OPINION

Ever since the former Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi Manish Sisodia wrote ‘a letter from the jail’ on the ‘politics of education’, one could not but applaud his another effort at attempting to convert his incarceration into some kind of a pilgrimage of penance.

The problem however with the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) today is that in the battle of perceptions they do not have the services of their generals of the yore. The well-known media persons/personalities who aided and abetted the growth of AAP in its formative years have all quit its ranks.

No wonder sheer banality has seeped into the narrative they have tried to create thus far in the current battle. First and foremost, the ingenuity of the founding years is missing, and in the present times they are largely ‘musing on the borrowed plumes.’ Last week in these very columns we discussed how Kejriwal’s cry of ‘our time has come’ was taken from Democrat presidential candidate nominee Reverend Jesse Jackson’s famous speech.

The letters from Sisodia written from the four-walls of Tihar jail too has an evocation to it. This reminds us of the “Letter from Birmingham Jail”, also known as the “Letter from Birmingham City Jail” and “The Negro Is Your Brother”.

In the midst of all the hullabaloo over the election of the mayor and now the standing committee members of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, people in the city doesn’t seem to be really missing their civic councillors. The return of the fairs to the national Capital and its satellite cities are for sure an indicator that pandemic is over and people are coming out in large numbers to enjoy spring, though weather has somewhat played a spoilsport.

For decades, starting with the India International Trade Fair in November, Delhi from autumn to spring would hold a plethora of jamborees which had people participating in large numbers. Come Covid in 2020 March followed by the spell of lockdowns, there were no fairs in 2021 and 2022. 

However, this year we have witnessed successful organisation of two real big fairs, first being the handicraft mela at Surajkund in Faridabad district of Haryana and now the World Book Fair at Pragati Maidan. There are smaller fairs happening all around, the Saras Melas, the Gandhi Shilp Melas, the tribal craft melas and not to forget the food fairs. In fact the famous street food festival organised by the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI) too returned this winter to the colossal Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium.

We are into the second month of the year, the board examinations have begun and so has the discussion for admission into the universities and the colleges. For the past few days’ different universities specially the Delhi University, Jamia Millia Islamia and Aligarh Muslim University have come out with certain announcements on the admission process.

 “For admission to the University of Delhi, it is mandatory for the candidates to appear in CUET- UG in those subjects in which the student appearing or passed class 12th,” a notification of Delhi University has stated. AMU and Jamia have expressed certain apprehensions and reservations. 

These broadcasts have followed the statement by the chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC), Prof M Jagadesh Kumar that all the graduate admissions in the centrally-funded universities should be done through Common Universities Entrance Test (CUET). “A single examination enables the candidates to cover a broad outreach and be part of the admission process to various central and participating universities,” Kumar has said.

It’s been almost a year that the Municipal Corporation of Delhi’s elected wing has remained in suspended animation. The last elected house completed its term on March 31 last year but elections could not be held due to an amendment which was to be brought in the MCD Act.

Even after the passage of the Act, thereafter holding of the elections and declaration of the results, the elected wing is still to get functional in the absence of a Mayor. Competitive politics of a new genus has ensured that attempts to elect a Mayor has been thwarted repeatedly. Again an attempt is likely to be made on February 16 to elect Mayor with no guarantee that election process would get completed.

In the meanwhile, one wonders how many in the city have missed the elected members of the corporation. The hue and cry over fund deficits have died down, the Budget has been passed by the executive wing and nobody has actually complained. The maintenance of civic services too has remained at the same levels, if not better, as under the elected wing.

Delhi University must not have ever felt such unwanted as its happening today. In the centenary years of this prestigious university, its main funding agencies – Central government-controlled University Grants Commission and Delhi government-controlled Directorate of Higher Education have squeezed the supplies.

What’s most amusing is that in midst of such financial crisis, the university community instead of coming together remains a divided house. While the teachers group backed by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have their guns trained on the Arvind Kejriwal government, the teachers aligned to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) are baying for the centre’s blood.

All this is happening as the campus is getting ready to send a new set of teachers’ representatives to the Academic and the Executive Council. The focus of the campaign is rather on whose cadres are getting displaced in the ongoing round of permanent appointments of teachers, whose cadres getting absorbed.

On the issue of non-release of funds by the Delhi government, opposition BJP MLAs have been demonstrating outside the residence of the Chief Minister. The representatives of AAP’s teachers’ body are more concerned that the rights of the elected government to nominate governing body members of the 12 colleges funded by them should not be taken away.