'Shrinking Academic Freedom, Crumbling Infra': Why are AUD Faculty Members Protesting?

In response to the AUDFA demand charter, the AUD administration shared a year-wise table of steadily increasing applications in UG and PG courses. AUDFA published a fact sheet that this is an inaccurate portrayal of an overall increase in application numbers. At the same time, it doesn't account for the increased seats owing to the introduction of new courses and expansion of existing courses between 2018-2023. Despite nearly doubling the admission capacity of the university, applications have staggered.

Infographic from AUDFA’s fact sheet.

As many as 25 faculty members have resigned from their positions as the work environment in the varsity continues to become increasingly hostile, according to the protesting faculty members. The memorandum states that no service rules have been notified to the faculty, which allows arbitrary and whimsical interpretations of existing rules and regulations. 

Contractual positions introduced in lieu of regular faculty are now being disbanded in favour of guest faculty posts. The appointment delays result in losing teaching/learning time and prevent programmes from running optimally. The non-teaching staff is also faced with insecurity due to short-term contracts, delays in renewals and results in long breaks. The memorandum notes that while AUD centres and faculty undertook projects and consultancies worth around Rs 5-7 Crore in the past few years, this amount reaches barely Rs 1 Crore today. 

Raising an alarm over the restriction of academic and research work, an AUDFA member requesting anonymity told NewsClick, “The university has served new pay fixation notices claiming that the pay received by the faculty has been wrongfully interpreted. Even though such a wrongful interpretation is a result of bypassing administrative procedures, some faculty members have been served recovery notices and recoveries are being made forcefully.”

The member added, “The faculty is being denied their rightful privileges such as research projects, which bring the university prestige, are continually discouraged in the name of prior approvals that never arrive. This is evidenced in the drastically reduced research output of the university. Faculty members are required to get an NOC from LG of Delhi for overseas travel for international conferences. Many are compelled to give up research opportunities in order to avoid the red tape  involved in the process.”

AUD administration informed NewsClick that “28 NOCs were issued for ICSSR Projects in a time-bound manner. Teachers also thanked the administration for the quick decisions. Delays, if any, are due to non-providing of required documents.”

The AUDFA rejoinder to the administration’s response stated, “Cumbersome processes for carrying out research results in delayed payments to vendors, salaries to hired staff, while inviting visitors and experts for meetings or lectures involves a series of processes, with multiple steps of approvals, leading to inordinate delays and unnecessary labour. Faculty engaged in externally-funded projects report heavy nitpicking, objections for the sake of it, and little interest in processing files in a timely fashion at various divisions of the university.”

Infographic from AUD’s Self Study Report submitted to NAAC for the 2nd round of accreditation.

 Concerning the poor state of the university’s infrastructure, the memorandum says, “Students and faculty routinely work with broken furniture, power outages, non-functioning air conditions and fans, fungal moulds, unusable toilets, and flooded rooms.” 

Snapshots from AUD (Kashmere Gate campus)

The varsity administration responded to these allegations by enlisting the repair of the reading room,  academic blocks, etc., at the KG campus and the building of a multipurpose hall, guest house,  crèche, girls' hostel, classrooms, and a  renovated auditorium at the Karampura campus.

Snapshots from AUD (Kashmere Gate campus)

The AUDFA member told Newsclick, “The idea was to utilise this space as a makeshift campus till AUD’s new campus comes up. However, the work on the new campus hasn’t even begun yet. Poor infrastructure affects staff and students as they are forced to work and study in hazardous conditions. Ironically, despite the faculty raising demands for renovation, the university administration has renovated the administrative block twice in this period.”

Other significant demands include the time-bound and proper implementation of the Career Advancement Scheme (CAS). Delays in holding CAS meetings and denial of past service have also emerged as a norm in the varsity that has led to stagnation of faculty’s careers, alleged protesting faculty. 

The member said, “The promotion committees for faculty should comprise academics from the same disciplinary area as per the UGC regulations. However, these committees routinely consist of members from entirely different disciplines who pronounce judgments regarding the efficacy of the working faculty without any concrete grounding.” 

AUDFA’s silent march at AUD KG Campus, August 24. 

The charter demands an end to harassment of faculty, immediate withdrawal of show cause notices and recoveries, a time-bound application and review of CAS, and investment into repairing infrastructure and making the campus safe. To create a respectful work environment and promote academic and research work, the union has demanded the reinstatement of stakeholders in the consultative process and the restoration of functional autonomy to Schools and Centres. The faculty union has decided to raise these issues and demands with government authorities if the university administration fails to take proactive steps towards course correction.