 Hello and let's talk about the COVID-19 situation in Maharashtra. The state is clearly one of the epicenters of the disease in the country with close to 100,000 cases of which at least 50,000 are active or close to 50,000 are active. The state is way ahead of all the others in terms of key indicators. Mumbai district itself has over 50,000 cases overall and reports say that there is a shortage of beds and ventilator facilities. We talked to a Mumbai correspondent, Amayath Rautkar on this issue. Thank you Amayath so much for joining us. So to begin with, it's estimated that rains may begin in Mumbai today and Maharashtra right now is obviously heeding the number of COVID-19 cases. So could you first talk about what the disease situation is in the state right now? State is very much ahead of all other states in India. Right now there are 94,000 cases, overall 92,000 cases, which includes 3,600 deaths and there are active patients around 46,000. So the proportion of getting people, getting patients cured is almost 50%. But still the Maharashtra number is very, very much ahead. Like Tamil Nadu is right now somewhere 35 to 40,000. But Maharashtra may touch 1,000,000 patients in the next two days. So that kind of seriousness of situation is here in Maharashtra. Particularly in Mumbai. So also could you talk a bit about the situation in Mumbai as well, in terms of what are the key hotspots? What is the kind of condition on the ground right now that is there? One thing is sure. Government data is trying to tell us or government data is telling us that Mumbai's doubling rate of patients is increased in last one month. So on 1st May it was 11 days, the doubling rate of patients. But right now it is 25 days, which is a good thing. But on the other hand, it is also true that the situation in Mumbai, particularly in hospitals, about patients getting ICU beds, patients getting oxygen ventilators, patients getting ambulances. All issues are very much there, very serious situations are there. And many patients, at least I know minimum 10 patients who died just because they didn't get ventilators. So that kind of situation is right now there. There are, it is unimaginable rather that a city of 180,000 people at least is having just 1146, 1146 ICU beds. This is disastrous situation. And 100% beds are right now full, which are used for COVID-19 patients. Yesterday BMC commissioner told me that they are going to add more 500 ICU beds by June 13th. But I don't know, till that time, till June 13th, the number could be much higher than right now. So there was 97 deaths yesterday. Day before yesterday also in 97 deaths in Mumbai, which is higher, 152 deaths in Maharashtra yesterday, day before yesterday, 149 deaths. So the number of deaths is also higher. And we must need to mention here that 985 patients have died due to corona in an entire month of May. But in last 11 days only 685 people have died in Mumbai due to corona. So that kind of the ratio right now is there. There are 1,954 people have died due to corona in Mumbai till yesterday. So it could touch, it could touch to 2,000 more today itself, which is much higher than any other city in India. So that is the situation of Mumbai right now. And what are the emergency measures the government is taking or BMC is taking right now to sort of, especially because the need right now seems to be like you mentioned in terms of beds and other medical facilities. Government is claiming that they are adding ICU beds, they are adding more hospitals. Few hospitals are there which are not ready to take COVID-19 patients and big names like Lila Vati and others, they have given some notices. They have asked to take COVID-19 patients, they have admitted to COVID-19 patients. So that is what government is right now trying to do. But yes, it is also true that there is a lot of mismanagement particularly in Mumbai. There are hospitals where oxygen is a major issue of BMC hospitals. Right now, medicines, oxygen, ventilators, ICU beds are really, really major issues. And it is very much known that COVID-19 is a very resource demanding disease. You need ventilator, you need ICU bed, you need quarantine system and you need it must. So it is very resource demanding disease. Only if you provide the kind of resources, only then you will be out of this current danger. So that is what the biggest challenge is because it is taking place. Absolutely. And also with the monsoons likely to start, what are the key concerns before authorities and people? There are two three concerns. Generally, in normal days, monsoon is good for other people but all the way the headache for moon makers, the cities a lot. Everywhere, Nala getting running, the train stops and all those kind of problems. But right now, there are claims that there is no Nala cleaning in last one and two months. Generally, this March to May period is used for that Nala cleaning and getting image out of those choked gutters and all. Right now, these words have not been completed because there are no workers, sanitation workers who come but they are already exhausted just because of hospital sanitation. So the right now challenge before is not to stop movement. Because in monsoon period, generally in month of July two to three days we waste every year just because of water logging. So that will be the biggest concern for state government. There are few setups of beds outside in ground for COVID-19 patients. There are some camps in Dharavi which are being used for institutional quarantines. But they are outside. So that government has to accommodate them inside in some schools, colleges. So those are also serious challenges before the city administration and the state administration. Thank you so much Amir for talking to us. Our second segment is about the issue of online exams in Delhi University. We talked to Abha Dev Habib of the Democratic Teachers Front on this issue. In most countries, education is as a result shifting online and in her university as