Rousseau, the celebrated political philosopher of the 18th century, wrote: "There is no liberty without laws, or where any man is above the laws…. A free people obeys, but does not serve….. It obeys nothing but the laws, and thanks to the force of the laws, it does not obey men".

This was the philosophy on which the democratic society was founded. This is the barometer on which a democratic institution is assessed. Unfortunately, many of our institutions will appear to suffer from democratic deficit if we measure them against this yardstick.

As a matter of fact, the basic premise of obedience today is not to the law, but to the men (and women) who are supposed to be the law-makers or law-enforcers. They subvert, skew and manipulate the laws to serve the interests of the rich and powerful. If you serve the powerful, then you will be deemed to be on the right side of the law. But if you take cudgels against them, then the law becomes the albatross round your neck. If you are a lay citizen and choose to raise your voice against unlawful activities around you, you stand the chance of being eliminated. If you hold any important position and still try to uphold the law that goes against the powers-that-be, there will be every chance that your services will be dispensed with.

 
t is not surprising, therefore, that most choose the path of least resistance and look the other way when they come face to face with patently unlawful action around them. But one thought at least the academics, especially the university dons (supposed to be the best-read minds) would stand by Rousseau's vision of liberty – that they would obey the law and not the law-wielders.

But, by and large, the academics have not risen to the challenge. The universities have not become the nerve centre of the democratic dissent, as it is supposed to be; rather they have turned out to be the fellow travelers of the Establishment. The vice-chancellors in many of our universities have contributed the most to undermining the sanctity of the university's autonomy. They have mostly been busy appeasing political masters (touching the feet of the chief minister has become a way of life for them) for gaining better perks, privileges, positions and awards. This has set the trends for others down the line to follow. If the vice chancellor is a boot-licker, then why should the professor be in his bad books by asking uncomfortable questions?

This herd mentality has been the cause of undoing of the university education in the country. Universities are being run as fiefdoms. There are some states, such as Punjab, where the provincial government is bent on sending down the message that the university is a constituent of the education department and the vice chancellor, a small-time bureaucrat. There are other states, like Bihar, where the governor as chancellor is acting as education Mafiosi.

The silver lining is that in both Punjab and Bihar single individuals have kept aloft the increasingly thin prospect of the university autonomy. Punjab is a classic case where the governor has completely abdicated his responsibility as chancellor to look after the affairs of the universities. So the state government is doing all it can to use them as their political outposts.