Deemed Universities and the Regulatory Regimes of the system

The case filed by the Central Government to withdraw the ‘deemed University’ status of 44 Universities throughout India is only a symptom of the larger systemic crisis which has already occurred. That there has arisen the question of taking back the once given affiliation indicates that there is a crisis within the system that allowed the affiliation and that ‘going back’ to the pre-crisis stable state is made impossible by the power configuration of the system. What is possible, as always has happened in the system, is a shift of the pressure of the crisis from those who are immediately affected by it(Management) to those who are made to be affected by it(students and staff).

The recent economic recession was accompanied by the loss of jobs by several I.T. workers and a reduced number of intakes by I.T. firms. What was and is ensured is the maximum and hence a constantly increasing rate of exploitation and surplus labor (thus an increasing rate of profit too). There was a shift of pressures from the owners of I.T. firms to the laboring masses who worked in the I.T sector. There are innumerable such examples where the shift of pressure of the crises can be seen- the economic crisis of the 1930s, the food and energy crises of the 1970s and more recently the economic recession, only to cite a few. What we confront today is another representation of such a crisis. The rate of (re)production of labor-power, i.e., students with degrees, has outnumbered the absorption of labor-power by the industrial sector. The system has failed to employ those whom it has made employable.

Instead of challenging the moribund system we tend to become its pawns by submitting to its logic and thinking in its terms. The system which flourishes on competition among its various components reduces us to being sacrificial goats and/or foot soldiers in the service of the competing hegemonies. The perspective of the ‘system’ Survival of the fittest is the law of the jungle and we find ourselves defending the jungle. We have two regulatory structures of the same system namely the Government and the Management of University challenging each other. The Government wants what is ‘good’ for the students and teachers and the Management also claims the same!!! Then why this confrontation? Because the interests of the Government and the now denounced Managements are the same- safeguarding exploitation. Where the Government safeguards exploitation in general, the Management safeguards particular exploitative structures like Universities. The contradiction is between the general and the particular expressions of the same regulatory apparatus implicit in the system- the guards of exploitation.

Students, teachers and workers are today reactive to the move of the Government and hence have sided with the Management which will ultimately subsume their struggle within the exploitative system. The other choice is to be proactive and to challenge the whole exploitative system. This is the where the students-workers can assert themselves as being those on whom the system survives with exploitation- denouncing and smashing exploitation and the structures that support it. In the context of the University it is neither the Government nor the Management that allows liberation of the exploited. In Germany, Austria and other countries, in 2009, students and workers have taken control of their own Universities. In India the crisis has made situations opportune for the same. To be or not to be -that is the question.

Contact: studentsworkers@gmail.com