The recent development of a certain antipathy for politics in the student front needs to be seriously dealt with. It is an issue, which has been greatly harming the growth of democratic and secular forces in the country. Our country, with the rich heritage of student movement right from the days of the freedom struggle should not have gone through the phase, but since we are experiencing it, so an analysis is a must for every responsible citizen. We must know and understand the gravity of the matter, the dearth of knowledge about the policies among the youth or students and the negligence that has been developed regarding the state’s functioning will show its effect in the near future. It is not far when the country will face a grave crisis of good and honest politicians.
I stress on the words “good and honest” in the above paragraph because as we all have been aware of in the recent times, there have been massive up strides in the field of people with criminal records fighting democratic elections in the country. Very often in India, we find rich people fighting elections just on the basis of funds, backed by certain political parties. Now, if we want to change these practices which are eating the very basis of the country, the students have to get involved. They have to get involved in the functioning of the country. It’s not possible for the students to actively participate in the various government bodies, but as they say “charity begins at home” so the students can at least try to get involved in the functioning of the various bodies which frame the educational policies.
We all know how the student communities are being handled in our country at the present time, the hierarchy is basically that some people sitting in their air-conditioned chambers will frame the syllabus and the policies which the students in the classrooms will have to abide by. It is not at all justified that they are forced on the very structure which will frame their future. Every single student should have the right to decide what he wants to or should study. The students should have a fair say even in the infrastructure of the institution, because it is ultimately them only who are going to go through the infrastructure of the institution. But we all know that these basic rights of the student community are being deprived of them. Now, the question comes is that why they are deprived of them.
The answer lies in the very attitude of the students in the country, which the system has framed in accordance with its own benefits. The semester system adopted by a majority of the courses of the institution leave them with no time to think about the society, they suffer from a complete alienation from the very system which dictates them according to its own free will. The students find it difficult to express themselves under the present undemocratic system.
I am taking a very simple example to explain what I have been saying, the general colleges in Assam have been suffering from a very saddening crisis of late, the problem being regarding their compartmental exams. The compartmental exams of these colleges are held after one year of the regular examination, this violates the basic essence of the semester system. Even though the colleges under the scheme are under the semester system, but still their exams are held on a yearly basis. Now, everyone knows that they should protest against this policy of the government, but a variety of questions crop up whenever they think of expressing their thoughts and problems. The student unions, once served as the voice of the student community, now led by the growing pimps of the rulers, have turned a deaf year to them, it is of course obvious that none of them will speak up against the very government which funds them.
It was just an example, but we all know that the problem might be different, but the circumstances are the same basically in almost every institution in the country. The unions have to be the voice, but instead they have turned to mere deaf and dumb dolls. A single student cannot do anything to change the system, however the students as a whole can wreck the system.
The unions these days in most of the colleges are formed by selection rather than election. The alienation comes handy here too for those rulers sitting in their publicly funded chairs, as they separate the student community from the hands of democracy and the students do not even understand that, being constantly pressurized massively under the growing undue pressure of society to run the rat-race.
It is the system which puts the students in this rat race, no student believes in it from birth, but as he or she falls in this system, one is made to believe that there are not enough seats in higher education or enough jobs for them and that they need to go through the cutthroat competition to secure the scarcely available ones. Someone should ask those people sitting in power a simple question,” if you cannot give us a scope to pursue higher education or jobs, why are you making us spend our parent’s hard earned money in the name of education? It is not your money, which you earned by making others work, it is money earned by toiling out there in the world, in the real world, not under the luxuries of your large mansions.”. It is, however evident that our government does not have the money to increase the number of seats, but they have enough money to fund numerous private institutions under the private public partnership (PPP) mode.
But the system kills the questions from the students. The system with elements like unfair sessionals, favoritism, ego problems from the teachers , who turn out to be mere puppets of those serving higher bodies, mutes the student community by giving threats of destroying their career. It is high time that these undemocratic systems have to do away with. And as a result, the antipathy towards the functioning of the country and thus the alienation from the society itself. It is not very far when we will be faced with the dearth of people able to lead the country just as we are going through the scarcity of jobs. The student communities need to come together to fight such chauvinist forces harming the future of our great country.
It is the student community’s sacred duty to infuse in itself the desire for a democratic system. A system which will work and protect their rights as students, a system which holds them under a common banner, a banner protecting their essence against the anti-student policies.
We must not forget that Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and many more radical freedom fighters voiced their protest against the imperialists when they were students only. The physical presence of the imperialists is long gone, it is time their effect on our education system should be made to go away, if not by persuasion then by force. In any way, we must understand that politics is not the arena to gather funds for yourself, but rather to take the country forward one step further towards the formation of a pro-people state.
Image Credits: The Indian Express
