SFI’s March to Parliament on Aug 19 Against 

Commercialisation Of Education

THE three-day meeting of the central executive committee of SFI, held in Hyderabad from  July 19,  chalked out a programme of agitational action opposing commercialisation of education.  The SFI gave a call  of ‘March to Parliament’ on August 19 to protest against blatant commercialisation of education.  It also called upon the  student community to conduct protest demonstrations on that day in all the capital cities of the states. 

K Ragesh, president, Kallol Roy, secretary, and G Mamatha, joint secretary of SFI, announced the decisions of the central executive committee to the  media.  The SFI decided to write an open letter to the Parliament, requesting it not to privatise education.  It also decided to request the opposition parties  to discuss commercialisation of education, increase in fees and other issues relating to the students.  The SFI decided to agitate in a phased manner protesting against increase in fees in engineering, medical and other professional colleges.  The SFI also decided to send lakhs of postcards to the president of India, submit memoranda to the members of parliament, as a part of its agitational programme till the Parliament enacts a law to see that the judgement of the Supreme Court giving a free hand to the managements of private professional  educational institutions in matters of admission and fees is not implemented.

The SFI expressed concern that the state governments, taking advantage of the judgement of the Supreme Court, cancelled fifty per cent of free seats in the private engineering, medical and other professional colleges, and resorted to hefty fee hikes. 

The SFI leaders condemned the police lathicharge on students who were agitating democratically against the hike in fees in  Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. The SFI criticised the state governments for their failure in discharging their responsibility of providing education to the weaker sections and the poor and emphasised that there should be government control on education. Referring to the orders issued by the government of India recently, imposing conditions like dress code to girl students and linking of sanction of scholarships to hair cutting of the students, the SFI demanded the government to withdraw these orders immediately.