Restrictions on Photocopying:Another Anti-Student Move to Placate Corporate Greed!

Restrictions on Photocopying: Down With Administration’s Yet Another Anti-Student Move to Placate Corporate Greed!

During the last few days, following in the footsteps of the authoritarian, corrupt, neo-liberal DU administration, the JNU administration too had taken the anti-student move of instructing the Xerox vendors in the campus to restrict photocopying of books and other study materials. This is outrightly condemnable and unacceptable and must be resisted.

Neo-liberal masters sitting in the government and their pliant followers running educational institutions are hell-bent on trying every trick in the book to commercialise every aspect of our education system and make it a privilege of the rich and the powerful. No wonder, on the pretext of the “copyright” law, they are now bending over backwards to please corporate publishing houses by restricting photocopying of books and study materials. When the controversy erupted in Delhi Univ. last year, Lawrence Liang wrote in an article in Indian Express:

“…. in India we follow the English system of fair dealing which enumerates a set of statutory exceptions and in India there are two important provisions which allow for educational exceptions. Sec. 52(1)(i) allows for ‘the reproduction of any work by a teacher or a pupil in the course of instruction’ or as a part of questions or answers to questions. Further Sec. 52(1)(a) allows for a fair dealing with any work (except computer programs) for the purposes of private or personal use, including research.  It is therefore very much within the rights of the university and the students to create course packs and to access photocopies of academic texts and articles in the course of instruction. The fact that the Copyright Act in India does not lay down any quantitative restrictions when it comes to personal use or educational use even though such restrictions operate for other  kinds of usages is indicative of the intention of the policy makers to ensure that there is adequate access to learning materials.” He further wrote that for the Photocopy vendors which are integrated within the university system by account of the fact that it operates on the basis of a license provided by the university controlling the price and nature of services, it would make sense for the university and the photocopiers to have a unified stand since what is at stake is not just the future of a single photocopying shop but the future of access to educational materials in India.  The Supreme Court in the Francis Coralie Mullin case (1981) has held that the right to life in Art 21 is not just about physical survival and includes the right to ‘facilities for reading, writing and expressing oneself in diverse forms’. And when Copyright comes in the way of a fundamental right it clear what should be given precedence.”

Clearly, JNU administration’s  latest move is not guided by any concern for “Law” but a specious interpretation of law to benefit the corporate publishers and inconvenience the students.

The primary concern of the heads of universities and educational institutions should be to ensure access to reading/studying materials for all students. No such commitment is visible. Libraries hardly have enough copies of books so that ALL students can access necessary books as and when required. Typically, a university library has a maximum of one to three copies of books that are shared by hundreds of students. In such a scenario, how will students study, write exams and research without access to required books, especially when books these days are so prohibitively expensive? It is the collective responsible of an institution to ensure equal access to books and academic material. More fundamentally, such restrictions on photocopying also go against the principle that knowledge is a public good and cannot be made the exclusive privilege of those who can afford it.

Concern for “Law” or  a Crass Class Bias?

Even if one were to go by the administration’s patently specious use of the Copyright Act, one must ask why the JNU administration has such a typically SELECTIVE approach for implementing “law”!

Why isn’t the same concern shown when it comes to abiding by the Minimum Wages Act or the Contract Labour Act? How does the very same administration violate every clause of wages and rights mandated for the contract workers on campus with a brazen impunity? How do they routinely allow the siphoning away of workers had earned PF/ESI funds? Aren’t these violations criminal and punishable? So when it comes to the rights of the most vulnerable, exploited  and least paid workers of the campus, all laws can be allowed to be violated with impunity for it helps to line up the pockets of the corrupt official-contractor nexus.

The same JNU administration, which refuses to increase MCM, somehow finds unlimited money to invest in CCTVs and surveillance technologies to favour the corporate giants.

Administration’s double-standards are all too obvious: when it comes to workers and students rights, laws can be wilfully violated and funds misused; when it comes to benefitting corporates or the official-contractor nexus, specious legalese will be manufactured and violations will be covered up!

Let us all recognise that JNU administration’s latest move is an attack on the very idea of egalitarian and accessible education for all. AISA calls upon the entire democratic section of the JNU community to resist this new assault and defend the very soul of our university system.