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Lady Shri Ram College for Women

LSR introduces Research and Referral period with the coming of FYUP

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Lady Shri Ram College for Women, known for intense academic commitment and discipline, has introduced a 75 minute research and referral or academic study period every Friday in the light of the new Four Year Undergraduate Programme.

The college has cut down 5 minutes from each class and done away with the assembly on Friday to make space for the R&R period.

The idea behind this 75 minute long study period is that both students are teachers have very little time during the course of the week to engage in research and further introspective reading. In the everyday routines of college and course work, the element of research is usually lost. Particularly with students who are part of the FYUP, it is difficult to manage anything other than coursework since classes take place till five in the evening. This 75 minute time frame every Friday gives faculty and students a chance to engage with their subjects further.

College administration is also making sure that this period is not used for any extracurricular activity. In the words of the administration, “It is not a time for singing and dancing but for intellectually stimulating activities.”

In addition to research and further reading, students are also free to make presentations, engage in guest lectures, talks, discussions and screen documentaries of academic interest during this time. While this new addition to the timetable has been made because of the FYUP, it is applicable to all students from all courses and all years.

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Biblio

Book Review: Seeing like a Feminist

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Title: Seeing like a Feminist
Author: Nivedita Menon
Year of publication: 2012

Feminist politics is complex, critical and contains a pattern of innumerable structures – just like the patriarchy it opposes. At the same time, being a feminist living in a patriarchal society comes with its own set of complications – from being labeled a man hater to questioning your own beliefs. Nivedita Menon’s book published jointly by Zubaan Publications and Penguin Books – speaks of all this and more. What is both insightful and humbling about Menon’s style is her sheer lucidity, which makes this book simple yet powerful, ridden with modern examples (like the ban on the Burkha in France) yet historical (like the existence of the stereotypical gendered colours of pink and blue having swapped genders only 50 years ago!)

Having been both a student and a professor at Delhi University, Menon connects patriarchy’s several structures and weaves them into a chain of thought that will not let you put this book down. Seeing like a Feminist starts with the concept of nude make up – make up that makes one look ‘natural’ and draws an analogy of the same with the present social order – which goes through the most painful rites and rituals only to finally move towards the natural order of things. She explains patriarchy through many such interesting insights and anecdotes, going through what it is to be a feminist, feminism’s relationship with family, love and marriage. She talks about bodies – what it is to be feminine and masculine and how these are mere social constructs and how these associate with sexuality. Menon’s take on today’s feminism is beautifully seasoned with the history of feminism in India; it’s associations with formal structures like law and historical ones like caste. She quotes several scholars, writers, writes extensively about contemporary movements, gets into the specifics of the Indian Penal Code, and yet, never once, does her writing make you feel like you’re reading a piece of academic work.

Feminism, for Menon, ‘’is not about a movement of final triumph over patriarchy, but about the gradual transformation of the social field- so decisively- that old markers shift forever.’’ This book is a brilliant read for anyone who wishes to understand feminism as a political ideology, along with its influences on informal and complex structures that makes up today’s conflicted society. Seeing like a Feminist is bold, thought through and in many parts – contrary to what is expected of feminism – very, very entertaining.

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News

Most ad hoc teachers are losing employment in the new session: DUTA

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On Wednesday, 17th July 2013, the Delhi University Teacher’s Association (DUTA) held a dharna outside Vice Chancellor Dinesh Kumar’s office or the Vice Regal Lodge. Believing that the University’s Ad hoc teachers have been discriminated against at several occasions during the previous academic session, DUTA staged this dharna to demand for better working conditions and higher recruitment rates for ad hoc and temporary teachers in the next session, which is to start exactly a week after the protest was held.

The idea behind this demonstation was to ensure some basic labour benefits for ad hoc teachers – like medical leave, maternity leave, vacation salaries, and transitions to permanent teaching appointments. While many believe it to be astonishing that these very basic working conditions aren’t provided to a substantial part of the University’s teaching workforce, the Vice Chancellor’s office did not seem disrupted at all by the strike. No official from the University addressed the gathering, or even made an appearance. After the protest, a few of DUTA’s members compiled all their demands into a memorandum and submitted it at the VC’s office.

DUTA

‘’No permanent teachers’ appointment has been made during the present Vice chancellor’s tenure. Most ad hoc teachers are losing employment in the new session. Despite the dharna and the memorandum, the VC’s office has not yet responded to any of our demands. We have also staged protests outside Shyam Lal College, whose administration has decided not to retain ad hoc teachers for the new session. Other colleges making similar calls – like Ramjas and PG DAV will also see demonstrations soon’’ said DUTA Vice President Harish Khanna.

