As Students Islamic Organisation (SIO) activists, including the organisation’s national leaders, were trying to stage a protest in front of University Grant Commission against the suspension of biannual NET (National Eligibility Test), police personnel forcefully evicted them on 3 October.
NET exam had been conducted twice a year for the posts of lecturer and JRF (Junior Research Fellowship) but in 2017 it is being conducted once a year. SIO calls it a big attack on the higher education of India which is already undergoing shortage of teachers, lecturers and the country lags in the research education.
“Last year, 6.5 lakh students registered for UGC net examination but 1.5 lakh students appeared in the examination. Therefore, they made it annual from biannual. The second reason has been given by CBSE that it has a lot of work to do, it has to conduct examinations up to class 12th students. This is a great burden on them. We want to say to UGC that if 6.5 lakh students register for NET examination, it means that they have desire to qualify the examination. If 1.5 lakh out of 6.5 lakh students appear in the examination, it means students are facing some troubles and hurdles. The trouble is that there are only 90 centres for net examination across the country,” said Tauseef Ahmed, National Secretary of SIO.
Ahmed, who is also Director of SIO’s Centre for Educational and Research Training, added, “In 2011, Knowledge Commission submitted its report. The commission says that if India lags in the higher education, one of the biggest reasons is that our country has non-availabilities of colleges at district and taluka levels. If a student from a rural area of UP wants to appear in the net exam, he faces a lot of troubles in going to Lucknow to appear in the exam. So making annual from biannual NET exam is not a solution. Colleges and Universities are already undergoing shortage of lecturers and seats are vacant there. Why doesn’t UGC increase the exam centres from 90 to 1000? There are thousands of colleges across the country, why are they not made the exam centres? If CBSE is not able to conduct this exam, why don’t they establish separate body for social science stream as separate body CSIR has been founded for science stream? The net exam for science stream is conducted biannually.”
Ahmed furthermore said that after cutting the non-net fellowship, this is another attempt to chip away at the higher education of the country. The government is gradually pushing the higher education towards privatisation.