well, that is Delhi University in India, a similar trend is being followed and now the university is set to begin online exams, open book exams from July 1st and this is happening despite massive opposition amongst the student and teachers community. So professor Abha teaches physics and she's also the treasurer of the Delhi University Teachers Association and she will be talking to us about this opposition and about the issues that are in this policy of online education. So thank you for joining us today. And can you first tell us about what exactly this system is of this open book online exam. How is this being planned and how will this be conducted? Yeah, so to understand this, first I would like to share the structure of Delhi University. For example, in Delhi University courses are offered in two or three different modes. One is regular mode, students have to take classes in colleges or in departments and then you have school of open learning, so a distance education mode. And then similarly on parallel to distance education mode is for women education but based on that distance learning mode. And undergraduate level teaching happens in roughly 55 or 56 colleges for humanities, social sciences and sciences. While for internal assessments, teachers work, take tests, quizzes and give assignments and assign internal assessment marks to students. But all students have to then take a central semester and examination and a combination of this 25% is internal assessment and 75% is your semester end exam. That total becomes your grades, these are used towards grades for the students. Now this announcement of OBE happened only in around 13th May and for the first time we came to know that the university is thinking of having conducting an open book examination in combination. Before that UGC was studying the possibilities for universities across and university had come with a very flexible formula and we were looking forward to a similar kind of formula. I want to tell you that the university is a central university. There are other 42 central universities also. Delhi University is a central university and this means that the student population is very, very heterogeneous. We get students from across the country and in this there is a very high percentage of, there are 50% seats are reserved for SC, ST, OBC and then we also have reservation for EWS students. So this is the composition, student composition for our university. Now if the university suddenly brings the formula of open book examination, our students are not used to it. Also the teachers were never instructed to teach in a particular manner. So that is a problem for us and the open book examination the university is saying that for each student there will be a folder created on the website in which the question paper will be posted for the day and the student will have to download, work on the paper and upload it within 3 hours. As per the university understanding the question paper is something which the students should complete in 2 hours. An additional hour is being given only to take care of connectivity issues for downloading and uploading. So this is a basic format and colleges have been instructed to help a student if they are not able to upload. So maybe then a question or if they are not able to download for some reason. Because suddenly when a large number of students will be taking exam, the university is not also sure whether the website will work or not. So colleges have been given the charge of following up the things case to case. First I mean give a personalized attention to students to email them the question paper to also take their answer script. So this is broadly what OBE is for Delhi University. So here of course you are mentioning issues of connectivity and now I mean what are the other issues that could come up in this system because like you were saying a lot of the students are from outside Delhi so they would have left for their homes and I think there have been issues discussed about how they might not have access to materials and internet. So a lot of issues have been talked about in this in relation to these exams. Tell us more about this and why it's being opposed. See one thing is that why do you want to examine student. The fundamental question is that you want to examine whether they have understood what you were trying to aim at, whether you had those learning outcomes, whether the student have critically understood, analyzed the reading material, learnt new things, new techniques or whatever. Now when the teaching has been very uneven you see that we were trying to connect for this interview for last 20 minutes and we did not have connection. Now when I say that students from across the country come then there are many students coming from suburban and rural backgrounds. They come from suburban and rural backgrounds and if in Delhi the connectivity issues are like this, you can only imagine what is happening in Rajasthan, in some Jilla of UP or somewhere else. Also students, 50% students, I mean we conducted from Delhi University Teachers Association, we conducted a survey among students and 51,500 students responded to our survey and in this 50% students said that they are from outside Delhi. Now we need to understand that in Delhi University we were having a mid-semester break which also included a festival. Holi was there, is one of the major festivals of the country and students had gone back only for 3 days or 4 days thinking that they will be back. So they did not even carry the study material from before the mid-semester break. I mean for the classes which were done in January, February, March, they do not even have reading material for that. So when we were instructed and the lockdown started around 19th March, just as our university was reopening the lockdown started. I want to say here that no institutional help was provided to students or to teachers. You can understand that there is no scholarship for teachers