Can Pedagogy of Care be Practiced in Precarity? Lived Experiences of Contractualization of Academic Labor from India

Introduction

In contemporary times, there has been significant attention on the changing nature of university spaces, both in India and globally (Connell, 2019; Thornton, 2014). With the rise of populist governments and the establishment of neoliberal economies, educational spaces have been unsettled. This is particularly true for public universities. There is a concerted attempt to transform education from a public good into a commodity (Kumar, 2021; Thornton, 2014). This can be understood from the funding cuts that higher education has faced in recent state budgets. Funding for the University Grants Commission (UGC)—the statutory organization of the Government of India for the coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of teaching, examination and research in university education—has been trimmed down. Funds were cut from ₹6,409 crore in 2023–2024 to ₹2,500 crore in 2024–2025 (Iftikhar, 2024).

There have been specific attacks on social sciences such as History, Sociology, Gender Studies and Women's Studies. For instance, the UGC, in its guidelines released on March 12th, 2019, cut funds on Women's Studies Centers across the country by up to 40%. There was a cutting down of teaching, research and staff positions to deal with the money crunch in public universities (Singh, 2019). Such moves have led to a surge in private universities (Connell, 2019), with education being seen as a big business (Chaudhuri, 2021). Public debates on academia are shaped by social media and media rhetoric on how tenure makes academics lazy (Das Acevedo, 2025). This implies that contractualization is seen as an effective model to regulate academics from becoming complacent and to professionalize their behavior (Verger et al., 2016). Increasing competition for academic positions allows employers to siphon off the symbolic and economic value generated by free or underpaid academics (Rogler, 2019). Such conditions make early-career academics particularly vulnerable.

Higher education is being reduced to a mere provider of skills so that those acquiring them will find employment (Chaudhuri, 2021). Social sciences in such a scenario are seen as less relevant. The academic job market is precarious. In a situation such as this, the options that are most likely available after the submission of a Ph.D. thesis are guest and contractual/ad-hoc teaching positions. ¹ Tenured/permanent positions are far and few. The National Education Policy (2020) ² also encourages contractual appointments. While it does not explicitly state that recruitment should be contractual, the policy language can be read as promoting it. For instance, (National Education Policy, 2020) emphasizes institutional autonomy. It gives institutions flexibility in hiring adjunct and visiting faculty, as well as the use of temporary or fixed-term contracts. Similarly, since it encourages self-financed courses, institutions prefer to hire faculty on a contractual basis to save on long-term salaries and other benefits. This can already be observed in many institutions where faculty in self-financed courses are on fixed-term contracts. With their contract renewals on the line, the faculty find themselves unable to practice academic freedom and voice their concerns in a desirable manner. One's contract may not be renewed for reasons such as “you do not fit the vision of the institution anymore” to “you are difficult to work with.”

Using a combination of qualitative research methods, I wish to illustrate how contractual appointments in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) are antithetical to the pedagogy of care. My primary field site is the University of Delhi (DU), where I worked as an ad-hoc teacher from September 2020 to September 2023 in an affiliated college. Among the HEIs and universities located in Delhi, DU has the largest scope for jobs in Sociology. It is one of the largest public universities located in India's capital city, which is a popular site for people across the country accessing education and employment. Ten affiliated colleges in DU offer Sociology as either an Honours course or as a part of the BA Program at the undergraduate level. There is also a postgraduate department. In the early 2000s, several new institutions were built, and courses were introduced in India. This resulted in a shortage of teachers. There was also a shortage of funds to hire teachers and pay them full salaries and social security benefits. Therefore, contractual employees were hired as a short-term solution to deal with the double crisis of a shortage of teachers and funds (Majeed, 2023). A similar case also happened at DU. Furthermore, DU also decided to adopt the Mandal Commission's recommendations to reserve 27% of seats for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in teaching positions (Kumar, 2019). ³ As such, it was noted that making permanent appointments would take time. Hence, contractual hiring was floated as a solution to the teacher shortage, the financial crisis and the implementation of reservations for OBCs.

