Right to Teach
Neerja Deodhar | 28 January 2024 | Mid.Day
To most students, a good college professor is a guiding light during the period when they are most malleable—as they turn cherished dreams into reality, understand their place in the world, and chart the map of their lives for the next two decades. The professor is the stuff of Robin Williams’s Dead Poets Society and Sidney Poitier’s To Sir, with Love—a larger-than-life figure who goes far beyond the assigned syllabus, shifting something within them as they navigate the tricky territory of adulthood and careers.
A quick survey of India’s academia will reveal that though such inspiring teachers still persist, all is not well. Consider the country’s rank in the 2023 Academic Freedom Index, behind its neighbours Sri Lanka and Pakistan, in the 20 to 30 percentile. The Index, which studies 179 countries, assesses them based on four factors: Freedom to research and teach; Freedom of academic exchange and dissemination; Institutional autonomy; Campus integrity; and Freedom of academic and cultural expression. “In India, academic freedom started to decline in 2009 with a drop in university autonomy followed by a sharp downturn in all indicators from 2013,” the Index notes. In the years that followed, campus integrity, institutional autonomy, and the freedom of academic and cultural expression were particularly compromised….