The Academics for Action and Development (AAD) – a teacher’s group with similar demands as that of the DUTA staged their protest the next day outside the Vice Chancellor’s office. For the AAD, the main concerns leading to the demonstration was that teachers who have taught in the previous semester may not be retained and ad hoc experience may hold no value during interviews for permanent lectureship.

The University has promised the AAD that deliberations over service conditions of permanent teachers is about to reach a conclusion soon, and as soon as the committee in charge of the same submits its report, the University will begin advertising for positions of permanent appointments. While a similar assurances were made in October last year and at the end of this June, the AAD is expecting a finalization by next month.

Image Credit: Jayati Bhola

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DUB Speak

10 things I learnt from a Women’s College

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Women’s colleges across the globe have had the history of producing some of the smartest, bravest and greatest minds we’ve seen – from Hilary Clinton to Aung Sang Suu Kyi, from Sheila Dikshit to Gita Gopinath – the most brilliant women today credit their successes to their all girl alma maters. So what values do these all women institutions instill in their students that inspire them to achieve greatness? A sense of confidence, a feeling of being comfortable in one’s own skin, breaking stereotypes, understanding that the only person you need to impress is yourself? Ofcourse!

Besides these, the experience of studying a women’s college is like no other – our college life comes with its own set of problems, solutions and sweet nothings. Some funny and some downright crazy, here is a list of ten little things that I’ve learned from my experience in a women’s college:

1)      Being a male professor is not easy – Can you imagine the plight of a man aged between 25-50 teaching a class of fifty 19 year old girls? Well, you can’t! Each move he makes is scrutinized, duly noted and discussed after class. God forbid he decides to wear acid wash jeans, mispronounces a word, or says one thing too many times, he can be rest assured to be topic of discussion throughout the day!

2)      Pyjamas are completely acceptable college wear – While this may vary from individual to individual and from college to college, most of us couldn’t care less about our attire in college. In the end, it’s all about being comfortable.

3)      College fests are a time when all your guy friends will decide you exist – WHAT IS WITH BOYS WANTING TO ENTER GIRLS COLLEGES? I mean, relax guys, we aren’t a species from outer space and our campus is not a UFO! Sure, come in and see what our fest is all about but don’t treat us like exotic birds you’d like to sight at a picnic with your pals.

4)      Beauty is not skin deep – Forgot to get your eyebrows done? Or shave your legs? Been too busy to watch your weight? Welcome to no man’s land. As long as you’re a great person and can help a friend in need, we really couldn’t care less!

5)      Everybody here is not a feminist – Sure, many of us lean towards gender studies or feminism as a political ideology, and that maybe because of the stark difference in our lives in and outside college, but not everybody claims to be a feminist, per se.

6)      Being a feminist and being lesbian are two different things – Many of us have heard this and it’s gets more frustrating each time. Feminism is not a man hating, lesbian loving idea – it’s an idea striving for equality of all genders in every sense, and should not be associated only with women’s colleges.

7)      Women aren’t delicate creatures who need to be constantly pampered – There are NO men here – we take our own food to the table, shift around the heavy furniture all by ourselves, travel alone and are well aware that the ‘girls are soft, boys are strong idea’ is stupid and has no place in the 21st century.

8)      Men who advocate for gender justice are extremely ‘sexy’ to us – Okay, so to be clear here, there is no battle of the sexes. There are men who are pathetic and misogynist; there are also women who think the same way. When we see someone from the privileged sex with the intellectual capacity to make sense of the war against women and genders other than male – and because it’s not very common – our hearts can’t help but leap with joy!

9)      There are no flocks of guys waiting outside the gates of our college – This is a myth buster – there are no boys peeping in from gates and windows, no men trying to sneak in. The only men outside college are the auto vaala bhaiyas, the rickshaw vaala bhaiyas, the bhelpuri/sevpuri bhaiyas and the icecream vaala bhaiyas.

10)  College is a real place, not Barbie land – Contrary to what outsiders or aspirants may think, everybody is not incredibly feminine, nor are there catfights, or women making out behind bushes. We go there to study, have fun, and learn about life – and that’s exactly what we do!

College teaches us all of this and more – love it or hate it, you’re going to learn here – both about yourself and about the world, and when you’re learning all of this in a women’s college, your life is going to be all new and very unique roller coaster. All freshers going to women’s colleges – welcome aboard!

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DUB Speak

Startups – to living the dream and making your own rules

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Imagine a world where Mark Zuckerberg hadn’t thought of Facebook; or a world where the genius of Google was still unknown; how would you book those minutes tickets if it wasn’t for MakeMyTrip or Yatra? Can you survive a hot summer evening without a refreshing beverage and a book you got from Flipkart? Don’t we all love the quirky trinkets we see at Happily Unmarried or Chumbak?  What would our lives be without innovation, invention, creativity and technology? What we do if it wasn’t for courageous young people who decided to take a leap of faith, start their own new age businesses or service companies and turned them into success stories.