In a resolution 120(8)—passed by the Executive Council of DU on December 12th, 2007, ⁴ ad-hoc teachers were permitted to be appointed for a period of between one and four months at the rank of assistant professor. Teachers were to be appointed in these positions only when there was a “sudden, unexpected and short vacancy” due to reasons such as a permanent teacher's illness, maternity leave or death (Bhattacharya, 2023; Deeksha, 2023). If a vacancy remained open even after four months, the mandate was to fill it temporarily. Despite this resolution, the DU had more than 4000 ad-hoc teachers until very recently (Mangalik, 2023). What initially emerged as a short-term solution became a state of permanent misery for many. This number came down after DU started appointing permanent faculty from August 2022 onwards. Since the process of permanent appointments began, almost 3000 regular appointments have been made. Regularization of teaching positions in the DU was portrayed as an initiative to end ad-hocism by the university administration (Express News Service, 2023). The end of ad-hocism and the appointment of permanent faculty were seen as requirements for the university's growth (Jha, 2022).

Before 2021, most colleges offering undergraduate courses had a significant number of ad-hoc teachers. Even in postgraduate departments, ad-hoc faculties were hired for their services. As evident from my own experience as well as those of my respondents, ad-hoc teachers could be hired on very short-term contracts, and they get no earned, maternity, childcare, medical leaves, and other benefits. They are allowed four casual leaves in one semester. In most cases, they are also forced to teach for more hours than the number (16) that is mandated by the UGC for assistant professors in an undergraduate college. Very often, this is in addition to the administrative work that is expected from them.

On August 28th, 2019, the then Vice-Chancellor of DU circulated a letter to the Delhi University Principals’ Association. This letter directed the principals to appoint guests instead of ad-hoc faculty. This resulted in ad-hoc teachers led by the Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) protesting against the letter (Tripathi, 2019). The Vice-Chancellor’s letter was another step towards increasing the nature of precarity associated with teaching at DU. Guest teachers have even less job security than ad-hocs. They are also paid on a per-class basis. Additionally, many principals saw this as an opportunity to terminate existing ad-hocs and not hire new ad-hocs. The exploitative nature of this work has prompted demands for regularization and absorption of existing ad-hocs by the DUTA (Utkarsh, 2019). A significant number of permanent appointments have been completed since August 2022. It is also estimated that 70% of ad-hoc faculty have since then been displaced (lost jobs) (Goswami, 2023b). For many who had devoted years and sometimes even decades as ad-hocs, displacement has meant not just loss of financial security. It has also meant a loss of academic work.

Ad-hocism, as a phenomenon that has existed in DU, has to be understood as part of the larger drive to make teaching jobs contractual worldwide. There is a push towards making academic labor casual in nature (Burton & Bowman, 2022), which is located within the context of transforming public education into a profitable good (Thornton, 2014). This transformation has been gradual, as promoted by state policies such as fund cuts for public universities, as well as raising fees for courses (Kumar, 2023). There is also an attempt to portray protesting teachers and students as anti-state. As such, they are dealt with by strict measures from the police (Utkarsh, 2019). State policies towards public universities are in opposition to their attitude toward private ones. Neoliberal governments have implemented laws under which entrepreneurs can set up universities, which has smoothed the path for a surge of privately owned universities (Connell, 2019). In neoliberalism, production and exchange of goods are at the core of human experience (Steger & Roy, 2010). In this model, universities are expected to be governed like corporations that increase their productivity and competitiveness (Rogler, 2019). Wright and Shore (2019) highlight features of neoliberal universities—state disinvestment, the rise of audit culture based on performance and output, the institutional capture of power by the administration, and the rise of the entrepreneurial university. With continuous funding cuts from governments, universities have become focused on their financial health. Universities compete for decreased funding and an increasing number of students. Hiring of contractual labor facilitates this, as it creates a workforce which can be used, as and when needed, while also reducing the financial cost to the university.

