As campuses around the country erupt with discontent, former HRD minister Dr Murli Manohar Joshi tells Bhavna Vij-Aurora that trust deficit between students and authorities is high.
Our university campuses are becoming hotspots of dissent. As an educationist and a former HRD minister, how do you analyse it?
What is happening on the campuses is not an instantaneous development. There is a history to it. It cannot be handled with one statement or one act. It needs patience. Unless there is a particular level of confidence between the teachers and the students, you cannot handle it. There is serious trust deficit, and the cleavage between the authorities and students has only become bigger.
Students have to feel that the teacher or the system is not their enemy and they can depend upon them. And the system should feel that this generation is not hostile to them; and rather they have to adopt them. The trust deficit gives rise to unrest and then ideologies in certain sensitive...