The Death Of Dr Samarveer Singh Highlights The Cruel Season For DU’s Ad Hoc Teachers

The other day I met Ramanuj. After a long gap. I used to meet him at North Campus where he was doing his MA back then.

“Where are you?” I asked a customary question. 

“I joined…college, sir.” 

“As permanent faculty?” 

He must have sensed the apprehension or surprise in my voice. Yes, permanent it was.

Ramanuj had displaced Shaheen, an ad hoc lecturer. He was lucky. She was not. She had been teaching in the college for 10 years. For a decade, she was renewed in the ad hoc position every semester and kept on tenterhooks. She has more than 10 papers published in good journals, has an excellent academic record. But now, after having taught in this uncertain position for more than 10 years, she has been left standing on the road. She did everything that a permanent teacher does, even more than that. 

Ad hoc teachers are generally treated as beasts of burden. They remain in the first slot of the scale meant for assistant professors. There is no security. They serve their college in its difficult times with all the anxieties that uncertainty brings but now when the time comes for permanent appointments, they are thrown out.

Where would Shaheen go now? She is her early 40s. There are appointments taking place in other colleges. But there too, there are ad hoc positions like hers. If her own college did not find her fit enough, why should an unfamiliar college take her?

Those unfamiliar with Delhi University must find this puzzling. Was Ramanuj not a capable candidate? The selection panel must have found him more qualified than her. Her being there for a decade should not mean that she is entitled to the position.

In this case, we see one capable candidate replace another equally capable candidate. But in this season of permanent appointments in the colleges of Delhi University, such cases are an exception which can surprise or shock you. And, as said right at the beginning, the general rule is that it is your luck which matters and not your capability. The two can come together in some cases. But they are rare and stand out in the crowd of those who have won permanent positions only because they had the right connections. Or ‘approach’, as they call it. 

The right connections in the present context means your proximity to one of the fronts of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), or the principal or one of the experts. In some colleges, your connections with the Aam Aadmi party (AAP) can also work as there are more than 20 colleges which are aided by the Delhi government. 

For more than two decades, more than 4,000 positions remained vacant in the colleges of Delhi University. Those positions were filled with temporary teachers. They are known as ‘ad hocs’ in the lexicon of Delhi University. Permanent appointments were not made for more than two decades on one pretext or the other. 

Strangely, an otherwise powerful Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) never thought that this was an issue for which a decisive battle should have been fought. My suspicion is that different factions of the DUTA —Left, Right and Centre— found this uncertainty very useful. The promise of permanence helped them cultivate these ad hoc teachers as their vote banks. Each faction of the DUTA had its share of ad hoc followers. There was always this hope that the patron will secure permanent positions for them wherever he/she was powerful. What the DUTA kept doing all these years was to ensure that the ad hoc teachers were not replaced. So, with a break of one day, their service was continued after each session or semester. The DUTA also got the colleges to give them summer salaries when no active teaching took place.  

As can be expected, one can find excellent scholars as well as indifferent people working in an ad hoc position. But the fact remains that, for whatever reason, the colleges kept renewing them each semester and benefitted from their services without giving them any security for five, eight, and even 10 years. Now, when these positions are being made permanent, they are being thrown out mercilessly. 

There is always this argument that they may not have fared well in the interviews. Merely being in the college for five years is no qualification. You cannot beat this argument. But it is also a fact that the process is opaque. Interviews last generally for two or five minutes. How on earth can anyone judge the capability of a candidate in such a short span of time? So, it is not your performance or your academic record which counts. It is something else. It is definitely the ‘extra academic’ record of the candidate which seems to work. 

We do not have a systematic study to back this claim which people make with the support of anecdotal evidence that there are three ways to get in if you put the factor of luck aside, which does work in some cases. The surest way is to enter the interview room where the panel is pre-informed about the special interest that someone in the RSS network has in the candidate. In some places, it is the resolve of the college authorities to not let the ad hoc teachers be displaced, a strategy which has worked in their favour. In colleges where the AAP is influential, your affiliation with it can be useful. Your scholarly achievements seem to be the last consideration. 

Appointments to DU colleges have never been above board. But in earlier times, competing forces balanced each other. There was also a hope that the experts in the selection panel would assert themselves. But now, selection panels comprise pliant people. Those who are ready to sign on the dotted line. In fact, as Ramanuj recalled in his interview, he could not see any subject expert in the room. Later, he was told that they were present online. But their presence did not register to him. Even if they are there physically, it is mostly for the sake of norms and the technical necessities of having subject experts on the interview panel. They are happy to oblige the authorities with their signatures. In some cases, they also bargain for one or two positions in return. 

This is a cruel season for ad hoc teachers of DU colleges. A season of annihilation of all considerations of merit. All of them are not ‘sportive’ enough to take their ouster in their stride. They fail to rationalise their humiliation of being kicked out at the first opportunity by the institution in which they had invested their talent and scholarship, for which they had toiled despite the sword of uncertainty hanging over their heads. They feel discarded after having been used for years. It leads some of them to a state of helplessness and hopelessness where they find no reason to live in a world where you are treated like dirt. Dr Samarveer Singh, only 33, happened to be one of them. He taught in Hindu College in an ad hoc position for seven years and was loved and respected by his students. But when interviews were held for filling his post with a permanent position, he found himself pushed out. He decided to move out of such an insensitive, uncaring, and unjust world by killing himself.

The death of Dr Samarveer could not be mourned properly as the ad hoc lecturers were running from one interview to the other and had little mind space to think beyond themselves. Permanent teachers have no reason to go out of their way to talk about the horrible injustice which led to this death. But ironically, it might also save the other ad hocs as one such scholar told me. He said that after this, the college authorities might not want any such ‘controversy’. Do we need to continue this discussion further after learning of this ‘hope’ that the death of Dr Samarveer Singh had kindled in the other ad hocs?

(Views expressed in this article are personal)