Previous scholarly works have focused on the neoliberal turn in universities (Connell, 2019; Jones & Ball, 2024; Rogler, 2019; Wright & Shore, 2019 ). Some recent works have also paid attention to the impact of precarity on migrants’ social and emotional lives (Burlyuk & Rahbari, 2023). Others have looked at the intersections between precarity and race, class and gender (Crew, 2020). In the Indian context, the focus has been on the transition from welfarism to neoliberal policies in higher education, the surge of private educational institutions (Tilak, 2014, 2018), the push towards skill-based courses (Chaudhuri, 2021), implications on student access, participation, and the quality of public and private universities (Jha, 2025). However, very little attention has been paid to the contractualization of academic labor. India has a demographic dividend with over 60% of its population in the working age group, 15 to 59 years. At the same time, informal workers constitute over 90% of the country's workforce. With a push towards informality and contractualization in all spheres, including higher education, this has great implications (Goswami, 2023a, 2023b; Maiti, 2013). Precarity and informality have differential experiences intersecting with marginalized identities such as caste, class, religion, ethnicity, region, and gender. India's policy of affirmative action has expanded access to higher educational institutions for historically marginalized communities such as Dalits, Adivasis, tribals, and women. The shift towards both contractualization and privatization threatens the quest for social justice, as reservations may not be implemented in contractual and private posts. Thus, academic precarity cannot be understood in isolation. Social structures are inefficient in responding to the challenges of growing precarity. Institutions are facing operational challenges in implementing welfare schemes for precarious workers.

The precarious nature of employment that ad-hocism represents is central to how public universities such as DU in India have experienced a neoliberal turn. As a form of contractual appointment, ad-hocism allows colleges and universities to hire casual employees without paying them full salaries and benefits. This aids the neoliberal university, helping it save money and also exercise more power over the casual workforce. Scholars have illustrated how, in recent times, universities have taken a managerial turn (Connell, 2019). This means that institutional decisions have a managerial prerogative rather than an academic one. According to Connell (2019), managerialism excludes the academic community from involvement in important decisions in a university. Priority is given to event management and market interests rather than critical thinking. Teachers are deployed in different kinds of roles, such as census data collection, election duty, distribution of welfare schemes, etc. The state of precarity that ad-hocs find themselves in forces them to engage in such tasks without much resistance. In such contexts, care for workers and their well-being takes a backseat.

The idea of care in education is not new. Education itself is seen as an act of care, which is supposed to impact students’ lives positively. The critical pedagogies advocated by Paulo Freire, John Dewey, and others are based on an underlying notion of care. But they explicitly do not talk about care pedagogies. The concept of care as an educative ethic was first articulated by Nel Noddings (Barek et al., 2021). Pedagogy of care is rooted in the expectation that teachers should care for students. It is also grounded in ideas of learning, which are communal and relational (Barthwal-Datta et al., 2024). Care is seen as a moral imperative and pedagogical necessity (Barek et al., 2021).

In this paper, I ask the question: Is it realistically possible to practice a pedagogy of care in structural systems where contractualization of academic labor is a norm? Contractual teachers can be terminated at any point. Some also leave when they find better opportunities. This means that the teaching−learning system is dysregulated. It has adverse impacts on students who are continuously forced to adjust to new teachers. At the same time, the lack of choice in teaching a course or designing the syllabus means that the teacher's creativity is taken out of the process. Ad-hocism is not an environment in which sustainable care can thrive. When there is structural discrimination towards ad-hoc teachers and the fear of losing jobs, the environment is negatively impacted. Should contractual teachers be expected to teach with care in uncaring educational institutions that are hostile to them? In this article, I illustrate how the pedagogy of care framework is insufficient to understand the teaching−learning system when structural discriminations such as contractual academic labor exist. The structural discriminations are manifested in the hierarchy and inequality in the workplace, and the lack of academic freedom in the classroom. It also leads to the invisibilization of labor (Daniels, 1987). Ad-hocs are expected to bear the costs of a system that does not provide any kind of care for them. What is required is to raise complaints, as Sara Ahmed (2021) has argued, rooted in a pedagogy of the oppressed (Freire, 1970).

The Field, Methods Used, and the Scope of the Study

I worked as an ad-hoc teacher at an affiliated college in DU for three years from 2020 to 2023 before losing my job. Although I am no longer a precarious academic, my location is central to this story of the contractualization of academic labor. The personal or the self, in this case, is embedded in the historical and social contexts (Chaudhuri, 2020; Mills, 1959). During the three years, I had a first-person experience of how contractualization contributes to academic precarity. I have been a member of the World Council of Anthropological Associations Academic Precarity Task Force since 2023. As such, auto-ethnography and lived experiences are crucial to this story. But mine is not a singular story, as this article will show.

