A select committee of the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly comprising legislators of various political parties, which has for the past couple of years gone slow over deciding the fate of a bill to convert seven government/aided institutions into unitary universities is scheduled to meet here on December 14. The AUT is apprehensive that the select committee is likely to decide in favour of the enacting the legislation "which would eventually lead to total privatisation of higher education."
"Our members working in 70 government aided institutions will go on an indefinite strike from December 15 demanding that the government give up the proposal and withdraw the bills. This will be preceded by a massive fast in Chennai on December 12 and a picketing agitation outside the directorate of collegiate education on December 13. It is a do or die battle for students and teachers," AUT president P Jayagandhi told journalists on Thursday.
The association general secretary S Pannirselvam argued that after having granted land and spent public money for decades to nurture the aided colleges, "the government should never vest control of the institutions to managements which are looking to commercialise education." According to him, managements of many other aided colleges in the state were waiting in queue for the unitary status and if PSG group and Thiagarajar group of institutions are awarded unitary university status, the concept of public funded education will eventually come to an end.
One of the clauses in the unitary university bill clearly said that that all the relevant Acts governing the aided institutions shall cease to exist once the institutions are notified as unitary universities, he pointed out.
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