DUTA condemns signing of tripartite MoU

The Delhi University Teachers' Association on Thursday condemned the signing of tripartite agreement between the HRD Ministry, DU and UGC, calling it a step towards privatisation.

The tripartite memorandum of understanding (MoU) requires universities to continuously increase the internal (self-generated) financial resource through fee hike, shift to revenue earning commercial courses, engagement with other commercial activities and manage greater part of their research activities through extramural funding, the teachers' body said.

What the tripartite MoU does is to initiate steps towards the privatisation design that forms the core of the Draft National Education Policy (NEP), they said.

"The Draft NEP 2019 aims to reduce the number of HEIs (Higher Education Institutions) while increasing the size of surviving institutions, which will be governed similarly by a privatised Board of Governors and have to have a development office to secure sources of funding other than government funding," the DUTA added.

The DUTA will broaden and intensify its struggle against the NEP as well as instruments of privatisation such as the tripartite MoU, they said.

Teachers had been protesting against the signing of the MoU between the Human Resource Development Ministry, University Grants Commission (UGC) and Delhi University (DU) for the last one year.

The varsity's Executive Council members Rajesh Jha and JL Gupta also condemned the MoU, saying it proposes "contractualisation and privatisation" and have written to Vice Chancellor Yogesh Tyagi voicing their concerns.