Jubilee Hall at 70: A Call to Remember, Rejoice, Renew

Jubilee Hall at 70: A Call to Remember, Rejoice, Renew

(Jubilation, Feb 03 & 04, 2018, Jubilee Hall – DU, Delhi)

 

Anthony Joseph, PhD

JH - 99

CIE - DU

 

 

To blame the poor for subsisting on welfare has no justice unless we are also willing to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is. Taken individual by individual, it is likely that there's more idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged than among the ranks of the disadvantaged. - Norman Mailer, author (1923-2007)

 

Applying for a berth at the Jubilee Hall – Delhi University? Well, you’d find your name on the admission list, if you had done well to secure a meritorious position in academics. After fulfilling the other prerequisites clearly spelled out in the Jubilee Hall Hand Book, with fingers crossed you wait for the Admission List. Not on the first list, hang on, there is always a second list, oops … no name … don’t despair … a third list could light up your face! Pay your fees, pick out a chit for your room and … ‘welcome to the Kingdom’! Jubilee Hall – Delhi University is turning 70 in 2018, and is all lit up, bright and colourful. Fun, Food and Friends have come together to remember, rejoice and renew with Jublee Hall – DU!

 

Jubilation – Feb 03 & 04, 2018 was to mark the 70^th year of Jubilee Hall. On the eve of Jubilation, a quick glance at the world around us - President Donald Trump has delivered his first State of the Union address on Tuesday, Jan 30, 2018. A (very) lengthy speech in which he largely revisited his accomplishments over his first year in office. A report published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society, says Wikie, a captive killer whale in France has learned to say words like 'Hello' and 'Bye-bye'. It is the first scientific demonstration of an orca mimicking human words.

 

Closer home, we have just concluded our 69^th Republic Day Celebration. The Organiser has been Echoing the Voice of Bharat for the last 70 years.  On Fri 12 Jan 2018, India's top judges in an unprecedented message to the journalists gathered in Delhi, declared, that the conduct of India’s highest court was “not in order” and that “unless this institution is preserved, democracy can’t be protected in this country” - An unprecedented warning over integrity of Supreme Court.

For the first time in the judicial history of free India, four senior-most Supreme Court (SC) judges were seen redressing their purported grievances at the feet of journalists in a public street!

 

The Public Sphere is arguably the only remaining bastion in India to keep alive the hope and fervor of democratic values that has shaped the growth and development of our Nation. Seventy years since its establishment, Jubilee Hall - DU merits a claim to fuel that hallowed Public Sphere to remember, rejoice and renew through its residents - with competence and commitment - Democratic Values. For the alumnus and the residents of Jubilee Hall, Jubilation 2018 is a great time to question our competence and commitment to Democratic Values.

With a capacity to accommodate nearly two hundred meritorious residents from various disciplines and parts of the country, its proximity to the best facilities of the Nation’s leading university, the envious ambience at Jubilee Hall, serves as a perfect space to nurture competence and commitment.

 

Jubilee Hall’s hoary past is dotted with luminaries in various fields. From Supreme Court Judges to highly decorated Service Personnel, Jubilee Hall has served the Nation with its steady ‘supply’ of competent and committed men willing to serve the nation. This raises a question, ‘How many men do we really need to serve this vast and magnificent nation?’ That was not a trick question. Well, you could try another, ‘how much salt is required to add taste to one’s food?’ ‘Just a little’, yes, this is right. Yes, and this precious little, is immediately invisible, while reaching out and touching every morsel of food and coaxing out the very best of that morsel, adding to the overall taste and nourishment. It is not too farfetched to imagine a Jubilian as the salt of this Nation.

 

The common perception of, ‘abuse of government favors among the economically privileged’ has led to strident demands for accountability in the functioning of many public spaces – Jubilee Hall included. The current spate of changes engulfing our nation is testing the limits of the dynamic nature of the diversity and complexity of India. Among the range of feelings and emotions that have ensued in the face of these changes, a multi-dimensional continuum of Trust and Mistrust, as it were, has been set off. Mistrust and suspicion have set off many voices and perceptions leading to, many note-worthy institutions bracing themselves to prepare for the onslaught of an accountability audit. The multi-faceted concept of accountability calls for credible competence from Jubilians, a commitment we owe to the Nation.

 

Accountability is an ethical concept – it concerns proper behaviour, and it deals with the responsibilities of individuals and organisations for their actions towards other people and agencies. The term is often used synonymously with concepts of transparency, liability, answerability and other ideas associated with the expectations of account-giving. (Ruth Levitt, Barbara Janta, Kai Wegrich, 2008).

