SFS 2nd Conference

SFS 2nd Conference

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Politics and Students


With the start of new session, the political environment of the campus is on the rise and the question arises, what the politics has to do with the educational institutions? This question has prime importance and therefore Students for Society (SFS) presents here its views on students’ politics.
The word ‘Politics’ nowadays is generally recognized only as elections, violent clashes of different groups, opportunism of vote politics and a power struggle. “Is this the only politics”? Of course not, but merely one of its aspects. It has another aspect too, the progressive one. As we look throughout the history, we find that students and youth had always played an active role to end up all types of oppressions and exploitations in our society. Shaheed Bhagat Singh is one of those revolutionary leaders who has lead the youth, organized them under Naujawan Bharat Sabha and HSRA to end the imperialist plunder of the working masses of our country by British and their Indian underdogs. Their struggle had remarkable impact on the whole independence movement. “A good government cannot be a substitute for self-government.” With this quote in the manifesto of Naujawan Bharat Sabha, they clearly established the plan for complete independence rejecting all the compromising ideas prevailing then. Their contribution is an example of how much impact the students’ has on the development of society.
The students have always played a crucial role in every single sphere of social and political affairs. Be it the struggle for independence, resistance for democratic rights during the period of emergency, the struggles of Telangana, Kashmir, North-east or the Naxalite movement, the propelling force has always been the students. Apart from these, Punjab has a rich history of progressive students’ movement that has always addressed the social and political problems throughout. However there has been struggles lead by students, on the international scale opposing the imperialist aggression of USA and Britain on Iraq and Afghanistan. Whole Europe has witnessed a strong opposition to fee hikes and the economic policies adopted during this ongoing economic crisis. So is the case during the uprising in Egypt and other Arab countries last year. In fact every social transformation has always seen a strong involvement of youth and students and their greater energy and enthusiasm always revolutionized the whole process of development of the society.
The two opposite aspects of politics: Historically there has existed two sides of the politics altogether – one is the pro people and the other being the anti people. The nature of politics will be decided by whether it is in the interest of common or to serve the ruling class. Talking of the pro people aspect, comes into the mind the French revolution where the toiling masses overturned the feudal establishment or talk of the American war of independence where the American people defeated the colonial British power or the great Bolshevik Revolution  of Russia or the Vietnam war where the people militia protected their homeland against the imperialist America. Of the Indian history comes into mind is the great peasant uprising led by Banda Singh Bahadur in Punjab state or the guerrilla rebellion of the Marathas under Chhatarpati Sivaji or Gadar and Kooka movement in North, movement of Birsa Munda and Gundadhar in eastern and central India during the colonial period.
The majority of the country still live under extreme poverty despite all the hard work, but a small section of individuals have flourished by exploiting the labour of those toiling masses. This exploiting section has been in power and tries to maintain the status quo. Our governmental policies have been proved catastrophic for the people. The policies like Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation (LPG) have pushed further the marginalized and denied them the basic rights. It is serving the foreign imperialist plunder of the resources and labour of India undermining the possibility of independent development of the country. These imperialist forces have been in coalition with the reactionary feudal forces.  The opportunist vote politics, oppression on peoples’ movements, huge corruption, dividing the people on communal lines, the caste politics and promoting the consumerist trends etc. all serve the interests of these exploiting sections and represents their brand of politics. So these opposite aspects of the politics crop up due to different interests of the sections of society, a manifestation of concrete social realities.
Educational campuses and Politics: We also observe the reflection of this anti-people politics in the campuses of educational institutions, where there have been a deliberate effort to ‘de-politicise the students’. The students are advised to stay away from politics and the student unions are not allowed to exist in most of the professional colleges and deemed universities.
 ‘Politics is only waste of time’, ‘ordinary people have nothing to do with it’, ‘campus elections are platform of power struggle and violence’ etc. These ideas are just the reflection of the vulgar parliamentary politics of our country but being propagated and promoted by a section of media and authorities to build an anti-student-politics atmosphere. The main driving force behind this nature of anti-student politics of the ruling classes lies in the ever existing probability of nurturing a progressive students’ movement that would question the existing exploitative system and organise the broader masses to change it as Shaheed Bhagat Singh did.
Whenever, there is a democratic environment for campus politics, it has been crushed under the name of ‘decriminalisation’ the politics and preventing violence. However there has never been any action on some elements, which have vulgarised the whole student politics and turned it into a battleground for clashes of different power groups. Such goon-politics can be seen as violent clashes, threatening and forcing students to vote for them etc. These groups generally have support of police and the administration. The socio-economic reality of our society is such that the feudal culture, casteism, fascism, patriarchy and self-centredness exist here and is manifested as vulgar politics inside the campus. The energy of youth is exploited by glamorising the politics and promoting heroism and consumerism to create work force for this vulgar politics. All this results in distribution of alcohol and parties are organised during elections in order to buy the votes and grab the power at council. Most of organisations, instead of addressing the issues of students and broader masses, work for the petty interests of some individuals and the students don’t have any active role in their decision making. Money and muscle power plays key role in the elections of Panjab University pushing back all the progressive aspects of the students’ politics.  All this is the reflection of cheap mainstream politics in educational institutes. Authorities too, play their part in promoting all these things as even after the huge presence of police and security, the liquor flows freely inside the campus and students are threatened right under their nose.
In fact the purpose of employing police inside the campus is not to conduct a free and just election but to terrorize students so that they will repel this whole democratic process. The media, last year, has portrayed the elections as a battleground of goon politics. Whatever happened last year, can be indeed seen as a conscious attempt at ending the student elections, even the events in the present year when some policemen got into a spat with members of a student organisation points towards the same. Also, we can see the same when deliberately holidays are adjusted pending the Election Day. Identifying the nature of the “Report on A Policy Framework for Reforms in Education” prepared by Mukesh Ambani and Kumarmanglam Birla, this de-politicization of educational campuses can be directly seen as a action in direction of privatization and commercialization of education as it was a perquisite for the private investment in education sector. Moreover the Lyngdoh Norms for elections are very much questionable for its role in de-democratizing the student politics.
Due the constant effort to de-politicise students’ politics and vulgarisation of it by some reactionary elements, the students somewhat repel the political activity in educational campuses. This isn’t a positive sign for the process of development the society. So we must identify the nature and the prospective of such politics instead of blindly opposing root existence of students’ unions or students’ politics. We don’t live on islands that are isolated from whole society but an important part of it. Being the most energetic section of the society and a product of a social investment, it is our duty to pay back the society.
In fact student politics must be recognised as democratic platform on which the student can understand the concrete realities of the society and organise themselves to solve the problems existing in it. So each student must support the democratization and politicization of educational campuses and work together on the principles of our revolutionary leaders like Shaheed Bhagat Singh so that the exploitation of nation by nation and man by man will become impossible.