Why Do Vice-Chancellors Fail At Aligarh Muslim University?

By KALEEM KAWAJA                                                                       Muslim India

Kaleem Kawaja, lives in Washington DC where he is an engineering manager at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He led the formation of the Association of Indian Muslims of America (AIM), a Non Government Organization that continues to be focused on uplifting India’s Muslim community. For the last twelve years Mr Kawaja has been in the Board of the Muslim Community Center, the largest Islamic Center in metropolitan Washington DC, where he was president for a few years and where he is a trustee now.

If we look at the tenures of Vice Chancellors (VCs) at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) in the last couple of decades we find that most of them, even though they were distinguished and competent managers, ran into substantial problems of indiscipline, students’ strikes, violence, arson, forced shutdown of university, indifferent academic achievement, lack of pursuit of excellence and discontent in the community that AMU serves. That brings up the question as to why VCs fail at AMU.

CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS

The basic expectation from a VC at AMU is that he solve the problems of the students and teachers, improve the quality of education, quality of research, quality of relationship between teachers and students, campus discipline, and ensure that most of the grants and funds allocated to AMU by the Government and Foundations are actually expended within the stipulated time period and for the intended purpose. Today AMU has a vast and sprawling campus, a variety of professional colleges, teaching faculties and departments, with about 26,000 students living in hostels at the campus. Overcrowding in hostels and classrooms and competition among students and teachers for the scarce resources is a gnawing reality. A variety of factors prevent AMU from achieving pursuit of academic excellence and be ranked among the nation’s top universities. Thus while expansion of AMU academic programs is a laudable goal, upgrading the existing infrastructure and learning systems in order to improve the functioning of AMU is a primary need of the community that AMU serves.

THE STRING OF FAILURES

All of the last four Vice chancellors, Mr Naseem Ahmad IAS, Mr Hamid Ansari IFS, Mr Mahmoodur Rahman IAS, Prof MN Farooqi, faced much campus violence, personal threats to their physical well-being, repeated student strikes, cancellation/postponement of examinations, major disturbances in the residential hostels, non-cooperation from the teachers and arson/murders at the campus.
Why did the handpicked, distinguished Prof MN Farooqi, former Chairman of the Electronics Department at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, despite his innovations, face unending disturbances, serious problems in the enrollment to the university’s professional colleges, strikes, turmoil at the campus that forced him to finally resign well before the end of his term?

Why did the politically savvy and tough guy IAS officer Mahmoodur Rahman face so much campus violence, threats from the students and the campus shopkeeper community, and become an unacceptable official at AMU, despite his hard work and penchant for discipline and scores of new initiatives?

The sophisticated and suave diplomat, IFS officer Hamid Ansari had to leave after serving only 2 years upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 65. That saved him from further troubles at the campus. In the short period of his 2 year tenure he faced violence and police raids against the then well entrenched SIMI elements at the University campus which threatened the shutdown of the university.

Why did the politically efficient and very personable IAS officer Naseem Ahmad, who even experimented with writing Urdu poetry to help bond with the AMU ethos, face not only murder of students at the campus but also threats on his life, and finally had to leave in a hurry?

The above four VCs were capable and experienced managers who brought a diversity of strengths and qualities to manage AMU. Some of them were very experienced government administrators and others were very experienced academic managers. Yet, all of them were unable to meet the basic expectation from them of trouble free operation of the university, orderly semesters, admissions, classes, examinations and some growth and improvement.
Why the failures?

Some of the factors that bedeviled all of these otherwise capable VCs are:

a. The expectation of the North Indian Muslim community and the Central and UP governments is that the Aligarh Muslim University VC be an ex-officio leader of the Indian Muslim community, a sort of central minister for the Muslim community’s higher education. That in addition to managing AMU he should manage the expectations and issues in the area of higher education of the 150 million strong Muslim community. The VC is given a signal that his next assignment after AMU may be a Central Cabinet Minister or Ambassador to a Muslim country or Governor of a state. Everyone is reminded of Dr Zakir Hussain Khan who after AMU ascended to the offices of governor of Bihar, Vice-President and President of India.


b. Thus after about a year as VC at AMU, the gentlemen start spending considerable time, effort and strategy with the top politicians and political parties in New Delhi and in international political circles. The Indian government itself propels the AMU VC in that slot. Thus the administration of the sprawling AMU campus, discipline at the campus and in the departments, the struggles of the students and teachers etc get much smaller time and attention from the VC. Most AMU VCs feel that they are not like the VCs of other big universities, because they are expected to carry the heavy burden of leadership of the Muslim community, which they think is their unofficial assignment. That results in the compounding of AMU’s core problems and periodic blowups.

c. Being short of time due to his pre-occupation with external functions the VC typically does not go beyond the department chairmen in the management of the various teaching departments. That transforms the department chairmen into sort of czars of the affairs of teachers, students, research scholars and research programs in their departments. Many a lecturers, readers, research scholars and research programs sometimes suffer from the whims of the chairmen and the VC remains blissfully disconnected from it. The department chairmen and senior professors start to control the hiring of new teachers to candidates from their ethnic sub-communities or extended clans leading to significant in-breeding. The net result is frequent frustration among the students and junior teachers and stagnation of the quality of academic output and pursuit of excellence.

d. The students, many of whom have high expectations of a bright new beginning in their lives, most of whom have just left their homes for the first time and who are trying to survive in the badly overcrowded AMU hostels, find that there is no official at AMU whom they can approach to get their many problems looked at. I recall that a few years ago a niece of mine, upon joining one of the AMU hostels, found herself living with five other girls in a crowded room in the girls’ hostel. She had just one bed and no desk, to spend her days and nights including studying daily and for tests and examinations. Often the food in the dining halls is not satisfactory, the instructions in the classrooms are indifferent and the teachers do not pay attention to students. As I said earlier many students suffer at the hands of the feudal attitude of senior professors but have no real recourse.

