Dr. Waseem Ahmad Bhat
Jammu and Kashmir’s higher education system today stands at a dangerous intersection—where structural decay meets intellectual disillusionment. Despite producing a generation of highly qualified scholars—PhD holders, UGC-NET/JRF/SET qualifiers, and Scopus-published researchers—the system remains grossly incapable of integrating them into meaningful academic roles. The disjuncture between educational attainment and institutional absorption reveals not just administrative lapses but a more fundamental crisis of vision. At stake is not only the future of thousands of aspiring academics, but the intellectual and democratic health of the region itself.
The Devaluation of Advanced Scholarship
Among the most disconcerting trends is the eroding value of a PhD in academic recruitment processes. Until recently, the Jammu and Kashmir Public Service Commission (JKPSC) accorded up to 30 points to candidates holding a PhD for assistant professor positions. This has now been slashed to a mere 5 points, effectively collapsing the distinction between those who have spent years producing knowledge and those with basic eligibility. In policy terms, this is presented as levelling the field; in practice, it trivializes intellectual labour.
What is particularly alarming is the message this sends to young researchers: that years of immersion in scholarship, fieldwork, and peer-reviewed publications count for less than a standardized test. This is not merely a bureaucratic adjustment—it is an epistemic assault, one that mirrors what Pierre Bourdieu described as symbolic violence: the imposition of arbitrary hierarchies disguised as objective evaluations. When education becomes detached from recognition, it breeds cynicism and hollow meritocracy.
Recruitment as a Ritual of Disempowerment
The structure of recruitment exams in J&K further compounds the problem. Recent selection processes have witnessed high failure rates even among candidates with multiple NET qualifications and rich research profiles. In a recent case, over 14 vacancies for political science assistant professors remained unfilled—not due to a lack of qualified applicants, but because the question paper was so esoteric and disconnected from disciplinary standards that even top scholars failed to qualify.
The issue here is not the stringency of the examination, but its dislocation from academic reality. When a test becomes a tool of elimination rather than evaluation, it ceases to be a mechanism of merit. The experience is Kafkaesque—where success is arbitrarily denied, and failure becomes normalized. In Gramscian terms, such processes function as mechanisms of passive revolution: change in form without change in substance, sustaining bureaucratic control while diffusing intellectual agency.
Contractual Lecturers: The Academic Underclass
If recruitment is exclusionary, contractual employment is exploitative. Thousands of scholars in J&K serve as contractual lecturers, many with PhDs and national-level qualifications. Despite performing core academic duties—teaching full courses, mentoring students, managing administrative responsibilities—they are paid a paltry ₹28,000 per month. This is less than half the UGC-mandated salary of ₹57,700 for assistant professors.
Worse, their services are rendered invisible in formal recruitment processes. Experience gained as a contractual teacher is often not recognized, creating a class of intellectuals permanently stuck in limbo. The state’s nomenclature—need-based,academic arrangement—only reinforces this erasure. This condition mirrors what Marx termed the “reserve army of labour,” wherein surplus workers are kept in precarious conditions to depress wages and ensure compliance. In academia, this logic is not only economic but ideological—it ensures that a majority of the teaching workforce remains overqualified, underpaid, and voiceless.
Reservations and the Crisis of Capacity
Reservation remains a vital tool for social justice, particularly in a region marked by layered forms of historical marginalization. However, the skewed implementation of reservation policies—especially when combined with limited job creation—has created new tensions. In a recent JKPSC advertisement for 49 political science posts at the plus-two level, only 19 were allocated to the general category, despite over 9,000 applicants. This creates a situation where the struggle is not between merit and equity, but between scarcity and misallocation.
The real issue is not the existence of reservation, but the absence of capacity. The state has failed to create sufficient permanent positions to accommodate scholars across categories. Gramsci reminds us that institutions must serve as instruments of cultural hegemony—but when institutions lose legitimacy in the eyes of both the marginalized and the meritorious, they fail in even maintaining hegemonic consent. What follows is resentment, alienation, and disaffection.
Fellowships and the Myth of Upward Mobility
Fellowships such as UGC-JRF, SRF, and ICSSR are designed to support research and academic growth. However, in the absence of institutional absorption, they end up functioning as deferred unemployment. Many fellows, after years of rigorous research, find themselves returning to the job market only to confront arbitrary recruitment exams, opaque selection processes, and a saturated applicant pool.
This gap between promise and outcome reveals the structural disconnect between higher education policy and employment planning. The fellowships, while generous in stipend, are not embedded within a larger ecosystem of academic sustainability. As Frantz Fanon warned, postcolonial states often reproduce colonial logics of symbolic investment without substantive change. The JRF holder left unemployed is a stark embodiment of this paradox: the state funds the scholar, but refuses to employ them.
Conclusion: Toward a Democratic Reimagining
To move beyond this stagnation, a series of urgent and foundational reforms are needed. First, the recruitment process must be made transparent and discipline-sensitive. Examinations should evaluate knowledge and pedagogy—not act as bureaucratic hurdles. Second, the value of PhDs must be restored in recognition of the intellectual labour they represent. Third, contractual lecturers must be integrated into the system with retrospective service recognition and salaries in line with UGC norms. Additionally, reservation policies must be implemented in a manner that balances equity and access, while expanding the total number of positions to address rising demand. Lastly, fellowships must be connected to academic careers through mentorship pipelines, post-doctoral opportunities, and regularized appointments.
The consequences of inaction are already visible. A growing number of scholars are abandoning academia, turning to informal work, or migrating out of the region. The sight of a PhD holder selling dry fruits on the streets of Srinagar is not anecdotal—it is emblematic of a broader collapse. The damage is not only individual but collective; it weakens the region’s intellectual spine and erodes the social contract between the state and its educated citizens. Jammu and Kashmir’s higher education system does not need charity or token gestures—it needs structural justice. If universities are to remain sites of critical inquiry and democratic imagination, they must be protected from the slow violence of bureaucratic neglect and policy inertia. At stake is nothing less than the region’s intellectual future.
(Author teaches Political Science, and his articles have appeared in journals published by SAGE, Routledge, Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), among others. He writes on issues of democracy, education, and social policy. He can be reached at waseembhat94@gmail.com)
