Pun­jab’s fore­most uni­ver­sity, and only the sec­ond in the world to have been named af­ter a lan­guage, Pun­jabi Uni­ver­sity, Pa­tiala, is in dire straits. For a uni­ver­sity that could sin­gle hand­edly claim to have looked af­ter the en­tire Malwa belt of Pun­jab, it is sad to see its pro­fes­sors and staff fight­ing for salaries, wages, grants on a monthly ba­sis.

In this an­i­mated dis­cus­sion with Prin­ci­pal Tarsem Bahia (retd), a vet­eran of Uni­ver­sity sen­ates and syn­di­cates; Dr Anu­pama Up­pal, a well known agri­cul­ture econ­o­mist teach­ing at the Pun­jabi Uni­ver­sity; and Dr Avneet Pal Singh, Sec­re­tary, Pun­jabi Uni­ver­sity Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, we zero in on where things went wrong, and the cir­cum­stances in which the var­sity finds it­self to­day.

A story of gov­ern­ment grants be­com­ing a mere trickle, the uni­ver­sity be­ing bur­dened with tasks it was­n’t meant for, a con­tin­u­ous shift away from the man­date, and the crush­ing re­al­i­ties of higher ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions buck­ling be­fore mar­ket forces, the de­bate un­der­lines the sorry state of a cam­pus that was once con­sid­ered a nurs­ery of grand ideas.

Now, there’s talk of how to get rid of some col­leges that have been drag­ging down the var­sity, the scams that were probed but no one was ever pun­ished, ir­reg­u­lar ap­point­ments, civil ser­vice of­fi­cers be­com­ing vice chan­cel­lors, and much more that has gone rogue.

Is there still hope for this uni­ver­sity? Are the dons fight­ing for only their salaries? Is it the soul of rad­i­cal Pun­jabi in­tel­lec­tual tra­di­tion that is at stake? And why is it that all we hear is about the cri­sis of monthly salaries?