 "Dinesh Singh")
Anyone who has been following the news about Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Dinesh Singh over the last two years is likely to have an image of him that would go something like this: impatient, ambitious, controlling, aggressive - in sum, a typical Type A personality, and maybe not a nice man to know. If you see him coming towards you on a street, you would be well advised to cross to the other side.
I am sitting in the drawing room of his old-style bungalow with a colonial feel in the university campus waiting for him to see me. This is not the first time I am meeting him, so I am not surprised by the man who actually comes out: soft-spoken, calm and dignified. The aura is more of a philosopher than a warrior.
How does he do it? If he is indeed the man his critics paint him to be, how does he hide it from those who don't know him that well? Or is it that he is simply a well-intentioned man who has been grossly misunderstood by all hose around him?
Singh has been in the eye of the storm for almost two years now. In 2013, faced with growing opposition to the four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP) and the reforms he introduced in the Delhi University, Singh had, at one point, been asked to resign - a first for any vice-chancellor of the famed university. But eventually, the dust had settled down and several powerful voices within the United Progressive Alliance (UPA)-II supported the reforms he was backing. In 2014, he was awarded the Padma Shri in recognition of his work.
Later in 2014, after the Bharatiya Janata Party government came to power, matters came to a head - with a sharp political overtone - once again. The Ministry of Human Resource Development urged the University Grants Commission to ask Singh to reverse the clock, and the FYUP was consigned to the dustbin. And now, even as he tries to minimise the damage caused by this yo-yoing, accusations of misdoing and his involvement in it fly back and forth. Do some people always remain in the eye of the storm?
He takes a different tack, opting to speak of the challenges ahead rather than the past. "The challenges before us remain the same even if the methods we deploy to resolve them change," says Singh. His impetus to change things around has always been based on the thought that "knowledge without action is meaningless". He argues that skills are nothing but pieces of knowledge in action. This is a two-way process. At present, knowledge and skills are viewed as two separate things and skills are considered "inferior", whereas knowledge is seen as something special, more for the elite.
"If you look at any great advancement that has led to the betterment of mankind, it is the marrying of skills and knowledge that have led to it," he says, citing the example of Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Michael Faraday, the poet Kabir - all of whom were skilled craftsmen who did things with their hands - among many others to illustrate his point. He himself paints with acrylic on handmade paper and has had his work exhibited publicly. He's also a keen student of Tulsidas, Kabir, Gandhi and a fund of knowledge on the history of science in India.
So, at the Delhi University, he says, students are being offered non-credit, voluntary courses - he emphasises the voluntary bit - in areas where they can acquire skills. With the skill and knowledge they gain through their degree, they can get good jobs. "Remember not every student here is going to go to the IIMs or pursue further studies. Of the 60,000 students that come in every year, we have a high dropout rate (almost 30 per cent a year). Maybe, 5,000-odd students will go for higher studies or get into a fancy post-graduate institution. What happens to the rest? There has to be some avenue for them too."
As we move to the dining room for a simple, home-cooked and rather healthy - his wife is a nutritionist and there are different types of rotis to go with saag and a range of dishes made from grains that are good for you - vegetarian meal, I bring him stubbornly back to the topic of the FYUP. How does this feel - trying to undo something you spent time putting together? Does he feel angry sometimes at the way things turned out?
"You just have to learn to be very philosophical about these things. People are under the impression that the UPA-II was very supportive of the FYUP but that was never so. We had managed to push it through despite the government, not thanks to it. But in the end, change is never easy. And a change of this magnitude is even less easy," he says, adding that he is contemplating a book now.
Doesn't he feel he's wasted a lot of time? Would he call it a failed experiment, I ask, aware that I was now treading on dangerous territory. Could it be that his approach was wrong: too dictatorial and autocratic, perhaps? One of the strongest allegations against him is that he simply pushed down everyone's throats what he believed was the right way to go.
"Not at all. We took everyone on board. Consultations were held at every stage. But unless one experiments, one will never learn. It was something we tried for one year. It could not continue. But, nonetheless, we learnt from it. New ideas are now in the air and being discussed, so it played a part. The good thing is that an experiment did happen and some learning has come out of it. I am a born optimist. I would not say it failed; it was interrupted. I suppose you can put it this way."
If he believes it was interrupted, does he believe that some day we (as a country) will move towards it? That such reforms are inevitable. Was it an idea ahead of its time? "Well, I wouldn't like to say that - it sounds rather pompous like I am some great seer, but let's just say that it served a purpose. Some new ideas have emerged as a result and these are now being discussed at all levels," he says laughing.
Never say die seems to be the motto of Delhi University's vice-chancellor. He may be embroiled in controversies but he sees it as part of his job, or perhaps karma. He may not have managed what he set out to do but that doesn't deter him. He moves on armed with an academician's discipline and a philosopher's natural acceptance of the unfathomable.
