Research scholars say no to surveillance Kozhikode: In an era of 24x7 surveillance systems in universities, the slogan, “open the gates of universities, nurseries and other prisons”, that rocked the campuses in Paris at the height of student revolts in the late 1960s, may sound as the faint echo of a bygone time. As the exuberance of the rebellion faded away leaving a trail of dashed hopes and new dreams, campuses across the world seem to have crawled back to their normal routine maintaining the status quo. The all pervading presence of closed circuit television cameras from nursery schools to university campuses monitoring every movement of the students in the guise of security and discipline, is a sign of such a conservative frame of mind. The decision by the University of Calicut to install biometric scanners to monitor the attendance of research students on the campus is the latest step in the regime of surveillance prevailing within the portals of educational institutions across the state. According to the new system, all research scholars in the university are required to mark their attendance in the biometric scanner in the morning and the process has to be repeated in the evening. “The decision of the university is inexplicable as research scholars are not engaged in a 10 - 5 job,” said Fazil Bappu, secretary of the Calicut University unit of the All Kerala Research Scholars Association. “I don’t think any other campus in the country has such an obnoxious monitoring system,” he added. A machine will only mark the time of arrival and departure but it will not be able to record the reason for a research scholar leaving the department, he said. A res¬e¬¬ar¬cher may go to the library or meet somebody connected with his research after mar¬king his attendance, but, with the new system, such activities can be construed as del¬i¬berate absence from the department, he said. The university, on the other hand, has justified the decision on the ground that such a system will help in improving the quality of research. “I don’t think the setting up of a biometric scanner for registering attendance is an infringement on the academic freedom of the research scholar,” said R.S.Panikkar, a member of the Calicut University Syndicate. Basically, it involves the automation of the manual attendance system, he said. “But, the system should be implemented in a flexible manner as the work of a research scholar cannot be equated with routine office work,” he pointed out. The 480-odd research scholars on the campus, however, are not convinced by the university’s reasoning. “The decision involves certain fundamental issues such as the meaning of academic research and accountability for the time of the research scholar,” Fazil Bappu said. The accountability of the research scholar and the timing is a matter to be decided by the respective scholar and the guide. “Just because someone is forced to sit in a place from 10 to 5, it does not mean that the quality of research will improve as that depends upon the kind of infrastructure,” he said. Fazil Bappu, who is pursuing research in management studies, pointed out that most departments on the campus lack basic facilities such as a good library, peer-reviewed journals and laboratories with modern equipment. “The science labs have very old instruments that were bought in the 1980s and they need to be replaced,” he said. The texts available in the library are mostly of vintage quality, he added. The fellowship given by the university is very low compared to the UGC and other Central Government schemes. The Calicut University provides a lump sum of Rs 4,700 to a research scholar compared to Rs 16,500 plus HRA of the UGC Junior Research Fellowship. “I don’t think the quality of research can be improved without addressing such fundamental issues. Instead, installing the latest surveillance gadgets will only help in ushering in an authoritarian atmosphere on the campus.” “No biometric surveillance system exists on our campus,” said Abhilash Vijayan, a research fellow at the Hyderabad-based English and Foreign Language University. “We have a manual attendance system and attendance is compulsory on all working days,” he said. Monitoring the activities of research scholars was quite a need as there had been cases of cheating on many campuses, especially when teachers joined for a two-year research period under the faculty improvement programme. They used to mark their attendance by proxy, he said. But, the type and system of monitoring have to be devised in a democratic manner that would add to the prestige and academic credentials of the university. The Research Scholars Association on the Calicut University campus will conduct a series of discussions with various sections of the academic community and the university authorities in the coming days, said Fazil Bappu. deccanchronicle/130906/news-current-affairs/article/research-scholars-say-no-surveillance
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 10:16:15 +0000
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