It’s not easy to move beyond a culture where having a ‘real job’ is possibly the most important dream parents hold for their children. It’s not easy to move out of conventional, comfortable professions and tell people you bake cakes for a living, or run an adventure company, make documentary films, work at a delivery service or web portal.  It’s even tougher to make this decision and stand by it – from running an online fashion label or being a stylist to running a digital solutions firm, from running an NGO and leading a social movement to designing cars  and sometimes doing things so offbeat that you don’t understand them yourself – entrepreneurship requires more than just starting capital. It requires courage, vision, self esteem and a whole lot more. More than anything else, it requires a firm belief in yourself and what you do – only then can you change the rules; only then can you change the world.

growth

Speak to any person involved in a startup, and they’ll tell you that things do fall apart, and you will make mistakes, but you can’t be great unless you’re brave enough to make these mistakes – and learn from them. It also requires some amount of support, but you’ve got to understand that there will be times when it will all be on your shoulders.

It’s astonishing how this generation is unafraid to take the road less traveled – with all its rocky bits and thorns – and make it work. Despite being termed materialistic, selfish and unhappy, the young today are consciously developing this need for change – they’re not afraid to walk on fire, they’re not afraid to do to materializing their ideas from a rented garage, they’re not afraid to make that firm call to say no to an easy and comfortable  9 to 5.

And it is this fearlessness which will one day change the world. Every startup is based on insane courage and passion, and as a generation, we should be incredibly proud of this endearing quality. We’re learning from every wrong step we take, we’re falling and rising, we’re giving our hopes and aspirations a chance, we’re doing our part in building a society where people are accepted for who they are, and can do whatever they like for a living– and we have every right to be proud of it.

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DUB Speak

Being a Minority in India – of life, death and losing children to fake encounters

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Have you heard of Ishrat Jahan? She was a beautiful nineteen year old second year science student. The second of seven siblings, she had taken the entire responsibility of her family when her father died in 2002.  Sounds painful, doesn’t it – to be taking care of a family of nine at the age of seventeen? Well, it gets worse. Ishrat was killed in cold blood on 15th July 2004, and her body, with arms and legs wide open, lay on the outskirts of Ahmedabad for the press to photograph and for strangers to see.

Unbelievable as it may sound to the nineteen year olds reading this, but there are have been many Ishrat Jahans in this country. Many young Muslims accused and killed falsely of terrorism, many Muslim parents with no strength, will and/or resources to fight over their dead brood. In Ishrat’s case, while the Gujarat government has been claiming that she was part of a conspiracy to assassinate Narendra Modi after the Godhra Riots and was a member of Lashkar-e-Taiba, judiciaries of many levels have upheld that her death was part of a staged encounter. Most recently, the CBI in a 1500 page report has claimed that the encounter was fake, and has also named seven police officials in the entire fiasco.

Ishrat’s mother Shamima, despite barely making ends meet with her son’s call center salary, has decided that her daughter deserves justice. For the past nine years, she has struggled to keep her family together, going from one court to another and being overly protective of her other daughters. She has heard neighbours question Ishrat’s character, seen her son leave his studies, and witnessed her daughter being rejected to design school for being related to Ishrat Jahan – and yet, she has fought for every day of these nine painful years, and she has decided to fight till justice knocks at her doorstep. All of this, so that another Ishrat Jahan doesn’t die of being a questionable minority in India.

It’s not easy being a minority in this country. Chances are your entire community lives in a particular area of the city – it’s almost like living the life of an outcaste. You have probably seen varying degrees of stigma and discrimination throughout your life. You may have been accused of terrorism, called an outsider, experienced a riot, lost family and friends. It’s a life most of us can’t comprehend. We will never understand the family’s fear when so called journalists came to their house at 2:30 in the morning; or the heart sinking sensation they felt when someone showed them a picture of Ishrat lying dead with three men; or even how they feel when they see Narendra Modi on TV.

Can you imagine any of this? All of this is the price you pay for being a religious minority in our secular, democratic state. A feeling of helplessness haunts me as I end this piece. I realize that all we can do is hope – hope that Ishrat Jahan gets justice, hope that she rests in peace.

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Admissions 2013

To every future leader DU lost this year

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Dear Future Leader,

Yes, I know you think this is easy for us to say. I know you think we have it all. We, with our fancy Delhi University degrees and sky high board results – what would we know about someone who couldn’t manage a seat in the country’s best university? No, we can’t possibly sympathise. And I’ll tell you why – because it’s our loss. It’s this University’s loss. The University should be pitied for being narrow in it’s thought process, almost to the extent of bigotry, and blamed for judging a student’s potential by something as unpredictable and as trivial as a board exam score.

