OPINION

A fortnight after it was mentioned in these columns, Delhi University has finally accepted the delay in the start of the academic session. With now classes scheduled to begin from November 2, the session would effectively be behind by three-and-half months.

Defending the delay, the Registrar of Delhi University incredulously blamed the pandemic for the delay. Poor pandemic! every second laggard is now putting blame on it for the delay in their work. While blaming the pandemic, this particular official probably did not care to check the academic session status of some of the other universities.

Even a government-run Guru Gobind Singh Indraprasth University has begun its session nearly a month before Delhi University would be starting. That the academic calendar has been issued in haste is evident from the fact that it has not catered to or synched with the admission process for the first semester students. For them the session would effectively get started only November-end.

This delay, blamed on pandemic by the university administration, has effectively brought down the level of Delhi University on the students’ preference table. The figure for registration for this year's undergraduate admissions stood at 2,17,653. This was 56,000 lower than the number of registrations made in 2021, and is far lower when compared with the 2020 figure of 3,53,717. The registration figure for 2019 of 2,58,388 was also much higher.

In a few years from now, if a historian was to recall takeaway from the centenary year of the prestigious Delhi University, it would be a very gloomy picture. Despite normalcy having returned post-Covid, Delhi University this year is going to set a records sorts for delaying the start of academic session by almost four months.

Till some years ago, July 15 was day when the session would start at the prestigious university, come what may. Even when there were changes from annual to semester system or from three year to four-year-degree programme and the reverse, the session was not known to have been disrupted the way it has happened this time.

The university authorities would put the blame at the door of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the National Testing Agency (NTA) for the delay in the conduct of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET). The delay has largely been there because the UGC decided to expand the scope of the erstwhile Central Universities Common Entrance Test (CUCET).

GRAP, the Graded Response Action Plan — a set of anti-air pollution measures followed according to the severity of the situation, has come in to force. It’s a long list of directions to prevent pollution but the document has largely remained silent on how to grapple pollution in the national Capital from stubble burning in Punjab.

The withdrawal of Monsoon leads to drop in wind speed. This comes at a time when crop stubble is burnt in the fields of Punjab and wind direction changes to northwest. This leads to build up of pollutants in the air especially in the national Capital. GRAP is being introduced from October 1, a fortnight before the use start of stubble burning in Punjab and complete withdrawal of Monsoon.

Last year there was a Congress government in Punjab and AAP government in Delhi. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had claimed that scientists at Pusa under his guidance had invented a technique which would end stubble burning. He had promised that if AAP formed a government in Punjab, there were would be no stubble fire.

Now we have a AAP government in Delhi led by Arvind Kejriwal and a AAP government in Punjab led by Bhagwant Mann. Both the governments are known to work in close coordination and it’s expected that they would work together to ensure that pollution caused due to stubble fire remains under control.

The skull-drudgery indulged into by the Arvind Kejriwal government is not limited the education sector. Another major area which has been witness to a systemic collapse in the national Capital is the transport sector.

Come winters and the national Capital is agog with the smog from burning fields of Punjab, is it? Though Mr Kejriwal has insisted on this fact in past years, with an AAP government in Punjab now, would he repeat the same allegation this year?

As we wait for the air quality to deteriorate, let’s face the fact that one of major factors for the increase in air pollution in the national Capital over the years is the collapse of public transport system. Due to its shrinking fleet, the public transporter – Delhi Transport Corporation, has been forced to shut down its depots.

In the past seven years the number of operational bus depots has come down from 46 to 39. The bigger shame is that 99.15 percent buses of the operational DTC fleet are over-aged and not fuel-efficient, thus adding their bit to the pollution in the city.

The number of over-aged buses in the DTC fleet in 2015 was as low as 19.74 percent and a scheme had been drawn for phasing them out. The current status of 99.15 percent over-aged buses speaks volumes of the governance deficit in the sector of public transport. 

Political analysts and media studies scholars world-wide attribute credit to social media for chief minister Arvind Kejriwal coming to power in Delhi in 2013 and prime minister Narendra Modi at the Centre in 2014. It’s true that Arvind Kejriwal, coming from an engineering background, was the first to understand the power of digital technology and turned it into the sinews of his start-up Aam Aadmi Party.

Narendra Modi, given that he is a keen and sharp student of politics, looking at the assembly poll results in Delhi was quick to grasp the power of social media. He made use of it during the 2014 general election, which helped him to come to power with a thumping majority.

The Congress on the other hand refused to learn from the debacle of Delhi in 2013 and went unprepared into 2014 general elections on the social media front. No wonder it lost miserably. Congress leadership failed to fully understand the complexities of a social media success story and continued to commit ‘harakiris’.