Along with auto-ethnography and lived experiences, this paper is based on 25 in-depth interviews. Most of these are with ad-hoc faculty (17), while the rest are with permanent faculty (8). Interestingly, 12 of the ad-hoc faculty are women, and five are men. Five permanent faculty are women, and three are men. Three of the permanent faculty are also members of bodies representing the interests of teachers in DU. The interviews began in August 2022, coinciding with the onset of regular appointments. As soon as the university announced regular appointments, the ad-hocs experienced heightened fear of losing their jobs. While there were some calls for absorption by the DUTA, there was no organized movement to support the ad-hoc cause. It was unable to effectively lobby with the colleges for the serving ad-hocs, resulting in mass displacement as mentioned earlier. Ideological and political reasons became key in determining who was absorbed.

It is significant to mention here that all respondents were apprehensive about giving consent for recording. Conducting interviews for this study was challenging, as it was difficult to find respondents and secure their consent. But many, primarily the ad-hocs, also expressed happiness that “someone was working on this issue.” I have anonymized the names and omitted personal details such as the names of colleges to uphold the privacy of all respondents. Most of the interviews were with women, which reflects my own positionality and access and the gendered composition of ad-hoc faculty. Their regional locations cut across the country—including Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, Kerala, Bihar, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan. Those who are migrants (around 20 of the respondents) had an added anxiety of having to relocate from Delhi in case they lost their jobs, especially if unmarried. Most of them belong to the upper and the middle castes, indicating the upper caste character of Indian academia (Sphoorti, 2025). Most of the respondents had worked for at least six months as ad-hoc faculty in DU.

The interviews are supplemented by participant observation of the unfolding of events in the college and university settings. As an ad-hoc teacher, I was part of meetings that discussed how the rights of the ad-hoc faculty could be protected. I am also a member of several teachers’ groups on Facebook. Observations from meetings and discussions on Facebook groups played a key role in understanding how the rights and demands of ad-hoc faculty members were being interpreted. Conversations with colleagues, too, have helped me formulate my ideas. Informal discussions around shared anxiety about job precarity were a significant part of this research. Things that were difficult for respondents to talk about and share in the interviews were revealed in these informal conversations.

While this paper is primarily based on material drawn from DU, I have worked as a guest faculty member in other public universities. At the same time, there has been interaction with friends and colleagues who are contractual faculty at different institutions. The conditions of contractual faculty are more or less similar across the country (Patgiri, 2024a, 2024b). As such, DU can be seen as a case study or an illustrative example of a larger national and global phenomenon.

Hierarchy and Inequality in the Workplace

Scholarships in recent times have looked at the way precarious labor has been normalized in academia, ignoring its impact on the careers of those workers (Burton & Bowman, 2022). Ad-hocism can be characterized as a state of precarity. Sometimes it is a privilege to be a “regular” ad-hoc in one college, as for many, even that option is rare (Dutta Roy, 2018). Ad-hocism is a set of structures which not only reproduces inequalities (Kahn et al., 2024) but also a pervasive and dominating culture or atmosphere (Burton & Bowman, 2022). This helps in perpetuating hierarchy and inequality in the workplace. The work done by ad-hocs is not appreciated, and it becomes invisible (Daniels, 1987). It is particularly true for those from marginalized communities who do most of the managerial and invisible tasks (University of Oregon Social Sciences Feminist Network Research Interest Group, 2017).

The primary aim of education is to nurture the ethical ideal, which is to be caring and to meet each other morally. Care is a virtue rooted in reciprocity (Noddings, 1984). But ad-hocism is not an equal and reciprocal relationship. Contractual teachers are at the mercy of the institutions. The essential elements of caring are located in the relationship between the “one-caring” (providing care, receptive attention to students and supporting the other person) and the “cared-for” (the recipient of care). While the contractual teachers are often expected to be the former, they are rarely cared-for. In equal relations, the parties regularly exchange these positions. However, in some relations, such as ad-hocism, this mutuality is not possible (Noddings, 2012).

Ad-hocism violates several basic conditions of equality. One of them is equal pay for equal work. Because of the contractual nature of their employment, ad-hocs do not get yearly increments. Thus, their pay is lower than that of permanent faculty. Whenever there is any delay in releasing salaries, permanent faculty receive theirs first. In some cases, this delay lasts for months (Agrawal, 2022). The salary heads for permanent and ad-hoc employees are also different, as the funds for ad-hoc employees are disbursed by the UGC. In many colleges, ad-hocs have to get a No Objection Certificate (NOC) signed by the Teacher in Charge (TIC)/Head of the Department (HOD)/Officer on Special Duty (OSD) stating that they have no dues in the college before getting their salary.