to buy laptops, to have basic infrastructure ready for all times, to be using it all the times. So it depends on whether I as a teacher have created that facility for myself at home or not. And the institutions just as an order, the vice chancellor or the MHRD says that teachers will have to engage students. Now teachers did whatever they were able to do. Similarly, our students are not equipped with laptops or netbooks or anything. There are no scholarships to ensure that there is minimum infrastructure available at the student's end, say some connectivity broadband or to say the netbook. So when we started teaching the students said that they have not carried material and cannot even able to connect so quickly because things have happened so drastically for them that things have changed, that they were taking little time to settle down with the new things, a completely uncertain world. And we can only imagine that if teachers are or we are feeling jittery how our students were looking at the whole thing. So one, they do not have material. The other is that they are looking at a very unequal playing field. We have students from marginalized section. We have a large number of students coming from differently able section. So with these things and no institutional help to ensure a minimum level playing field we can only imagine how uneven our teaching has been. So for an uneven teaching, even when I was taking classes I was uploading material. I was also trying to hold classes on Zoom. I saw that only one fourth student was able to come on Zoom and they said that connectivity is one issue. Conditions at home is another condition that they do not get an environment where they can concentrate on their studies. The environments are very different for all our students. So a large number also said that environment at home is not conducive for us to join our Zoom sessions regularly. Only one fourth students were coming. So when I'm making efforts, even then I can't reach my students equally. And if we looked at the Delhi University structure which I told that physics honors for example is being taught in roughly 25 colleges. Now if our teaching has been so unequal can we test students through a centralized examination which is going to be common for all. The students and teachers did not protest so much towards internal assessment because when I took internal assessment, though I found it very difficult to track each and every student to extend my deadlines but I was still able to reach to my students. There are students I will say that I was able to reach but many teachers have reported that even for internal assessment I was finding it difficult to reach to the student because the student does not have any internet connection. So I'm saying that even for internal assessment suppose I made efforts I tested them on what I was able to teach them how evenly I was able to approach them. I tested them on that. Now for a centralized examination this situation is not there for the student. The student could negotiate much more with me than with the centralized examination. Therefore we think that any examination right now will be unjust because the teaching has been uneven because the institution you know I am from Miranda House and in Miranda House I will appreciate that academic committee meetings were held regularly departmental meetings were held regularly so we were able to do a coordinated effort. All teachers tried to do similar things and we also we are teachers in regular stream and we did not have this idea of online teaching various applications. All this we had to learn on our own and it did help us to have you know meetings but there were no orders from the university no systematic approach to see that uniformly this was done across colleges or across departments. There are departments and colleges where there has been no coordinated effort. Now you want to suddenly test the student I think it is very unfair. Any kind of examination will be unfair because of the unequal level playing field unequal playing field for the student. Right now an examination will be mapped of how well they were well equipped they were in terms of infrastructure internet connection environment at home if a student had best of all of this they may perform little better and others will be damaged. So we think that any form of examination will be back. The other thing is because we are a central university and most of our students in my class in fact in some departments in some colleges the number of our station student is as large as like 95% students from outside. Now they are coming back to Delhi will mean quarantine. It will also mean that most of the students do not stay on campus I mean that we only have limited number of hospital seats they stay on rented accommodation whether now they will get rented accommodation or not is also a thing. So I don't think so pen and paper is possible a routine exam is possible in the near future and online examination will be completely discriminatory and when the letter of the dean examination came on 14th May the first announcement of OBE for the students and teachers I will like to say here that we were very hurt in the sense that it also filled us with some anger that it did not respond to needs of and entitlements of different sections it did not say that what will happen if in 3 hours a student is not able to upload it did not say what will happen to blind students who need a scribe and who will not get scribe right now because of the norms of physical distancing so I think OBE has to be rethought the other thing is that OBE in the OBE there is no way of maintaining it is not a fear that the private players and group of students can completely rig this examination so in some sense it is not really an examination which will be a credible system. That's all we have in this episode let's talk we will be back on Monday with the latest news developments in the country till then keep watching NewsClick.