‘THE LOCKDOWN IS BEING FULLY IMPLEMENTED IN JNU’
The corona outbreak has brought the entire world to a halt. India is also facing tough times due to lockdown which was necessitated in view of the growing number of Covid-19 cases. This has affected academic activities across the country. Delhi’s premier Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) is trying its best to cope with the unprecedented situation arising out of the pandemic. The university faces twin challenges of making the huge campus safe from any outbreak, and at the same time, continuing with the academic activities. JNU Vice-chancellor M. JAGADESH KUMAR, spoke to The Sunday Guardian on the various steps taken to achieve these goals. Excerpts:
Q: What steps have you taken to cope with Covid-19?
A: We are all going through extremely difficult times due to Covid-19 and particularly, the student community in universities is faced with uncertainty and anxious moments. Almost every university in India, including JNU, has asked their students to go home by March third week. In JNU, we typically have about 6,500 students in 18 hostels. However, about 860 students, of which 240 are female students, could not go home because of travel and other issues. We are providing them mess facility, accommodation, sanitation and medical facility. Grocery and other essentials are available in the campus market.
Q: How is the lockdown implemented in the campus?
A: JNU is spread over 1000 acres and we have more than 20,000 residents on the campus. All the gates of the campus are closed. All our academic buildings, including the library, have been closed. No one is permitted to enter and exit the campus unless there is an emergency. All essential services are made available to the residents. No one is permitted to come out of their homes in the campus. We are ensuring that social distancing is maintained in the campus market area and the health centre. The lockdown is fully implemented. The mess staff, sanitation workers, medical staff and those in the essential services are doing a great job.
Q. How will the university cope with this abrupt end to academic activities due to Covid-19? A: This is a period of uncertainty. But it is also a good opportunity for all of us to learn about coping with such a situation. During this lockdown period, our two primary concerns are how to maintain continuity in teaching-learning processes and how to conduct evaluations so that the current semester can be concluded without delay. We need to make some tough decisions regarding the academics.
Q: Has your university switched to online learning?
A: In the current crisis, we do not see any option other than completing the remaining syllabus through fully online mode. The online teaching tools are very important. It is good to take advantage of these technologies to teach the students and to complete their courses. However, it will take some time for the professors and the students to acclimatize to online teaching. Q: What steps have you taken to implement online learning? A: We have asked our faculty members to (a) upload course-related reading/ viewing materials and assignments in Google classroom or send via Whatsapp, (b) provide video links on the relevant portions of the course from Swayam/ NPTEL portals, (c) conduct discussion sessions through online video platforms (such as Zoom) and (d) provide access to recorded version of lectures. We have left it to the faculty members to use a combination of the above tools to reach out to the students and continue the teaching-learning processes. Ultimately, any form of learning is self-learning. Teachers can be there only as mentors. What would truly help the situation is the students’ determination to use all the online resources which are provided to them with due rigor and attention.
Q: What about the end semester examinations? Will you also conduct them online?
A: We have two categories of students: terminal students who are going to pass out in June and the continuing students. For the terminal students, we have to conduct the examinations in online mode as per our academic calendar so that they can leave the university without any delay. Since JNU follows a continuous evaluation method, in many schools, sessional examinations/ mid-semester examinations have already been conducted. Where such examinations are not yet over, they may be combined with the end semester examinations. For terminal students, we are planning to replace the end semester examination by an online examination. For the continuing students, we may either conduct an online examination or wait for them to return to the campus and conduct a physical examination.
We have left it to the Schools and Centres to decide on which format they would adapt so that students can seamlessly start their next semester without any difficulty.
The lockdown has left Mumbai’s iconic dabbawalas without a livelihood. “We ensured our customers got hot lunch daily. But today we ourselves are missing our own meals,” one of the dabbawalas said. On 19 March, the dabbawalas had announced that they would be suspending service in light of the coronavirus crisis. Ulhas Muke, president of the Nutan Mumbai Tiffin Box Suppliers Trust, told The Sunday Guardian that “We are facing an unprecedented situation for the first time in the 130 years that we have been operational. If we have no customers, we have no earnings. Our stomachs depend on the stomachs of our customers.”
JNU V-C Jagdesh Kumar says he sees no option other than completing the remaining syllabus through online mode.
Across India, unknown individuals and organizations have surfaced asking people to donate money and rations to feed hungry mouths. Many “fraud ones” may be pocketing the funds. Help is not reaching many who need it. In Delhi’s several jhuggi-jhopri colonies, it has been noticed that many so-called needy families are hoarding supplies distributed by genuine NGOS and individuals. A search of many houses revealed chicken and biryani being cooked at this time of crisis as a large number of packets of milk, salt, pulses, rice and wheat lay concealed under cots. “Those who genuinely need food are not getting it and those who don’t need are getting it daily in plenty,” a group of volunteers in Malviya Nagar told this newspaper.
Even the Statue of Unity, the memorial dedicated to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, was recently “put up for sale for Rs 30,000 crore” “to donate the money for medical and health care equipment for COVID-19.” Someone posted this offer on an e-commerce website but later withdrew it as the police began investigating.
Then people who are at home and out of work are vulnerable to work-from-home scams. If someone you don’t know contacts you and wants you to urgently pay them in return for a “job,” you are dealing with a criminal. Legitimate jobs will not ask you to pay them. If you’re in a role like this where you’re being asked to send or move money, you’re acting as “mules”, a term American enforcement agencies use for such crimes.