Sunday, January 31, 2010

Reservations and JNU faculty


It was quite shocking that a bunch of JNU faculty members resorted to the same cliched arguments against reservations at the faculty level -- especially at the full professor level.

That was two weeks ago.

Now, in a welcome move, quite a few of them have backtracked from their earlier stand.

As for the official stand, this is what the Vice-Chancellor B.B. Bhattacharya had to say:

... [T]he university was in the process of furnishing its response to the query. “We have to first get a clarification on whether reservations in the academic faculty is a law; if so, we won’t go against it.”

While this seems to me like a strange thing to say, I hope he finds the time to figure out the right thing to do, and do it.

14 Comments:

  1. Anonymous said...

    Abi: Does IISc have quota for the faculty positions? How many people from reserve categories have been recruited (or promoted)at the prefessor level at IISc?

  2. Anonymous said...

    Anon1, yes, it could be a good starting point. Abi, would you?

  3. Abi said...

    @Anon (#1 and #2): I think I can count a handful of associate and full professors -- but there may be others in reserved category that I may not know about.

    I know this is not a satisfactory answer. Yet another reason why disclosure of this sort of information (in statistical terms that don't violate anyone's right to privacy) should be made mandatory -- preferably on each institution's website.

    As for whether there's reservation at the recruitment stage, here's what what the recruitment ad says: "Women candidates and applicants belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes are especially encouraged to apply."

  4. Anonymous said...

    This is anon # 1 again:

    I think the points are

    (1) Whether selection of faculty members at the asso. prof. and prof. level should have reservation is a complex issue. One can think in both ways.

    (2) Generally speaking, Indian institutes/universities have (at least in science and engineering) very few faculty members who came thru' the reserved category.
    This is not a 'JNU' problem (as the OUTLOOK articles suggested) rather an issue which is relevant to all Indian institutes/universities.

  5. Ahmed said...

    " very few faculty members who came thru' the reserved category."

    Ridiculous. All NITs have 22.5% reservations at the assistant professor level for SC/ST. Additionally, there is OBC reservations also.
    There are no reservations for associate or professor level, though.

    IITs/IISc have not implemented it for their faculty. Faculty in IIT/IISc should only be recruited based on caste (SC/ST/OBC) and there should be at least 50% reservation for these categories. If these institutes can do it at the student level, why can't it be done at the faculty level. In fact, for the next ten years, they should not recruit any one from the open category at all till the imbalance is corrected.

  6. Anonymous said...

    yes, lecturer positions in NITs follow 50% reservations. See

    http://www.nitt.edu/home/other/jobs/faculty/WEB_ADVT_2009.pdf

    All NITs follow this. None of the IITs have achieved anything better than NIT. IITs have been circumventing this by recruting only at the assistant professor level and not at the lecturer level. This has led to unfair promotions

    unfairpromotionsatiits.blogspot.com

    This is something that should be immediately implemented. Further, qualifications in IITs should be relaxed from Ph.D to M.Tech for faculty positions, so that many SC/ST will apply and be recruited.

    SB

  7. Anonymous said...

    1) IIXs have average 30% faculty shortage because they are not able to find "qualified candidates"

    2) The faculty advertisements say "Without any compromise on qualification, experience and competence,
    reservation as per Government of India rules is available. "

    => There will be no effect of reservation in the recruitment

  8. Ahmed said...

    As SB correctly pointed out, the qualifications should be relaxed to M.Tech and age should be no bar. If there are enough SC/ST faculty in NIT, how are they not good enough for IIT?

    One has to introduce the rule, unless SC/ST candidates vacancies are filled first, open category faculty candidates can not be recruited. This will do wonders and suddenly they will find qualified candidates.

  9. Anonymous said...

    I have enough qualifications for an assistant professor position (phD, 10 years post doc experience in USA, 38 years old and adequate publications such as PNAS, Oncogene, JBC etc) and applied in IISc (biological division), but they did not even consider my application because I am from a reserved catogory(SC/ST). As Prof Abi said the advt for faculty position states that women and SC/ST candidates are encouraged to apply. Look at my case, i applied, What happens? But there are people who was recruited as an asst professor with lesser qualification than me in IISc, What to do ?

  10. Anonymous said...

    I forgot to mention in my last post (regarding asst professor position) that I got my PhD from IISc apart from other qualifications.

  11. Anonymous said...

    Dear Anon 9/10: This seems to be very sad. I hope you did not make many enemies during your PhD at IISc.

    TA

  12. Anonymous said...

    10 years of postdoc will automatically disqualify for a faculty position anywhere.

  13. Anonymous said...

    JNU has many professors at all levels (in all categories including general) that do not deserve to be teachers but they are thanks to licking boots, sycophancy, corruption etc.

  14. Anonymous said...

    In JNU EC meeting Mr. Aditya Mukharjee of CHS made a comment that the induction of reservered category teachers in JNU will reduce the quality of JNU.
    He must check his records and check how many students registered for his 'quality' optional courses that he offered in earlier years. It is an evident fact that his 'quality' lectures never fetched any student. What right he has got to talk about quality when he gets no students to teach. All the quality loving 'reserved upper caste elite professors first go, sit and prepare for ur classes......