The VC, busy with his pursuit of high level educational problems of the Muslim community and making visits to New Delhi, has little time for the mundane daily issues of the students, and gets disconnected from the masses of students. Thus when some leaders of the students’ union sometimes politicize the core grievances of the students, the VC looses patience and reacts. This cycle which has so often caused indiscipline, turmoil and violence at AMU repeats itself every few years. Unfortunately successive VCs have continued to downplay this issue and it has come back to blow up in their face.

e. Many a retired Muslim government officials and extended family members of AMU teachers, who have settled down in Aligarh, some of whom have business interests with the university, have vested interests in AMU and they expect the VC to pay attention to their needs. Also they want to have a role in the management of the affairs of AMU. In recent past some of them have taken undue advantage of the AMU land and properties. Efforts of some VCs to stop this abuse has resulted in some of these folks’ instigating turmoil and violence at the campus. Many a VCs have overlooked this problem which got compounded with some nefarious elements taking residence in the university’s hostels, operating unauthorized businesses and muscling the students and teachers. The lesson is that the VC should give enough attention to these issues, unpalatable as they may be.

f. The many alumni of AMU and their vast global network often want to have a role in the management of the affairs of AMU, yet they provide limited resource support for the development of AMU. The Alumni with either excessive praise or excessive criticism, but either way a significant demand on the time and attention of the VC, make the VC’s life complicated. The VC has to manage the role of the AMU alumni with a proper perspective.

g. To cope with all these expectations from the AMU community, the government and the nation’s Muslim community, the VC starts to juggle a large number of balls in the air and fights with lots of fires simultaneously. At the same time the possibility of the next assignment as a senior political leader representing the Muslim community distracts the VC’s attention away from the university’s routine issues.

Unlike the VC of any other university in India, who is not burdened with such diverse expectations, instead of being a good academic administrator of AMU who spends time improving across-the-board quality of education, the VC becomes a semi-political leader who practices the politics of expediency and gives too many promises that he has no chance to keep. Most of the time the core issues of students and teachers get short shrift and low priority from the VC , and finally they come back to harm AMU and bite the VC himself.
The end result is that as the VC steps into the last year of his term he notices that most of the visions and goals that he had set for AMU in his first year have either not survived the many controversies and political in fights that erupted, or he compromised them so much that he can not recognize them any more. One reason is that the VC detaches himself from the two communities that matter most for the welfare of AMU– the students and the teachers.

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

For instance with the current HRD minister’s encouragement AMU VC Prof Abdul Azis has launched an ambitious program to build five AMU extension centers remote from Aligarh. By itself it is a visionary program to improve college level education in the Muslim community. But managing this program is going to be a full time job in itself. It will take a lot of the VCs time, resources and attention, that will necessarily come out of the time that he needs to spend on the issues and programs of AMU itself. That may very well result in intensified problems at AMU. If the HRD ministry wants this program implemented it should first look at the constitution and charter of AMU that does not allow AMU to be a multi campus educational entity.

If the Government really wants to make AMU a multi campus university it should first implement proper legislation to revise the charter of AMU to give it the legal authority to be a multi-campus university, and change the office of VC into an “AMU System Director General”. The legislation should ensure that AMU’s minority status is not compromised by non-minority colleges in Aligarh district or elsewhere demanding affiliation with AMU. Failing to do that first will land AMU in lawsuits and much waste of AMU’s resources. Furthermore, the task of expanding AMU into a multi-campus higher education entity should be assigned to someone other than VC. May be to some top Muslim educationist or some former VC, or IAS official, so that the AMU VC is not sidetracked from his main responsibility of running AMU and is over-burdened. All of us should realize that with its massive student body and many colleges, AMU needs a dedicated full time VC to manage and improve AMU into a superior academic institution; not a part time VC who is also a part time leader of the Muslim community.

The VC’s job being a heavy burden he should delegate many of his responsibilities by appointing a set of Pro-Vice Chancellors (PVCs) and Officers on Special Duty (OSD). The system will work much better if people for these positions are recruited from the IAS or IPS cadres on term appointments and given sufficient responsibility to carry out their functions. In the past recruiting these positions from among the AMU teachers has led to instances of influence peddling and politicking within the community of AMU teachers.

It can not be over-emphasized that the VC has to not only pay enough attention to the teachers and students, he also has to ensure that the relationship between these two sub communities is good. In view of the failures of several successive AMU VCs in the last two decades it is time that the Indian Muslim community, the Government and the AMU community introspect on the situation and makes suitable adjustments in the role of the AMU VC.

Source: KHABREIN.INFO