Discontent simmers at South Asian University, two senior faculty members resign from posts

The Indian Express sent a detailed questionnaire to SAU but received no response.

🚨 Limited Time Offer | Express Premium with ad-lite for just Rs 2/ day 👉🏽 Click here to subscribe 🚨

The university was established through an agreement between SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) countries to provide education to students from all eight countries and is governed by all of them.

The discontent is evident in internal communications between teachers and administration in the last few months to convene important meetings. In April, in the backdrop of the cancellation of a GB and financial experts meetings, several emails were written by teachers asking the acting president to convene a meeting of deans and chairpersons to discuss important issues, sources said.

There were also almost a dozen emails asking the administration to convene meetings with both teaching and non-teaching staff on the matter of salary freeze and promotions.

On May 12, Ravi Kumar, Chairperson of the Department of Sociology, resigned. “To achieve growth, any institution needs to have robust administrative mechanisms, which are adaptable to changing times. Rules and Regulations of SAU must be followed, and if problematic to growth they must be altered formally. I have said these things innumerable times. But neither you nor other constituents of the administration have responded to my emails on the issue of

violations and non-implementation of Rules and Regulations. A University needs to be always responsive. But we have seen, even during the pandemic, that our institution has become furthermore unresponsive towards students as well as staff,” he wrote to the acting president, saying his suggestions had “fallen on deaf ears”.

“In these circumstances, it has become extremely difficult for me to continue as Chairperson…,” he said. Kumar did not respond to calls and messages by The Indian Express.

On May 25, Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences, Sasanka Perera tendered his resignation after the appointment of acting registrar was given to a teacher from Computer Science, who already had other administrative responsibilities.

“Given your continuously demonstrated lack of leadership and consistent insult to the social science community in the university through your selective appointments, I can no longer be part of your administration if I am to maintain any degree of self-respect… I will also be writing to Secretary General SAARC, Chairman of the Governing Board and representatives of the host government in the next 10 days explaining reasons for my resignation detailing the deteriorating state of governance in SAU under your leadership,” he wrote.

When contacted, Perera said while this was the immediate trigger but there were “several grounds”. “For one, the administration has been completely unresponsive to students, especially on matters of online classes and disbursal of scholarships. If the university administration does not answer even after hundreds of emails, then there is something wrong. Secondly, promotions of colleagues were delayed and done only in a few cases… The problem is that the former is illegal and one of the many ad hoc things the university has done,” he said.