The Prime Minister’s direct intervention may be needed to save the plunging reputation of the UoH with Prof. Appa Rao Podile as vice-chancellor. The Telangana’s CM has promised to take up the vice-chancellorship issue with Mr Narendra Modi: the matter is urgent as the institution’s credibility is at stake.
A leading sociology professor from Edinburgh University has warned about the university’s “high-handedness” in handling students and the possibility of top scholars like him reconsidering research ties with the university. This goes to the very crux of the problem, that of students’ oppression, which led to various issues emerging in the wake of scholar Rohith Vemula’s suicide.
Use of force on students in any bid to direct their politics or get into arguments over political affiliations will sound the death knell of the open atmosphere campuses must have if faculty-student interactions are to prove a healthy germinating ground for ideas. It is a moot point whether students or outsiders should have a say in who should head the university as vice-chancellor.
But in Prof. Appa Rao’s case it does appear that he has taken campus affairs beyond the point of no return. If there’s even the slightest chance that the campus will return to near normal if he is removed, it would be worth the sacrifice and Rohith’s life wouldn’t have been in vain.