Apart from less and delayed pay, ad-hocs are also not paid their summer salaries on time. While teaching in the winter semester begins in January, it ends in April. Thus, many colleges do not pay ad-hoc faculty their salaries on time from May to June, as it is considered a break in service. They are paid after rejoining the college when the new semester begins in July. However, this summer break does not mean that they are not expected to work. They are engaged in invigilation and evaluation duties during this period. The break is an administrative move as it legally protects colleges and universities. Ad-hocs cannot claim to be regular employees, as there is a break in service. This is also reflected in the experience certificates that colleges provide, where the break is mentioned. In many cases, the administrative duties that an ad-hoc faculty member does are not mentioned in the experience certificates. Technically, ad-hocs cannot sign any document that involves financial transactions. However, because of faculty shortages and the reluctance of permanent faculty, ad-hocs are made to do administrative tasks without credit.

Ad-hocs get no other social security benefits, such as a pension or leave for research or medical reasons. For instance, there had been a long-standing battle demanding maternity leave for ad-hoc faculty. In fact, because of DU’s policy of denial of maternity leave, several ad-hoc faculty members had been pushed out of their jobs. Finally, in December 2021, the Executive Council of DU approved maternity leave for ad-hocs (Kaushal, 2021). However, it is still the college's discretion whether it grants maternity leave or not. Such structures push women out of academia, contributing to the leaky pipeline phenomenon and invisibilization of labor.

It is not just salary, benefits and leaves. As an ad-hoc, one does not have an institutional affiliation per se. In many cases, teachers are not even given identity cards. There is no formal recognition of an ad-hoc position. Let me cite an instance to substantiate my claim. One of my colleagues and I had requested a NOC to renew our passports in July 2023. However, the college refused to grant us the NOC. The Administrative Officer said, “hum ad-hocs ko NOC nahi dete” (we do not give NOC to ad-hocs). This meant that we could not get our passports renewed on time as the college administration refused to recognize our employment status. Interestingly, ad-hocs can vote in the DUTA. But they have to carry “signed evidence” from their respective principals to cast their votes, as they do not have identity cards.

Ad-hocs also cannot apply for research grants and projects. This is particularly true for government-based research projects that require a permanent affiliation as an eligibility criterion. For instance, the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), which was set up by the Government of India to promote research in social sciences in the country, provides financial support for undertaking research. The ICSSR provides financial support in the form of major and minor research grants. One of the conditions to become a project director is that the applicants have to be professional social scientists who are permanently employed or retired as faculty in a UGC-recognized Indian university/deemed university/college. Contractual faculty who has published at least two solo-author books published by reputed publishers and/or 05 articles in peer-reviewed journals can be considered as co-project directors. ⁵ The requirement of being permanently employed means ad-hocs are excluded from these grants. This hinders their academic progress for permanent employment as they are unable to provide evidence of research excellence.

In some cases, one can apply for grants as a team of researchers. However, the principal investigator (PI), even in such cases, should be a permanent employee. This can often lead to the exploitation of both the labor and intellect of ad-hocs. Rashi Sharma, who has experience working as an ad-hoc at DU for more than ten years, narrated her experience of working on an ICSSR research project:

Because of their precarious position, ad-hocs find it difficult to negotiate their way firmly in such situations. Refusing a senior colleague is not an option that they possess. Ad-hocs also do not get any kind of research leave, even if they might want to undertake research at their own cost. Casualization thus creates a binary between teaching and research (Connell, 2019), whereas the university expects to merge them. In recent times, there has been a research-oriented push in universities and colleges. The faculty are expected not just to teach but also to produce quality research outputs. Research is often more rewarded than teaching in the hierarchy of academic work (University of Oregon Social Sciences Feminist Network Research Interest Group, 2017). But the work conditions for ad-hocs are not conducive to it:

Simona Dey worked as an ad-hoc teacher for five years before moving to a Bangalore-based private university. Her narrative sums up the gap between expectation and reality in terms of academic productivity from contractual employees and the invisibilization of labor. Without any kind of infrastructural support in place, it is difficult for ad-hocs to publish quality research. This often means that they end up publishing in predatory journals. There is also no provision to pursue post-doctoral research. Thus, the pressure to publish exists without taking into account the structural barriers that ad-hocs face (Patgiri, 2022; Rogler, 2019; Sundar & Fazili, 2020).

