which all the universities in the country could be brought together under one umbrella of power being decided by the central government. Strangely, you have these people sitting in some kind of a 24-storey building in New Delhi on the top floor and making these regulations without ever having any idea of what kind of requirements, challenges, hopes and aspirations that a person in rural Maharashtra or a person in rural Andhra Pradesh would have. They are totally unconnected with the ground realities of the students. What the UGC does is to deny this possibility of difference, divergence and plurality. Instead, everything is being brought into one singular mould, which favours certain sections of the population, especially in urban areas and in terms of the social hierarchy. The minorities are left behind, the rural people are left behind, and women are left behind. In fact, ultimately, this becomes a kind of system where a small elite is catered to and they become the successful people while the others are left behind.

What they are effectively creating is this huge system which appears to follow the dictum of one size f its all and this is a basic problem in a country like India with multiple communities, identities, languages, living styles, and religions. This makes it impossible to actually have one size fits all. A proper democracy is not like a procrustean bed. You cannot just cut off your leg in order to fit the bed, you should have beds that fit the lengths of each person or each community. In that sense, universities and higher education institutions should ideally be permitted to formulate their programs, research agendas, admission procedures, and student body.

In the UGC system itself, they brought in this idea of numerical values in promotion, selection, and admission. As a teacher, I often reflect on how we measure merit. Take two students: one from an urban, affluent background enters with 80% and moves to 82%. Another, from a rural, sociologically marginalized community, starts with 56% and reaches 67%. T he system sees the first as more meritorious, but in terms of real progress, the second has come much farther. Yet, our focus on numerical scores ignores the transformative journey of learning. True education should recognize growth, not just scores.

I want to share some figures from parliamentary records that show a troubling trend. Over the past few years, scholarships for marginalized communities have faced severe cuts: OBC pre-matric scholarships are down 77%, ST scholarships by 57%, and those for minorities by 94%. The National Fellowship for ST students has been slashed by 99.99%, from Rs 240 crore in 2024 to just Rs 0.02 crore in 2025. The National Overseas Scholarship has seen a 99.8% cut, and scholarships for minorities- both pre-matric and post-matric- have been reduced by over 70% and 69% respectively. Even the Maulana Azad Fellowship and free coaching schemes faced major reductions. These aren’t just budget cuts; they represent a systematic withdrawal of support from the most disadvantaged students.

When I was a student, fees were just 20 rupees. That small amount made higher education accessible for the majority of my classmates. But today, while funding to institutions has been slashed, fees have soared, and financial support for marginalized students is being dismantled. We remembered Rohith Vemula – but the system is now producing millions like him. The government seems intent on denying education and pushing the poor into low-paying, dead-end jobs. Education is no longer treated as a democratic right but as a privilege for the wealthy. T hough the Constitution hasn’t changed, access to education is being systematically denied to those who need it most.

With the rapid changes in the knowledge economy, 60-70% of today’s jobs may disappear in the next 20–30 years. Degrees like BSc Computer Science could become obsolete. Yet, are our universities preparing for this future? There’s little sign of flexible curricula or forward-thinking programs. The UGC system remains trapped in outdated, content-heavy frameworks, while private institutions, adopting skills-based and new pedagogic models, offer their students a distinct edge. Universities should be spaces of dialogue, critical thinking, and democratic learning where students question, collaborate, and co-create knowledge. Sadly, this ethos is fast eroding in many public institutions.

What troubles authorities most today is the student who speaks up, who questions, who stands.

What troubles authorities most today is the student who speaks up, who questions, who stands. Disciplinary regulations -like those enforced at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences- dictate where, when, and how students may speak. This isn’t discipline, it’s regimentation. A culture more suited to the military than a university. It produces students who follow orders, not those who think freely. The idea of the university as a space for critical introspection, shared learning, and even making mistakes in the pursuit of knowledge is being dismantled. The culture of the university is being militarised, submissive, silent, and stripped of its democratic soul.

In 1939, Erika Mann, daughter of the German novelist Thomas Mann wrote School for Barbarians: Education Under the Nazis after closely studying Nazi Germany’s education system. It wasn’t a standard sociological text, but a half-fictionalised narrative drawn from multiple case studies, woven into composite stories that captured how schools and universities were transformed into extensions of the Nazi Party- mirroring its structure and ideology. Read it today, and the resemblance to our own educational system is uncanny, disturbingly identical. Just take a look, and ask yourself; where do we stand now?

With my grey hair and old years, it may be easy for me to say that the real problem that one has to realize is that what is being done today is going to affect generations of our country as has happened in many places in the rest of the world. The wastage of generations who are pushed out of that stream of knowledge. It is easier to get out of a stream than to get back into the stream. We are all in this together and how long it’s going to last I’m not sure but however long it’s going to last let us give it a fight the best fight that we can fight. Thank you

Transcribed by the Organising Committee members.