 So if you could elaborate on the three-tire system that is being imposed now? Somewhere in June, and this is happening very quickly, so they are kind of pushing us towards privatisation in a number of ways. So one of the things that they did is that there was a meeting of the Niti Aayog and the proposals from there, or decisions you may say, which was then sent to the UGC for implementation. The first happened somewhere around April and then in June they were ready with the amendment. You can see how quickly it is moving and we believe a lot of these documents are being prepared somewhere else because those who are supposed to know why it is like this are not able to explain, either at the UGC level or at the MHRD level, why this is what is being envisaged. So on the 12th of June the Duta receives, all of us saw on the website, there is a second of June it is supposed to have come out, that all universities are going to be offered what you I mean have to be put into the scheme of graded autonomy. Now what is this graded autonomy? There will be three kinds of universities. All universities are put into one of three categories. So category one will be those universities which have a rank of 1 to 50 or they have a grade of over, I mean a grade. Then those who have a rank from 50 to 100, 51 to 100 in NIRF or some other grade in the lower grade in the NAC, they will be given put in category two and everybody else will be in category three. What is it that is given to category one universities? They give you five or six what they call incentives to be in that category and remain in that category. Each one of those incentives is about self-financing. There is nothing else that they give you. One freedom from regulation you can start new courses without getting the approval of the UGC which is the you know it's supposed to do an academic audit and see that you have the infrastructure and teachers and so on to run that course but you don't have to go to them you start these courses but you will not get any money you can charge any fees that you want to charge. So one is self-financing courses second is you will have to appoint 20% faculty from outside the country from you know the top 500 universities in the world who come from those top 500 rank universities in the world and you negotiate with them what salaries you can pay. We don't give you any extra money for that that is between you and the teachers outside. What happens to our teachers who are qualified and waiting to become permanent? You still ad hoc. What makes you think that those teachers are going to be much better than the talent that you have in India? You see the whole thinking is very colonial like a colony you know. The third thing is that you have to give 20% seats to students from other countries over and above the current numerical strength. Never mind what kind of infrastructure or space or number of teachers you have. Whatever extra you need you will pay for your you have to generate the funds yourself you can charge any fees you want from those foreign students so and then there are certain other incentives which are performance related service conditions should be performance related and so on. So these are the things all of which are pointing towards commercialization and got right or characterization and give no guarantee of quality. Second category is going to be dictated to by the placement agencies that you have to be able to show that you are you get these so theirs is going to be employment oriented supposedly. So the employers will dictate that you know these are our needs and you have to fulfill those needs so the kind of courses you will offer the kind of students you will be preparing will be to fit those needs of the employers and you will be judged by how good your placements are and if you fall below that then you can move out of category 2 into category 3. So will the colleges get transformed into a corporate training institution? Exactly and category 3 will be those who will give mass education and there also if you you know don't meet certain conditions you can be closed down altogether. So you basically in category 3 you can expect hardly any teachers you will have massive open online courses which there is a mantra these days you know MOOCs as a substitute for formal education. So the thinking is that in this colony in the people still think of them as you know the policy makers are thinking of themselves as rulers and in this you know country natives or people who can't really afford very formal education don't really deserve it they can manage with massive open online courses non-formal schemes systems skill education of some kind and so on. So this is what they're pushing our country towards. So what is the reaction among the teachers in across the country relating to this? See teachers are feeling the brunt of it in two ways one is that we've not had appointments for years in most universities across the country. In Delhi University which is a central university we have about 50% of us teaching staff is ad hoc non-teaching also but we're talking about teachers. So we felt the brunt in terms of service conditions no appointments instead of regular salaries people are getting in most of the universities some small amount of money is being paid a pittance depending on how you negotiate with the teacher 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 much much less than a regular salary. So that is one because the funding is being reduced second you've had almost zero promotion situation. Third is that you're getting no I mean the pension is also severely affected so and teachers can see how these policies are leading to severe decline in standards. Immediately what has happened is when the pay revision takes place to make up for the inflation for all government sectors as well as you know autonomous bodies under the government when they're like we are public funded education our salaries are determined by the UGC every 10 years there's a pay revision there's a you know there's a whole sort of committee setup and then the UGC decides that this is how you combat inflation to give them these new salaries. This is the first time that they have not declared the report of the pay review committee they have decided that they will not give even 80 percent we've asked for 100 percent funding of state universities as well earlier they were getting 80 percent the center was giving and now they said we'll get 50 percent and that also just for 39 months. So that will severely affect the lakhs of teachers who are teaching in state universities and colleges and which means that state education state level universities and colleges education will take a nose dive in terms of quality. I mean this year we our annual library budget is 120,000 our college this year we've been unable to buy a single book for the library because no money is come from from the UGC. For the SCST and OBC students we receive grants to conduct remedial teaching for them okay now this year not a single penny has come from the UGC so there is no remedial teaching because this is essential this remedial teaching is essential to bring them at power because they are coming from underprivileged backgrounds very indifferent kinds of schooling okay not at power with the big elite public schools and so we have to give them additional teaching in order to make them come at power with the other students but due to lack of funding we are unable to run all of that and increasingly this focus is shifting towards starting all these kind of coaching courses or MOOCs or you know more market friendly courses at the expense of these kind of things that socially empower and make education more inclusive. The other thing I want to point out is that because the non-teaching posts are not being filled up in fact in terms of service conditions their pay revision has not taken place at all even though the corresponding government servants in central government they have all got the revised pay because even if it's not very satisfactory but their pay revision has taken place but the same the non-teaching employees in universities their pay revision has not taken place in the seventh pay commission second posts have not been filled up there so there's a severe shortage of administrative staff and increasingly that administrative work is being taken from teachers so whether it is examination work it is lumped on the department so they are you know a whole lot of bureaucratic work is increasing which is taking away time from the academic work that they expected to do that's one thing the second thing that has happened is that because there is naturally protest against all these policies which have been coming over a period of time whether it is the semester system which was forced on us or the FIUP or the CDCS or the taking away the right to make syllabi all these things so to suppress the protest there has been you know the governance has been completely changed and I mean it's being affected very severely the care is taken to place as heads of institutions people who are not very good academically and who will just tow the government line okay so and then they are encouraged to unleash repression on teachers and non-teaching employees to crush any kind of dissent unions are not encouraged because that is where they become you know if you're organized and you're able to express your protest or dissent more effectively so neither among the teachers nor among the students are associations being encouraged because you want to basically crush any kind of opinion contrary to the policies that you're bulldozing so teachers are also feeling the brunt of this kind of repression that the victimization you are made to tow the line on all matters even if you think that what is being done is really wrong so you know increasingly teachers are alienated they're frightened they don't want to express themselves on a host of issues and that's because the policies have to be smoothly implemented