Ad-hocs faculty are not appointed as TIC/HOD/OSD. They are also not allowed to head committees that develop syllabi and course outlines, and set question papers for examinations. They can be, however, part of committees that develop these documents. When it comes to evaluation, an ad-hoc faculty is supposed to get five answer scripts cross-checked by the convenor of the particular course. Their abilities are seen as requiring supervision, thus facilitating hierarchy in the workplace:

This is what Indu Trivedi, who has worked as an ad-hoc in Political Science in several colleges at DU, said. Unlike ad-hocs, permanent faculty have the option of not showing up for evaluation. Ad-hocs do not have any such option. Very often, the course convenors threaten them that if they do not complete their share of work or pick up the extra share, they will face consequences. One consequence is that the principal would be contacted, saying that the ad-hoc teacher in question has refused to check the answer scripts. This might impact an ad-hoc faculty member's chances of getting their contract renewed in the next semester. Hence, ad-hocs are under pressure to not just complete their share of evaluation but also pick up the extra share. This reflects the differential social relations between permanent and ad-hoc faculty, with the former assuming the role of supervisors when it comes to the latter. Brown et al. (2010) call it the experiencing of class subordination by casual teachers, which is institutionally embedded. Their payment can be delayed, and jobs threatened—income insecurity is a key aspect of class subordination (Brown et al., 2010). Some ad-hocs see extra tasks as necessary to gain experience to become permanent/tenured. One can characterize them as “hope academics” drawing from Kuehn and Corrigan's characterization of “hope labour” (Kuehn & Corrigan, 2013). It means under-appreciated and under-compensated work that is carried out in the present, often for experience or exposure, in the hope that future employment opportunities will follow.

The precarious nature of ad-hoc employment also promotes the way colleges expect teachers to function as administrative or managerial workers. At this point, let me define what administrative tasks mean. Every college has committees, cells and societies that require faculty involvement as advisors and mentors. These are not seen as mandatory but as advisable roles. Both permanent and ad-hoc faculty are expected to perform such works in addition to teaching, evaluation and invigilation. Permanent faculty can refuse these advisory roles. However, because of the precarious nature of their appointment, ad-hoc faculty are not in a position to refuse such tasks. This is also connected to how leaves can be obtained. Permanent faculty members have the option to either say no or take leave to get out of tasks that they find tedious. No such option exists for ad-hoc faculty. Very often, they are expected to make up for the work that regular faculty members shrug off. Most colleges hold interviews every four months, and as such, ad-hocs are under pressure to hold on to their existing jobs. There is very little scope to say no to a colleague and alienate a permanent faculty.

Advisory roles are only one aspect in which the distinction between permanent and ad-hocs is visible. The distinction is also evident in how other administrative tasks are allotted. Be it about invigilation duty during examinations or monitoring duty during events, ad-hocs have to carry the heavier workload. For instance, ad-hocs are allotted more invigilation duties than the permanent faculty. Similarly, in college fests, when faculty are allotted duties such as security monitoring, it is mostly ad-hocs who are given such work. There is no pretense about this disparity, as the reason cited for extra work is one's employment status. “Aap ad-hoc ho toh aapko karna parega” (Since you are an ad-hoc, you have to do it) is regularly cited as a reason for extra workload. There is a lack of care for ad-hocs. Even if unwell, it is difficult to take leave during invigilation days.

Ad-hocism can be characterized as a form of institutional exploitation that leads to a state of uncertainty in an everyday form. It thrives in an environment in which social relations are based on permanency and seniority of employment status. Precarity leads to unpredictable changes and even dismissal without even recourse to an appeals process. In fact, given the worldwide job market situation, precarity can now extend for one's entire career. As such, it is very antithetical to any pedagogy that is rooted in the idea of care.

Academic Freedom Under Conditions of Precarity

With colleges and universities increasingly becoming managerial neoliberal spaces, academic freedom in general has eroded (Thornton, 2014). It is difficult to ascertain the exact meaning and terms of academic freedom (Gordon, 2023). Broadly, it includes the freedom to teach and research, the freedom of academic exchange and dissemination, institutional autonomy, campus integrity, and the freedom of academic and cultural expression (Sundar & Fazili, 2020). However, for this paper, I wish to focus on academic freedom in relation to classroom teaching alone. Simply put—the freedom to teach.

