Right until the late 1970s, one of India’s most respected universities — especially for graduating highly skilled and industry-ready engineers — Bangalore University (BU, estb. 1964), which has 600 colleges with an aggregate enrolment of 700,000 students affiliated with it, has suffered a precipitous decline in norms and standards during the past quarter century. Industry and chambers of commerce are in despair over the poor quality of students — particularly in arts, science and commerce — certified by the 48-year-old university.

In recent months BU has been afflicted with the internecine caste wars which have bedeviled Karnataka politics in the post-Mandal era, spilling into academia. On October 13, BU vice chancellor N. Prabhu Dev — a respected academic — resigned four months prior to expiry of his four-year term following a bitter and prolonged feud with registrar B.C. Mylarappa, which has split the BU faculty and students along caste faultlines.

Soon thereafter nemesis caught up with Mylarappa — a failed BJP candidate in the state assembly election of 2008 with obscure, if any, academic credentials. Hearing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed against Mylarappa’s appointment as registrar in end 2011, on November 21 a division bench of the Karnataka high court comprising Justices N. Kumar and V. Suri Appa Rao ruled that “he is not entitled to continue even for a single day”, and reprimanded the BJP-led Karnataka state government for ignoring expert committee reports which had indicted Mylarappa for plagiarism and corruption.

The high court observed that an expert committee headed by K.V. Irniraya, a retired IAS officer, had indicted Mylarappa and his research student for plagiarism. The Irniraya report confirmed that Mylarappa’s doctoral student had “lifted” 100 pages from Mylarappa’s books which were themselves “not original”. “The committee’s findings clearly showed he encouraged, colluded (with) and connived to plagiarise the thesis. The state hasn’t performed its duty of considering all the relevant material. It has not applied its mind,” said the court.

The high court’s quashing of Mylarappa’s appointment as BU registrar has revealed to the public what the academic community in the garden city knew all along — that he was a political appointee of the BJP state government. “After Mylarappa lost the assembly election of 2008, the BJP state government appointed him registrar of BU as solatium. This individual who plagiarised his own Ph D thesis also encouraged his students to indulge in plagiarism. For the state’s politicians, Bangalore University is a fiefdom where jobs can be handed to cronies and supporters,” says an academic who preferred to remain anonymous.

The sorry condition of Bangalore university is reflected in the India Today league table of India’s Top 50 Universities 2012. BU is ranked No.20, behind Osmania (6), Mysore (12), Andhra (Visakhapatnam, 18), Lucknow (15) and Madurai Kamaraj (19) universities. Interference by quasi-literate, caste-obsessed rustic politicians with faculty and administrative appointments and even members to the university’s syndicate — BU’s highest decision-making authority — has plunged its reputation to a new nadir. Academic curriculums are obsolete, infrastructure dilapidated, and student unrest and protests commonplace in this once highly respected university.

Rampant political interference in education has also bedeviled the education department of the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), which runs 143 municipal schools and junior colleges in the city, in which  misappropriation of Rs.240 crore has been unearthed as this issue of EW goes to press. The BBMP Standing Committee for Administrative Reforms headed by V. Vageesh has found “nearly half the budget allocated to primary education is being misappropriated”, and large-scale corruption in the procurement of school uniforms, shoes, sports equipment, computers, books and furniture, and teacher recruitment.

Even as a growing uncleared garbage mountain looms over the once garden city because of the ineptitude of its civic politicians (see edit p.8), it’s quite plain that the once reputed Bangalore University is suffering the same predicament.

Summiya Yasmeen (Bangalore)