It is this University, and it’s unbelievable cut off lists for 2013, that couldn’t comprehend your true potential. It is this University, apparently the best in the country which believes that your intelligence, ability, confidence and maturity can be reflected in simply one set of exams.

For every future journalist, writer, novelist, poet and literature enthusiast we lost this year, I’m sorry we didn’t even bother to see your writing – your wit, your insight, the books you’ve read and the things that inspire you. I’m sorry we thought that a 97% can encompass all of that.

All future entrepreneurs, business leaders, who needed a 100% to get through the best institutes of the country, you’re better than that. For everyone who missed out on a seat by a meager margin, I don’t even know where to begin to apologise. Apologise on behalf of the entire university. Apologise for never comprehending your true potential, for never even trying. For not giving you a chance – a chance at an entrance exam, a chance to rise up to your true calling.

On another tangent, I think the university’s loss of some of the best minds of the future is not it’s only loss this year. The much protested Four Year Undergraduate Programme and all its predicted downfalls might be a sign of falling standards. This is not my way of showing you a silver lining, but you probably do deserve better.

I will always regret not having a chance to be associated with you. I hope we have a chance to work together someday. Or just meet each other and learn from each other’s experiences. It’s sad that the University’s lost yet another chance to be associated with the Mark Zuckerburgs and Einsteins of tomorrow. You are the future, and this world is your oyster. So spread your wings, and go conquer. May you fly high, and may your flight be long.

With best wishes and a certain sense of hollowness,
A DU student

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Admissions 2013

Political Science under FYUP: Course analysis

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polsci-wp
The University of Delhi has been through a lot in the past two years. The shift from an annual system to a semester mode has been quick, tremendous, and a whole new experience – just the way all change has ever taken place. And just while we were all settling in, the University is going to see yet another new way of life – the Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP). Through this article, we look at how it has affected the Political Science course offered by the University.

The Course
Analysing the University’s undergraduate Political Science course in particular, the first thing that strikes a person is that in the foundation year, there are very few subjects (out of eleven) that would be vaguely related to political science – namely Governance and Citizenship, Indian History and Culture, Environment and public health, Geographic and socio- economic diversity. While courses like IT, Mathematics and Literature may help enhance vocational skills, they have very little to do with the subject itself.

The structure of the course has obviously changed, and the university has tried to make it more comprehensive by introducing twenty major subjects (Discipline Course 1) related to the students’ particular subject of interest, six minor subjects (Discipline Course 2) for additional information and knowledge, and four skill based Applied Subjects. While this well defined way of functioning will give students an in depth research perspective to political science, the fear of reading material being too short (as laid down by the university) to provide greater understanding – especially in a research driven subject like political science – is quickly seeping in. Yet, many feel that the course may become more practical, with all knowledge being coupled with important skill based learning.

Mind Body and Heart Courses and ECA
Some also see this as a way of making Political Science a less rigorous course, with co curricular activity being given importance, along with skill building and overall development with courses like Mind Body and Soul. But the essence of a research driven subject, the idea of creating a generation of academics who understand in depth political theory and have the potential to lead revolutions is slowly diminishing.

Freedom of Choice
While students will now be able to make an informed choice about exactly what honours degree they’d like to pursue, there has also been certain curtailing of free choice, with the eleven foundation courses being compulsory along with one applied language course. These courses like Information Technology, Science and Life, Business, Entrepreneurship, and Management are from varied streams and may not really equip a student studying Political Science.

(Political Science 2013 Cut-offs)

Exit Points
Under the FYUP, the mid course exit points provided after two years and three years respectively may also prove to be the easier way out for some. Fear is that it would serve to the disadvantage of students from underprivileged backgrounds and women students. Since the first year is only a foundation year, these exit points in a course like political science may lead to graduates with half baked knowledge on concepts that are built over time –like theories of politics, international relations and global politics, governments and constitutions.

Employability
Amidst all protests and petitions against the FYUP was the Vice Chancellors argument of the new system improving employability and placement patterns of the university. For a subject like political science, whose scope is so diverse, students would benefit more from quality education than from unguaranteed, but apparently easy jobs.

Final verdict
Like every course, Political Science too, has been affected by the FYUP –for the better in some ways, and for worse in others. The final verdict, though, can only be given after this batch of students completes their graduation. Ruin or reform, this change is finally taking place despite protest from a substantial part of the university, and each course can only accept it and make it work for itself.

(For analysis of other courses click here)

Illustration Credit: Bidisha Mandal

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