On 15 January, 2021 the Union government made it mandatory for academics and organisers to seek prior clearance from the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to hold international webinars or online seminars on various topics like India’s security and internal issues such as such as India’s borders, Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, the situation in the Northeast.
The new Webinar rules has been criticised by academicians, social and human rights activists, researchers and scientists as the new rules will put a curb on free flow of ideas and knowledge. According to Professor M. Aslam, Former Vice-Chancellor, IGNOU, Member of the Collegium of Eminent Social Scientists constituted by the ICSSR, Fellow EDI of the World Bank, “Webinars are recent phenomenon instigated by Covid-19 lockdown. Hundreds of webinars are being held daily on various topics/ occasions/ social events. I am more concerned with webinars being held as part of academic pursuits. Looking at the numbers and output of these webinars, there is certainly a need for some guidelines to be in place to streamline them. Organisations like UGC can take such an initiative after due consultations with stakeholders.”
“As far new rules circulated are concerned, they amount to impeding the growth of educational discourses. The New Education Policy document so much publicised envisions “internationalisation” of education, and to invite world-class universities to open campuses in India, with a promise to make autonomy and freedom central to higher education. On the other hand, new rules impose a blanket requirement for obtaining prior permission to organise such events. This is a great contradiction and I feel that educational institutions should be allowed to remain a place for the contest of ideas and thoughts,” said former VC, IGNOU.
“Some sense seems to have dawned on the government that the new demands for prior permission even for on-line or virtual academic meetings, seminars in which either foreign scholars or institutions were participating, would seriously hurt its reputation in the comity of nations, apart from severely injuring academic freedom and scholarship in India. For universities, professors, authors and scholars, it would have been in effect a crippling blow to freedom of expression and the pursuit of knowledge, said John Dayal, a noted social and human rights activist.
Dayal added, “Academics had earlier been protesting vehemently at the slowly tightening grip of the government of India – in fact of the ministry of Home affairs, and the Prime Minister’s Office through such agencies as the MEA for visa clearances and the finance ministry for foreign exchange expenses – even before Covid lockdown put a freeze on all such activities.”
“Academic excellence since ancient times has flourished with a free exchange of ideas, thoughts and information. Indian intellectuals themselves had been travelling widely in the distant past. The last two millennia saw more such exchanges. The modern age has seen Indian science, technology and the starts grow in depth and stature in lively bilateral interactions with the best brains in the world. The development of technology, first telephones and now the internet and the information technology and communication sciences, has woven scholars across the globe into an intellectual network. I would like to hope that the government will withdraw all existing restrictions on academic interchange of ideas through seminars, meetings and conferences,” argued Dayal.