In another case of embedded corruption within the Indian education system, a JNU professor was suspended and consequently arrested by the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) in a bribery scandal linked to the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). Professor Rajeev Sijariya, of Atal Bihari Vajpayee School of Management and Entrepreneurship (JNU), was allegedly part of a racket that manipulated the NAAC inspection reports for universities in exchange for bribes. According to the CBI, the NAAC inspection committee, comprising 10 individuals including KLEF president Koneru Satyanarayana, NAAC’s former deputy adviser L. Manjunatha Rao, NAAC adviser M.S. Shyamsundar, and professor Sijariya, demanded Rs. 1.8 crore from Koneru Lakshmaiah Education Foundation in Andhra Pradesh to ensure a flattering accreditation rating. This was later negotiated to Rs. 28 lakhs, including a laptop and travel expenses for the spouse of a visiting member. The massive bribery scandal shows the deep-seated systematic disintegration of academic integrity under BJP-RSS rule, corollary to the fact that Sijariya has been a long-time member of RSS-ABVP, rising to academic ranks under the political patronage of Mamidala Jagadesh Kumar—the current UGC Chairman and former JNU Vice-Chancellor.
The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has increasingly allowed foreign and domestic capital to enter the Indian education market, leading to privatisation coupled with a hegemonic understanding by the BJP-RSS of what ‘Bharat’ should be—a saffron, culturally monolithic entity fuelled by the power-hungry upper castes. This ideological supremacy backs state policies regarding education—the scrapping of Maulana Azad National Fellowship (MANF) and pre-matric scholarships for SC, ST, and OBC students; the focus of National Research Fund (NRF) on research-benefitting industries; the emergence of Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) under a public-philanthropic-partnership model; and so forth. Last year, the University Grants Commission (UGC) granted financial-managerial autonomy to 8 central universities, including Delhi University, allowing them to make infrastructural improvements without its approval through tuition fees and not government funding. These self-financing endeavours have paved the way for the privatisation of public education—an increase in tuition fees with no financial transparency and partnering with private enterprises to secure funding and resources to get better NAAC grades. The current corporate model of education reigns under the pursuit of profit maximisation, where education has become a coveted private commodity and prevents marginalised students from accessing their right to education. Consequently, the competition for better ranking has increased, shifting its focus from genuine academic improvements to numerical scores. The accreditation system has become a mere business transaction, where the privatised educational spaces employ different ways to get better scores as leverage to advertise them and stretch fee structures. Instead of developing educational institutions nationwide, the government divides them into different categories by giving ‘appropriate’ NAAC gradings, subsequently funding them according to their grades. This underlies the problem of using unfair ways like manipulating the data or presenting misleading information to get better NAAC grades.
The ideological agenda of RSS-BJP runs deeply through India’s educational institutions, with its allies all over the helms of bureaucracy, pining for money and power. If the very system that determines the quality of an educational institution is flawed, the future socio-economic implications on the youth would be severe. The fragile accreditation system, which falls at the whims of saffronized academia, therefore reflects public mistrust— students are being cheated, and their education is being compromised. Despotic men like Sijariya are a part of the larger corrupt web woven by the Modi government—underqualified party jingoists sitting in top academic positions and propagating favouritism and ideological control. This bribery scandal is not an isolated case but a glaring example of the larger scheme of RSS-affiliated individuals who have completely exploited their positions for personal gain.
The scandal exposes the need to further fight for an already missing fair and transparent education system—free of fraud, bribery, and political favouritism.
