 For some years, we have been seeing that the government policy towards higher education has been such that the grant that we are getting for the universities has been gradually reduced. And this has happened very drastically at the time of the current government also. But the root cause of this in my mind is that at one point of time in 2005, the government of India signed the GATS Treaty for higher education, in which there is a clause which says that to create favourable trade conditions for all the players from different countries, you have to reduce or completely remove the subsidy given to Indian universities. As a result of which continuously policies are being made in such a manner to reduce funding for the universities. This particular government has gone ahead at a very great speed and viciously crushed all dissent. The MHRD is imposing a tripartite MOU on all central universities. This memorandum of understanding, it basically allows the government to bypass the UGC which is an autonomous grant funding agency and it allows to take over the funding functions directly under its own sort of executive authority. And it also makes funding conditional, funding for public funded universities like due conditional upon certain performance evaluation targets that it will set for universities. Now these targets are really absurd because they are quantified targets meant to evaluate things that are basically qualitative. The policy is all that every level has started. Funds are not being released, the pensions are not being released, the allowances are not being released. Research grant has not come up. The travel grant for, you know, when you go for seminars, it has not been given. And this is happening in central universities which are in Delhi. I hope you can understand what is the state of the other universities. The government is trying to automate the 6 colleges in the D.U. Autonomous means that the government is saying to them that you can make slaves according to yourself, you can take exams, you can open new branches and you can do everything, but we won't give you money. This means that the public funded universities in the D.U. where the government would give you money, now it is being pushed in the direction of privatizing through this autonomous. They are asking the universities to take research grants from corporate sources through an extramural funding program. They are asking us to take loans for infrastructure from HEPA which basically raises funds from the capital markets and asks universities like ours to pledge our assets, our land, our building, all our intellectual resources as securities against the loans that we will be forced to take. Now this means that the students who are going to come to a place like D.U. are going to come to mottgaged buildings, they are going to study in mottgaged libraries, all of which are publicly owned. This is a sinister plan to eventually hand over publicly owned resources to private sector. One after the other brought certain regulations, cutting down the number of posts in universities, reducing funding through privatization in one form or the other. The latest is to force all central universities to sign a memorandum of understanding which says that we will take loans rather than grants. And to pay back those loans, we will show that we have the capacity to pay back the loans by immediately raising students fees. Now if we have to pay for infrastructure, for new posts and so on, then the students fees will be going into less, like it is in private universities. The immediate impact will be A, on the kind of students coming in, bulk of Indian 99% will not be able to afford higher education. They have to take steep loans which they may not be able to repay because they don't have any jobs coming up either. The second thing that was happening is that the content of education will change because those subjects which are not fetching high fees, which are not getting many takers who are willing to pay high fees, will slowly die down. So the humanities and the social sciences and language courses will suffer very badly. They are insisting that the university should commit to incremental hikes in student fees, which is, you know, it has happened earlier. We have forced them to push their agenda back, but they are bringing it in a new kind of way and trying to ensure that higher education becomes out of reach for poorer sections, especially for women. You know, at times in pay commission and other related issues, Duta takes a lead because it's in Delhi. And it is, you could say that since we are in Delhi, there is a locational advantage. And since media may even cover us, which may not be possible in other states. But a fight against privatisation and coming up with a solution will not be possible in Delhi. It will not be possible in Delhi. It will not be possible in Delhi. It will not be possible in other states. But a fight against privatisation and commercialisation of higher education cannot be only on the, you know, shoulders of the Duta. The overall implication of the tripartite MOU is privatisation and commercialisation. It is against the interests of the larger majority of people who want access to higher education, who want a modicum of equity just in the higher education system.