A Decade of Drift: When Policy Shrinks Universities into Departments in Naveen’s regime
By : vikram jena
Odisha deserves an honest conversation about its educational trajectory. Critique is not hostility; it is a democratic responsibility. Under the long leadership of Naveen Patnaik, the state delivered administrative continuity. Yet continuity without intellectual courage can turn institutions inward, making them efficient in paperwork but fragile in purpose.
The Central Question: Reform or Control?
The Odisha Universities (Amendment) Act 2020 was defended as a governance reform. In practice, many academics experienced it as an assertion of control. When universities are increasingly treated like subordinate offices rather than autonomous communities of scholars, the message is clear: compliance over curiosity, regulation over research.
Universities are not extensions of secretariats. They are republics of ideas. Their legitimacy flows from academic freedom, peer review, and intellectual dissent. Once these are constrained, subtly or structurally, knowledge production slows, and mediocrity institutionalizes itself.
Professors as Administrative Functionaries
A worrying pattern has emerged across institutions: professors spending disproportionate time on administrative reporting, compliance files, and procedural approvals rather than research and mentorship. When the academic calendar is dominated by circulars and compliance audits, scholarship becomes secondary.
This is not merely inefficiency; it is a structural downgrading of intellectual labor. Professors are reduced to what feels like bonded functionaries, obliged to obey directives, measured by bureaucratic punctuality rather than scholarly output. In such an atmosphere, innovation suffocates.
The result?
Research proposals delayed or discouraged.
Faculty appointments questioned for transparency.
Young scholars disillusioned before they begin.
Senior academics cautious rather than creative. A university where fear replaces freedom cannot produce knowledge; it can only reproduce notes.
The Research Vacuum
Education without research is like a body without a nervous system. Yet the culture of inquiry appears weakened. Quantity has often overshadowed quality. Degrees multiply, but rigorous peer-reviewed scholarship remains scarce.
When doctoral programs prioritize enrollment numbers over mentorship, the PhD risks becoming symbolic rather than substantive. A doctorate must represent original contribution, not procedural completion. If academic integrity weakens, society eventually pays the price.
Primary Foundations in Retreat
The crisis in higher education is linked to primary schooling. The erosion of government school quality and the aggressive shift toward private schooling have diluted confidence in public education. Vernacular and mother-tongue instruction, critical for cognitive grounding, have been marginalized in practice. Language is not just grammar; it is identity and epistemology. Weak foundations inevitably weaken universities.
The Culture of Silence
Perhaps the gravest damage is psychological. When faculty feel insecure about autonomy or career progression, silence becomes survival. A silent university is a dangerous institution. Debate fades. Critical pedagogy declines. Students inherit conformity instead of courage.The tragedy is not the absence of talent in Odisha. The state has always produced remarkable minds. The tragedy is the absence of enabling conditions that transform intellect into innovation.
Reclaiming the Republic of Ideas
This is not a call for chaos or deregulation. It is a call for balance:
Restore genuine academic autonomy with accountability.
Ensure transparent, merit-based recruitment.
Invest in faculty development and global research exposure.
Separate academic evaluation from political or bureaucratic pressures.
Rebuild mother-tongue–based foundational education.
Education policy must aim beyond electoral cycles. Its horizon is generational. History will not ask how many circulars were issued. It will ask how many ideas were born.
Odisha still has time to reverse the drift. But reform must move from control to creativity, from compliance to curiosity. Universities must once again become spaces where professors are thinkers first, administrators second, where knowledge is produced, not merely processed.
Only then can the state reclaim its intellectual dignity.
