Rituparna Patgiri | 16 December 2023 | The Indian Express

Not a lot of people dream about being academics. It is not a very lucrative job. But for me, since I was in class VIII or so, I wanted to be a teacher. This was primarily because of my family background — my mother teaches in a college and my father has retired from a public university in Assam. I had seen them being passionate about teaching and research, and most of my childhood was spent reading. During my undergraduate degree in Sociology from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi, I struggled with theories. But I persevered and subsequently completed an MA in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics (DSE), University of Delhi and an MPhil and PhD from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). The academic journey is challenging but none of these moments made me feel like quitting.

But what has been happening at the University of Delhi, and specifically in Indraprastha College for Women (IPCW) has shaken me to the core. I have felt like quitting my passion and changing professions in the past two months. On September 29, 2023, the interview results for the position of assistant professor in a permanent capacity in the Department of Sociology at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi were declared. I, along with four others, was working as an ad hoc teacher. Since the date of the interview was announced, all of us were nervous. We knew that we could lose our jobs, considering what was happening in both the college and the university. But when the results were uploaded on the college website, even the most prepared of us could not believe what had happened. All five of us were displaced….

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