Ritabrata
Banerjee
THE
14th all India
conference of
Students’ Federation of India is going to be held at Madurai,
Tamilnadu during September 4-7,
2012. The conference manch has been named after the founder
all India
president
of the organisation Comrade C Bhaskaran and former general
secretary Comrade
Subhash Chakraborty. The venue of the conference has been
named after the
student martyrs from Tamilnadu Comrades Somasundaram and
Chembulingam.
A
total of 750 delegates and observers from all over the country
representing
more than 40 lakh students and 23 state units will be
assembling at Madurai to
deliberate and discuss on various issues and matters related
to education,
organisation and politics. The conference will decide the
future course of
action to resist the commercialisation and centralisation of
education and to
intensify the struggles for democratic rights and equitable
access.
Education,
in history, has always been a site of contestations. Be it on
the question of
who gets access to education and who gets denied, or what
comprises the content
and ideology of education. The infamous episode of Ekalavya in
the Mahabharata
or the denial of education to women and the oppressed
castes by the Manusmiriti
are but a few examples of how far back this conflict goes in
Indian history.
Debates over the ideological agenda of colonial education in India
or over
saffronisation of education by the BJP-RSS betray its deeply
contested terrain.
Karl
Marx had noted emphatically - “The Communists have not
invented the
intervention of society in education; they do but seek to
alter the character
of that intervention, and to rescue education from the
influence of the ruling
class.”
The
poor status of education in India
continues to exist despite the otherwise high growth rates the
country has
achieved. One of the most important reasons for this has been
the continuing
apathy and unwillingness of successive central governments in
committing more
resources to the education sector. The UPA-I government also
did not make any
serious efforts to overcome this problem. The small increase
in spending, which
was done under pressure from the Left parties, was also far
from sufficient and
reached nowhere near ensuring the promised spending of 6 per
cent of GDP and 10
per cent of the budget on education. The result is that today
around 90 per
cent of our country’s youth in the 17-23 years age group are
outside the ambit
of higher education, as opposed to 45 to
85 per cent enrolment in higher education in developed
countries. The literacy
rate of our country is also just 65.38 per cent with the male
literacy rate
being 75.96 per cent and the female literacy rate being as low
as 54.28 per
cent. Even out of those students who take admission in Class
I, only 16.6 per
cent reach Class
XII as per
Yashpal Committee Report. As expected,
the poor and the marginalised (females, dalits, adivasis,
minorities, OBCs) are
facing the brunt of these faulty policies. The literacy rate
among SC/STs is
52.2 per cent, Muslim minorities 59.1 per cent and OBCs is 65
per cent.
NEO-LIBERAL
AGENDA
Attempts
to further the neo-liberal agenda of commercialisation also
continued in
various forms. The UPA-II government has waged a renewed
offensive in the field
of education. This constitutes the twin attacks of
commercialisation and
centralisation of education. The attempt is not only to push
for increased
commercialisation and opening up of the education sector to
foreign players,
but also to fundamentally change the structure of education
sector in the
country. To put it in simple terms, the thrust is to
fundamentally curb the
democratic values in the realm of education policy and make it
subservient to
the whims and fancies of the market.
The
most dangerous step in this direction is the proposed The
Higher Education and
Research Bill (THER) 2011 which has been brought by the
government. The
defining feature of this bill is that it takes away all rights
of policy and
decision making in education from democratically elected
bodies like the
parliament and state legislatures and gives sweeping powers to
a seven member
body. Similar steps can also be seen in the field of school
education where
attempts are being made to undermine the autonomy of state
boards in the name
of uniform syllabi and curriculums.
All
this is being done in the name of “reforming and rejuvenating”
the education
sector in the country and is being presented as a drastic
reform of the
otherwise inefficient education system, which prevails in the
country. While
the government is not showing any inclination to increase
resource allocation
for the education sector, it wants to acquire all powers to
implement its ‘one
size fits all’ policies. Education, especially in a country
like ours, which is
marked by large diversities, cannot be straight jacketed. It
would require a
participatory and democratic attitude, where diverse sections
can both relate
to and benefit from attaining education, to improve the sorry
state of affairs
which prevails today. It is indeed absurd to think that some
“enlightened”
individuals sitting in Delhi can decide upon what policies
should be undertaken
to address the problems of providing quality education to
students studying in
a remote village in the north eastern part of the country as
well as the urban
poor in our big cities. It also fails logic to argue that a
clique of some
individuals, who will have no accountability whatsoever to the
common people,
would get rid of all the problems which are facing the
education system today.
