OPINION

It’s admission time and Delhi University is in news all over again. Like other years, this time too its about high cut-off rate for admission to the undergraduate programmes. At the outset, let it be clear that this noise largely pertains to admissions under the general category which amount to less than 50 percent of the seats on the offer as it also includes candidates from economically weaker sections.

Tinge to the current controversy has been added with a large number of students from the southern states, Kerala particularly, arriving with a very high percentage of marks, 100 percent in many cases, and occupying these premium seats. There indeed is a difference in curriculum and scheme of marking between the state school examination boards and the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE).

With this difference, when the merit in the senior secondary school examination becomes the sole criterion for admission, there would be some gaining unfairly and some losing unfairly. In his own understanding a Delhi University teacher-activist has called this scenario something as ‘Marks Jihad’ without really appreciating that the crisis is of university’s own making and not Kerala board’s doing.

For the residents of Kaushambi, a wooded small colony bang on the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border, the recent observations of the Supreme Court on the farmers’ strike were nothing less than music. The Supreme Court last week expressed its angst at the highways being blocked as part of protests while hearing arguments against the farmers’, now a year-long long, agitation along borders of national Capital with Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.

The farmers have been protesting on the borders agitating against three contentious farm laws. They are demanding the repeal of the farm laws and legal guarantee for the minimum support price for their crops. A stalemate on the matter has continued despite several rounds of talks between the Centre and farmer leaders.

Last week the call for ‘Bharat Bandh’ by the farmers once again led to traffic snarls on the Delhi’s borders with Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Those living in a colony like Kaushambi, which is just across the border, on the day of a general strike like last week, crossing of the border may take half-an-hour to 45 minutes.

A colony like Kaushambi has been affected because the Ghazipur border on the highway has been lying blocked for a year now. The highway traffic is diverted through the colony putting a strain on colony roads and also adding to pollution level. In fact, recent surveys have shown that Kaushambi, which touches Anand Vihar border, falls under the most polluted zone.

Delhi University may finally see redemption time. The past seven-eight years have been most horrendous for the hoary university with a very prestigious legacy. The decay started sometime towards the end of the vice-chancellor tenure of Professor Dinesh Singh, it started to sink during the time of Professor Yogesh Tyagi leading to his suspension followed by the ad hoc regime whose tenure is been comparable to the rule of Sayyid Brothers of Delhi sultanate.

Thanks to the ad hoc rule, Delhi University today has unaccountable number of professors and equally unaccountable number of associate professors and near complete absence of assistant professors. The appointment process has been stuck for the past many years, and end of the tunnel seems to be still some distance away.

In the midst of these we have a new Vice-Chancellor Professor Yogesh Singh with the assignment to repair the dent in the image of the university and ward off competition from other universities in the capital running under-graduate programmes like the Guru Govind Singh Indra Prastha University (GGSIPU) and Ambedkar University of Delhi (AUD).

The much-delayed admission process of Delhi University has finally gained momentum and it’s expected that the first list of admissions should be out before October 1. The chair of the admission committee has initiated dialogues with the college principals on the probable cut-off and as the past years the impractical cut-off are all set to make screaming headlines.

The annulment of examinations by the Central Board of Secondary education (CBSE) this year, has left several lakh children looking at a vacuum as far as their future progress is concerned. Their plans for stepping onto the next stage of knowledge gathering has received a setback. Scrapping of examination is now going to make the process of admissions, more tedious and circuitous at the graduate level in the both the professional and conventional courses.

In a news report recently, it was claimed that given the farcical nature of evaluations done by the Central Board of Secondary Education, the number of examinees with 95 percent plus marks has increased manifold. The increase in marks may see higher cut-off lists. 

This year every time that it has rained in Delhi, the government has gone to the town that it never rained like this before. However, to many the rains and the subsequent deluge has reminded of an action-adventure game developed by Frogwares, inspired by horror fiction author HP Lovecraft, named The Sinking City. The plot goes like this, the town of Oakmont is made up of seven districts which have all been affected by flooding to various degrees. The water is so polluted that it can make fatal damage to the player's health and sanity.

The pictures of office goers trudging their bike in shoulder deep water at the underpasses is similar to the graphics in the game. Since these waters on the city’s roads are from the overflowing drains and sewer lines, their potential to cause fatal illness is as much.

Talking of photos, the social media handles have been full of ‘waterfalls’ from the elevated roads. These pictures were not there till a few years back, as the drain pipes installed in these elevated roads to take the water down to the soak pits built at the bottom of flyover pillars still functioned.