48 SOCIAL SCIENTIST gency and in consonance with announced aims of the University. However, this "model" of excellence is eating up vast amounts of money in spheres of University development which are totally extravagant. The blueprint for the new campus has a site for the residence of the Vice Chancellor on a 20-acre estate surrounded by artificial lakes. This is just one minor instance of how the JNU authorities are anxious to "avoid costly luxuries which a poor country like ours cannot afford". The University has spent Rs 49 lakhs for constructing 72 houses for teachers and Rs 61 lakhs for 600 hostel rooms for students and warden's flats. Another 10 lakh is estimated to be spent on development and beautifica-tion of this area. Buying airconditioners, carpets and expensive furniture come first in the priority list of our planners, while the hostels for students and quarters for Class III and IV employees are yet to be ready. National Character The Vice Chancellor in his first and second reports made it clear that the jurisdiction of this University is not confined to Delhi only^ it extends to the whole of India. He assured that in matters relating to enrolment, special care would be taken to ensure that students from all parts of the country are enabled to join the University and that it "becomes a national university in the true sense of the word". However, the all-India character of JNU was eroded right from the beginning. The actual pattern in the admission of students to the University would show a clear bias against persons coming from the rural areas and poorer sections of society in favour of those belonging to urban centres. Despite the declared objectives, a clear discrimination is being perpetuated by admitting. students normally belonging to the affluent sections, who anyhow would have got into other universities where there are insufficient opportunities for less privileged students. By emphasising upon an abstract academic quality as the standard for admissions, the academic authorities in JNU are only perpetuating the age-old reactionary policy which argues that "academic quality" should be the sole test for a student's eligibility for higher education. Out of the students admitted to the University so far, an overwhelming majority has come from urban centres, particularly from Delhi. The bias begins with the advertisements, which usually appear only in the so-called national English dailies. Even if a rural student applies for admission, he is tested on the same standard with students coming from the urban-elitist institutions. They are handicapped by several factors such as the inability to express themselves adequately in English. To illustrate our point. In one of the Centres of the School of Social Sciences, out of 24 students admitted last year 18 were from Delhi University, and that too mostly from the elite colleges. Similarly, out of the 30 students admitted this year 19 are from the same University. However, there has been some change in this pattern of admissions this -year because student representatives were associated with the