Reading the NEP 09: The Faculty Chapter
English

Our department has five sanctioned posts.
Two of us hold letters like this.
Three teach as guest faculty,
engaged a session at a time.
Does the policy mention us?
Chapter 13 is about faculty.
On page 40 it says that,
despite past improvements,
faculty motivation remains far lower
than the desired level.
Its seven paragraphs then set out
what should change,
from recruitment to leadership.
Every campus is to have clean
drinking water,
clean working toilets,
offices, libraries and labs.
Every classroom is to have the latest
educational technology.
Teaching duties will not be excessive,
it says,
and student-teacher ratios not too high,
leaving time for students
and for research.
Not excessive.
How many hours a week is that?
The text gives no number of hours
and no ratio.
It does say that faculty will be appointed
to one institution
and generally not be transferable.
Faculty are to have the freedom to design
their own curricular
and pedagogical approaches,
within the approved framework.
That covers the choice of textbooks
and reading,
assignments and assessments.
Excellence is to bring promotion
and a path
into the institution's leadership.
Faculty who do not deliver
on basic norms are to be held accountable.
The text does not list those norms.
Recruitment is to be independent
and transparent.
The current process is to continue,
with what the policy calls a tenure track,
defined as a suitable probation
period of no stated length.
And once I'm confirmed,
how am I judged?
By criteria each institution writes
into its development plan.
They are to count peer
and student reviews,
new ways of teaching, research,
and service to the institution
and the community.
High-impact research is to earn
fast-track promotion.
Leaders are to be found early and trained
through a ladder of leadership posts,
and those posts are not to remain vacant.
Chapter 15 adds
that every new PhD scholar,
in any discipline,
is to take credit courses in teaching
and gain actual teaching experience.
A national mission is to bring senior
and retired faculty
to mentor college and university teachers.
A guest colleague of mine has taught here
for six years, on six letters.
Which of these paragraphs is about her?
None of them names her.
The word contract does not occur anywhere
in the policy, and neither does ad hoc.
Guest faculty appears once,
in chapter 22,
for local artists and craftspersons.
On pay, the chapter notes only
that salaries of permanent faculty
in public institutions
have risen substantially.
The vacancies the policy promises
to fill are school teachers' posts
and leadership posts.
As of October 2026, appointment
and promotion still run under
the UGC's regulations of 2018, as amended.
No regulation since 2020 has set up
a tenure track,
fast-track promotion
or a new rule on workload.
A draft of January 2025 would replace
the points score used
to shortlist candidates with a review
of their notable contributions.
It would also remove the cap
that keeps contract teachers
to 10 per cent of an institution's posts.
Their pay would be no lower
than a regular assistant professor's.
As of October 2026,
that draft is not on the UGC's
list of regulations.
In central universities,
nearly 4,900 of about 19,000 teaching
posts were vacant in 2025,
about one in four.
Special recruitment drives had filled more
than 8,300 posts since September 2022.
In January 2026
the Supreme Court told institutions
to fill vacant teaching posts
within four months,
reserved posts first.
As of October 2026, we found no public
account of whether that was done.
And state universities and their colleges?
Most of us teach there.
For them
we found no verified national count,
only local reports.
In West Bengal in September 2026,
a principal told a reporter that around
5,000 college teaching posts were vacant.
In Nanded, in Maharashtra,
the university stopped first-year science
admissions in 24 colleges in 2026,
for want of labs and teachers.
Counts of contract teaching differ,
because they measure different things.
The official survey for 2021–22
classes 5.7 per cent of all teachers
as temporary.
Reading the survey for 2022–23,
the sociologist Rituparna Patgiri
puts nearly a fifth of faculty
in public institutions on contract.
Delhi University notices reported
in September 2026 offer
guest faculty 1,500 rupees
a lecture, up to 50,000 rupees a month.
Since 2021
the UGC has required new teachers
to complete an induction programme
within a year of joining.
The PhD rules of 2022 require training
in teaching,
and a programme launched in 2023 set out
to train 15 lakh teachers.
The mentoring mission,
run by the teacher education council,
names school teachers as its mentees.
Does that draft keep
this chapter's promises?
Our staff room can't agree.
M. Jagadesh Kumar,
then chairman of the UGC,
said in January 2025 that the old rules
judged candidates mostly on numbers.
Under the draft, he said,
selection committees can judge
each candidate as a whole.
They can weigh new ways of teaching,
digital learning material, community work
and the promotion of Indian languages.
Jagannath Khemnar,
a college teacher and elected
member of the University of Mumbai,
said the same week that removing
the cap was very risky.
With no cap, he said,
universities and colleges will prefer
to appoint more contract teachers
than permanent faculty.
That, he warned,
will lead to the exploitation of teachers
and students.
What can one teacher do,
especially without a permanent post?
Find the documents that govern your post:
your letter of appointment or engagement,
and the rules it cites.
Then find
your institution's development plan,
where the criteria for judging teachers
are meant to be written.
Keep your own record of what you teach.
A history teacher might keep
a new reading list,
a commerce teacher a local case study,
a nursing tutor a clinical demonstration.
When a post is advertised,
that record is your evidence.
And ask a senior colleague to sit
in on one of your classes
and talk it over afterwards.
If you are the senior one, offer.
My guest colleague has kept
every timetable
from six years of teaching.
She'll take the file
to her next interview,
whenever that comes.
Let her take the six letters too.
The full text
and our sources are linked below.
Next time, skills,
vocations and the professions.