MARKET
DRIVEN
It is
important to understand that the driving force behind all
these measures is the
urge to cater to the needs of the market and undermine the
progressive content
of education in the country. To take an example, the HRD
minister recently gave
a statement stressing on the need for having identical syllabi
for science and
commerce streams at the higher secondary level across all
states. One might ask
why there is no felt need to include humanities or social
sciences as well. The
answer is clear. Science and Commerce streams have a direct
relation to the
needs of the market today. The ruling elite in our country
needs supply of a
skilled labour force to compete in the world market. That is
not the case with
social sciences or liberal arts which have no direct
contribution to material
production in the country, and in fact poses a challenge to
the imperialist
hegemony which would want us to interpret our society in a
particular manner.
Such
designs constitute a concerted attack on the very idea of our
country, which is
known for the deep rooted democratic consciousness among the
people.
Disregarding all the earlier recommendations of committees
appointed by the
government, they now seek to undermine the federal aspects of
our Constitution.
There is an urgent need to expose the real intentions behind
the government’s
“radical reforms”. A thorough and painstaking campaign must be
launched to
explain the dangers which such ‘reforms’ pose to the education
sector at large.
Also we must wage militant struggles to pressurise the
government to commit
more resources to the education sector and stop its dilly
dallying on our long
pending demands. It must be forced to withdraw all plans which
seek to further
the agenda of centralisation and commercialisation of
education. All such moves
like scrapping multiple regulatory bodies like the UGC and
AICTE, pushing for
common school boards and curriculums, and other regressive
provisions in the
THER Bill 2011 must be defeated. We must resist all these
attacks on the very
spirit and grain of diversity which the SFI and democratic
movements have
always upheld and cherished. Given the larger stakes involved,
there is also an
urgent need to mobilise the student community along with other
democratic
sections in the society against such moves.
DEMOCRATIC
RIGHTS
With
the advent of neo-liberal globalisation, there has been a
frontal attack on the
democratic rights of common people throughout the world.
Students are no
exception. For students, this attack has been two pronged --
depoliticisation
and curbing their democratic rights. The student unions have
faced the biggest
attack in this milieu. Most of the educational institutions,
including most
central universities, do not have elected students unions in India.
The
situation is much worse in private institutions where a
majority of the
students are enrolled today.
The
SFI has been at the forefront of demanding and safeguarding
the democratic
rights of the students. One recent example of this struggle is
in the state of
Rajasthan, where a consistent struggle for five years forced
the state
government to restore student union elections in the state.
The students voted
in a big manner for the SFI which has registered its best
performance in the
state till date. Also in Himachal Pradesh SFI has been
registering emphatic
wins braving all sorts of repression and heinous attacks from
the right and
communal forces. Significant victories have been achieved also
at Kerala,
Tripura, Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu. Successes have been
registered in some
institutions of Maharashtra,
Assam,
Odisha
also.
In West Bengal,
there has been
an all-round attack on the democratic rights of the student
community under the
new regime. There have been constant physical attacks on the
cadres and the
supporters of the democratic student movement. They are not
being allowed to
sit in their examinations. They are also not allowed to enter
the colleges.
Since the new government came to office, more than 120 SFI
activists were
hospitalised. A total of 103 elected students unions have been
forcibly
captured. In the elections to student unions of 63 colleges,
SFI registered
victory in 53 colleges. Incidents of beating up of teachers at
various levels
are also taking place at regular intervals. The state
administration is
shamelessly shielding the miscreants who belong to the ruling
party. All
elements of the horrific days of the seventies in the state
are in the air.
Fighting for the democratic rights of the student community
needs to be one of
the main agenda of the SFI in the coming days.
In the
47 months since the last all India
conference of SFI, six of our valiant comrades have been
butchered by forces of
reaction. The crime of these six valiant brave hearts was that
they cherished
the values of democracy, national unity and integrity, social
and economic
equality and decided to promote these values. They were
murdered because they
directly challenged the authority of the ruling classes and
their agents. These
brilliant flames have been put out. But these six flames, like
many others
earlier, have generated hundreds and thousands of sparks that
continue to glow
with determination. Spreading like wildfire they are conveying
the message that
we shall advance to a better future and those who are
obstructing this will be
consumed by the raging torrents of history. Our enemies have
succeeded in
killing six of our comrades but they cannot kill their ideas.
The ideas of
Comrades Abhijit Mahato, Partha Biswas, Tilak Tudu, Swapan
Koley, A B Bijesh
and Anish Rajan will remain the dominant ideas on most of the
campuses in our
country. They have proved once again, like our innumerable
martyrs before, that
rivers in spate cannot be held back by straws.
The
challenging task of organising and uniting the millions of
Indian students who
continue to remain outside the ambit of organised student
movement awaits us.