 

Accountability involves responsibility, authority, evaluation and control (Heim, 1995).  It is a social relation in which an actor feels an obligation to explain and to justify his or her conduct to some significant other (Boven, 2005). With increasing demands to improve service quality and final outcomes of public services, as well as demands to increase services’ responsiveness to their users, accountability has become a cornerstone of public sector reforms, and a particularly significant issue in those public services where professions and professionals are central, including schools, health care and social care (GTC, 2000).

 

Darling-Hammond  (1989)  states  that  an  accountability  system  is  a  set  of commitments, policies and practices designed to:

 

·         Increase the use of good educational practices.

·         Reduce the use of harmful or wasteful practices.

·         Create internal mechanisms to identify, diagnose and change courses of action that do not lead to learning.

 

From the above one can gather, a minimum level of competence is required to fulfill rather easily, the demands of accountability, but it is the call for autonomy and commitment which ought to challenge every Jubilian.

 

The merit or competence which earned the residents a berth at Jubilee Hall, is quite sufficient, ‘To judge and blame the poor for subsisting on welfare’ but only a reflexive, committed and autonomous Jubilian, is willing ‘to judge every rich member of society by how productive he or she is while attempting to unravel the idleness and abuse of government favors among the economically privileged’.

 

The call to Remember and Rejoice is quite straightforward – recall the luminaries of Jubilee Hall holding exalted positions, celebrate, participate, why, even draw on their success and fondly hope to recreate their ‘success’. It is, however in the ‘renewal’ that the Jubilian is truly called to set off on a transformative journey within himself, his chosen profession and with the larger society. The call of the Jubilian is not to mindless competent ‘reproduction’ but to enable and empower ‘critical transformation.’

 

Jubilee Hall – DU, enables the transformative journey of a Jubilian. The journey of every Jubilian is well captured by Timothy Ewest (2018) in the Prosocial Leadership Development Process. The four stages he elaborately discusses in Prosocial Leadership are:

 

Stage One: Antecedent Awareness and Empathic Concern
Stage Two: Community and Group Commitment
Stage Three: Courage and Action
Stage Four: Reflection and Growth

 

The interrelationship between the four stages is evident. Each stage calls for the dynamic movement of the Jubilian from ‘Aspiration to Participation’. Each stage calls for a critical approach, arguing that there is a need for Jubilians to develop critical thinking skills, be flexible and have the capacity for originality. The circular path of the above four stages denotes the continuous and life-long competent and committed engagement of the Jubilian to constantly renew his efforts as a Prosocial Learner. Education has increasingly come to be seen as a process with qualifications as the output; however, as economies change, attaining advantage increasingly relies on creativity and originality.

 

The Jubllian is called to venture forth as a Prosocial Learner and serve as a Prosocial Leader. Where the goal of education is the emancipation of an autonomous individual and his integration into society – Jubilee Hall is a perfect laboratory to set off these two related goals of education.

 

In the face of some powerful cultural narratives - that include the reductionist, technicist and highly instrumentalist discourses shaping the articulation and delivery of much of education policy and practice, reflecting similar troubling framings from broader neoliberal perspectives - Jubilians are called to argue that wisdom’s marginalisation has had, and continues to have, profoundly deleterious consequences for our educative practices. Jubilians are called to push at the boundaries of emerging knowledge, including how knowledge is generated and continuously interrogate our assimilated educational perspectives.

 

Jubilee Hall enables the transformative journey of a Jubilian from ‘Aspiration to Participation’. The annual churning out of meritorious officers from the stables of Jubilee Hall means little or nothing if their merit does not spill over into service. Merit without service is mere reproduction and never transformative. Aspiration, for the Jubilian, is set off in the many opportunities and encounters at Jubilee Hall, he is called to be a participant.

 

70 years of Jubilee Hall and surely many more years to come, but where are we headed? Bigger? Better? Braver? Successful?  Surely. But successful is not a very tangible outcome, as it has probably a million interpretations. How would a Jubilian choose to define ‘success?’

 

Twenty or thirty years from now, no Jubilian would ever want, wise women and men saying that the Jubilians have sold their souls and didn’t do the right thing. We leave the portals of Jubilee Hall to embark on a credible quest to ferret out opportunities, to enhance participation, to set off new seeking and embolden new visions. Would we be successful - as Jubilians we are confident to “Let the nation decide that.”