The Academic Freedom Index developed by the V-Dem Institute of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, shows a sharp downward decline in India's position (Sundar & Fazili, 2020). Even the smallest thought of questioning the state and existing structures is met with harsh forms of punishment (Gopal Jayal, 2022). Both students and teachers are under surveillance across the country, cutting across public and private universities. There have been interferences in curriculum design. For instance, in 2025, the University of Delhi's Standing Committee for Academic Affairs recommended removing Karl Marx and Thomas Robert Malthus from its new syllabus for the four-year undergraduate program under the National Education Policy (2020). The committee recommended inclusion of more Indian thinkers and removal of units on gender and caste (De, 2025). Social science disciplines such as Sociology are seen as fostering “anti-national” and “critical” thinking (Patgiri, 2024a, 2024b).

In this context, it becomes important to trace the relationship between precarious labor and academic freedom. It has been argued that employing teaching staff on precarious contracts affects the nature of the teaching they provide (Kahn et al., 2024). In the context of DU, ad-hocism has impacted how academic freedom is practiced both outside and inside the classroom. Ad-hocs have little freedom to choose the curriculum, the courses, and the pedagogical tools.

The syllabus of all courses that are taught at the undergraduate level is decided centrally by committees. One does not have much flexibility when it comes to designing a course curriculum. With respect to course allotment, it is a common practice to assign the courses that the permanent faculty does not want to teach to the ad-hocs. This is often dependent on the timing of the classes as well as the kind of preparation that would be involved in teaching a particular course. Monali Dahiya, who has worked as an ad-hoc at DU for six years, says that there is barely any choice that an ad-hoc can exercise in choosing the course that they teach:

This kind of course allotment impacts the quality of teaching that happens in the classroom. For many ad-hocs, they rarely get to teach a course they want to or specialize in. As such, they are not satisfied. Many feel that they can do a better job if they can choose a course in their expertise. It also impacts their research, as there is no synergy between teaching and research. The term academic freedom thus rings hollow in such cases.

In terms of pedagogical methods as well, there are limitations. A teacher has to stick to the texts that are assigned in the curriculum. To screen films and videos, one has to book a projector-enabled room, seeking permission from the principal. If one is an ad-hoc faculty, it only means more surveillance, as questions are asked about the necessity of screening a particular film or a video. For instance, one of my ex-colleagues was asked about her teaching methods in the interview for a permanent position. When she said that she uses the help of audio-visual modes of communication such as films as part of her teaching, the principal asked, “What kind of films do you show?”

Since their jobs can be terminated at any point, contractual teachers hesitate to build relations with students through dialogue. There is a fear that anything which is against the status quo could be used to terminate their jobs. Within the education system, the burden of care is most often on the teachers, but in systems where teachers are equally vulnerable as students, this care is most often misplaced. For social sciences such as Sociology, discussing and critiquing issues that are familiar, such as caste, class, ethnicity, gender and religion, are part of the curriculum. However, in an increasingly surveilled environment, it is a security concern for teachers who question and defamiliarize the familiar (Patgiri, 2021, 2023). Many teachers have become uncomfortable speaking freely about issues of caste, class, ethnicity, gender and religion. This is particularly true for contractual teachers who have their jobs on the line every four months. Thus, the academic freedom to teach is practically non-existent in these situations.

Many faculty members who served as ad-hocs in different colleges of DU have moved to private universities. Their financial and academic needs were not fulfilled in the precarious structure that ad-hocism represents. Many of them have said that private universities value their work experience in a premier public university such as DU. As such, a lot of well-qualified academics have been forced to shift from public to private universities in recent times. Mihika Sharma taught as an ad-hoc in two different colleges for four years from 2016 to 2020 before shifting to a Mumbai-based private university:

Some of the permanent faculty I interviewed see this as a “loss for public education:”

This quote from a permanent faculty member (who is also an active member of a teachers’ body) shows how precarity is at the heart of the debate on public versus private education. As a result of the contractualization of academic labor in public institutions such as DU, teachers are pushed towards private universities. But privatization of higher education itself is fraught with issues of inaccessibility for students as well as regulations on teachers. There is contractualization of work, teachers’ pay is performance and output-based, their movements are surveilled, and they face extreme pressure to be productive. These measures are aimed at professionalizing teachers to improve their “market performance” (Verger et al., 2016).

