The embarrassment over Viswanathan Anand’s honorary degree has raised the question of academic autonomy in a dramatic, if peripheral, way. The human resource development minister has intervened; Anand has conducted himself with dignity; the matter has receded from the headlines. That is a relief and a pity. We have missed a chance to examine some deeper issues of academic functioning.

But first, the incident itself. Without holding any particular brief for Hyderabad University, we should accept that they were not guilty of any special sycophancy: they were simply following procedures that apply to all Central universities. The fact that some universities flout this stipulation is immaterial. Strictly speaking, Hyderabad was sending its proposal to honour Anand not to ‘the government’ but to Pratibha Patil in her capacity as University Visitor, not head of State. Academic autonomy was not technically infringed.

The problem is, the president qua Visitor to all Central universities relies on the Union ministry to help her execute this function. One may ask what help was called for. Need the president’s secretariat have turned to the ministry? They must have heard of Anand. If they had doubts about his nationality, surely for a person so eminent, those doubts could have been discreetly resolved. Instead, the issue was fed into the bureaucratic machine — ‘naturally’, as Hyderabad’s vice-chancellor accepted. The ministry, as naturally, proceeded to exercise the prerogative of babudom. The contretemps was brewed as much in Delhi as in Hyderabad.

But why should Anand’s nationality be a point at issue? Because it appears (though as often in the breach as in observance) that foreign recipients of honorary degrees need government clearance. This truly militates against the principle of academic freedom.

Let us remove a red herring from the trail before we proceed. In such a situation, we habitually contrast the practice of the liberal West. The press has duly noted how many Indians have received honorary degrees from Western universities. This ideal picture is somewhat marred by the long history of respectable, even eminent Indian academics (not to mention students) who have been denied visas for legitimate academic trips, or obtained them after delay, harassment and humiliation. The United States of America might keep an application pending for weeks and months while it conducts a ‘background check’. Erstwhile Soviet Bloc countries can insist that a letter from a university be backed up by a ‘state invitation’ — obtainable for a hefty fee paid in dollars. For Indian academics, professional visits abroad can be so fraught that they may have little sympathy to spare for those travelling the other way.

But that is an unworthy sentiment no academic community should publicly profess. It also overlooks a crucial point of difference. Those other countries carry out the probing and monitoring through their homeland or consular authorities. India, unusually and mortifyingly, involves the universities in the process, tarnishing the image of our academic community. Till a couple of years ago, any conference visitor from abroad needed advance clearance from Delhi, sometimes from more than one ministry. The host institute had to gather the information, which included parents’ birthplace and the visitor’s CV: a university might consider a scholar fit to invite, but a section officer might demur. And needless to say, the clearance never arrived without prodding and lobbying, faxes and phone calls.

That rule has been rescinded, but the mindset survives and flourishes. Indian institutions work under a burden of official constraints that Western academics would find intolerable and virtually inconceivable. I am talking of not only financial but also academic control. Some years ago, the heads of UGC curriculum development committees (including this writer) were deeply embarrassed at a warning from the then UGC chairman that ‘unpleasant consequences may follow’ for universities that did not heed their recommendations. Such crudeness is rare; but we still insist that scholars seeking travel grants submit the papers they will read on their trip (who assesses them?); that leave records of college teachers be sent to the government before salaries are paid; and that applicants for promotion meet a painfully mechanical set of criteria. A colleague of mine had her promotion in jeopardy because of her five mandatory ‘journal articles’, two had actually appeared in stand-alone volumes — prestigious, internationally recognized ones, but what of that?

So far, the only substantive response of the HRD ministry to this state of things is the celebrated proposal (now somewhat modified) for a handful of universities whose staff need have no recognized qualifications, whose curriculum need match no framework, and whose accounts are exempt even from CAG scrutiny. The rest of the system, however, would remain unaltered. In fact, the official appetite for reports, checks and reviews grows more insatiable by the day. In many states, it is generally acceptable for a vice-chancellor to be a retired member of the IAS, IPS or other government cadre.

Now for a sad admission. The academic community has so discredited itself that the public may often welcome such checks and controls. A depressing number of institutions have been formally charged with misrule and flagrant corruption, and who knows how many lie outside the net. But no less depressing is the number of committed, productive institutions steamrolled by the system into stagnation and frustration. We have a choice: to risk some degree of malfeasance, with deterrent penalties for abuse; or to deny our institutions the minimal freedom of operation that alone can revive them. Our decision may be helped if we recognize that the current academic regimen, like all restrictive ones, breeds its own corruption and power politics — often, indeed, leaves room for little else.

Another proviso needs making. To scrap the educational license-permit raj is not to allow free scope to the exploitative and intellectually paltry construct of the private university system as so far developed in India. To be fair to its members, their catchword is never freedom, rather ‘discipline’ and a parodic corporate efficiency. They keep their teachers on a tight leash. Incredibly, they sometimes dress their students in uniform. Their collective research output to date is virtually zero. Even the private school system prefers to direct its best products to the chaotic campuses of the state system. This is not to defend that chaos, usually caused these days not by lack of funds but by an incompetence in routine functions that goes hand in hand with babudom.

Let me end on a personal note. My teaching life was divided equally between two leading institutions in West Bengal, Presidency College and Jadavpur University. Fifty years ago, virtually all ambitious students in the arts and sciences would aim for the former; today, the scene has changed.

I am convinced that the single biggest factor behind the shift is the restrictive and bureaucratic atmosphere in which Presidency has functioned throughout its history, as against the abundant freedom enjoyed by the Jadavpur faculty. This is crucial in view of the wider spectrum of activities and commitments that, for better or worse, today’s academics must take upon themselves. It involves a vastly greater quantum of infrastructure and amenities, and greater funds from an unprecedented range of sources. Jadavpur fosters secure and confident functionaries to meet these challenges, environmentally supported in taking the initiative and working things out their own way. This individualism might sometimes result in an untidiness of approach, the need for a little discreet ordering. Every friend of higher education in Bengal must pray that the exercise does not bureaucratize its function.

Academic freedom can compensate, at least in part, for the growing disparity in funds and privilege between Central and state-run universities, leave alone the untrammelled right to income without commitment enjoyed by private operators. It also helps to balance the political control of education in our own as in most other states. On recurrent visits to the Central University of Hyderabad (picture), I have been sneakingly envious of its lush sparsely-peopled campus, its imposing buildings, its super-abundant resources. I have consoled myself by recalling Aesop’s fable of the starving wolf and the well-fed watchdog. But all said and done, that is the consolation of the deprived. (Think of the other fable of the fox and the grapes.) The wolf, as it were, is the underdog. Even its growls sound rather like a whimper.