Conclusion

Initially implemented as a temporary solution, ad-hocism became a long-term trend at DU. The impact of this kind of precarious employment has been detrimental. The visible impact is displacement and the loss of jobs. However, the invisible consequences on academic freedom in the classroom and the creation and reinforcement of hierarchy in the workplace are also equally crucial to note. Ad-hocism in the DU is antithetical to the very idea of what has been called a “pedagogy of care.” It is rooted in hierarchy, exploitation and exclusion. This discrimination is then reflected at the policy level (leaves, duties, rights, etc.) in the workplace. At this point, it is also significant to state that ad-hocism in DU is only a microcosm of the contractual model that exists worldwide. In her thought-provoking work on tenure in the United States, Deepa Das Acevedo, challenges the common belief that tenure is only important for the protection of academic freedom, in her book The war on tenure. She argues that tenure is important for the performance of what students, administrators, parents, politicians, and taxpayers value (Das Acevedo, 2025). Thus, the push for contractualization of teaching jobs has global implications.

In recent developments, DU is appointing guest faculty instead of ad-hocs after a round of permanent appointments. Several displaced ad-hocs who lost their jobs earlier have now become guest faculty. This means that they earn on the basis of the number of classes taken every month. But there is a cap on the number of classes one can take, and so the income cannot exceed Rs 50000 in a month. The appointment of guests instead of ad-hocs has only increased the precarity of teachers. Most are struggling to make ends meet. This is reflective of the contractualization model that the National Education Policy (2020) encourages. As the National Education Policy gets implemented across the country, this has become a reality in most educational institutions. Therefore, it is difficult to practice a pedagogy of care in precarious structures.

What is instead required is a pedagogy of the oppressed. Freire argues that it has two distinct stages. In the first, the oppressed unveil the world of oppression and, through the praxis, commit themselves to its transformation. In the second stage, in which the reality of oppression has already been transformed, the pedagogy ceases to belong to the oppressed and becomes the pedagogy of all people in the process of permanent liberation. The pedagogy of the oppressed must be forged with and not for the oppressed in the struggle to regain their humanity. As long as the oppressed live in the duality, in which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this becomes difficult to achieve (Freire, 1970, p. 48).

Therefore, I draw inspiration from Sara Ahmed's work Complaint!, in which she interviews people who are part of complaint processes in educational institutions. She sees her resignation from her job not as a lack, but as a way to conduct interviews on her own terms (Ahmed, 2021). Researching academic precarity is not an easy task. Institutions do not like people who raise complaints; they are seen as “troublemakers.” It involves both practical concerns—fear of losing employment, funding, and networks—as well as ethical dilemmas. What O’Keefe and Courtois (2024) call the “precarity dividend” (the ethical contradiction of researching precarity while simultaneously benefiting from systems of precarity) is significant here. While tenured academics benefit from research on precarious labor, those in precarious positions continue to perform invisible or unrecognized labor. Thus, knowledge production on precarity often benefits established academics without transforming exploitative structures. Although I have long written, spoken, and researched on precarity before becoming a permanent employee, this ethical dilemma also confronts me while writing this article. There is discomfort in writing about the experiences of precarious academics from a position I no longer occupy. There is fear of misrepresentation and misinformation, as well as the anxiety of centering myself.

At the same time, there is a recognition that universities largely operate through elite structures aligned with the interests of the privileged. Therefore, there is a need for more discussions on the politics of labor, care, and ethics within HEIs. It is not just universities, but professional associations can take responsibility in spearheading these discussions. For instance, the Sociological Association of Ireland (SAI) is one of the few bodies to have ethical guidelines on the employment of part-time and short-term contract staff. ⁶ The SAI states that “they are concerned about the casualization of university teaching, as well as the conditions of service under which staff are employed.” This becomes particularly relevant in the present context as there is an increasing push for the casualization of academic labor worldwide. Universities should be able to provide an environment for critical thinking. If teachers are expected to practice a pedagogy of care, there should also be structural provisions to sustain it.