People's Democracy

 Special Conference of SFI in Guwahati

A SPECIAL conference of the Student’s Federation of India (SFI) will be held from February 7-10, 2004 in Guwahati, Assam. The updated Programme and Constitution of the SFI will be taken up for adoption in this special conference.

This conference culminates a yearlong intense discussion carried out in the organisation. The entire rank and file of the organisation discussed the draft Programme adopted for discussion in the 11th all India conference held at Kozikode in February 2003. The struggles carried out by SFI against the commercialisation of education demanding a central legislation to empower the state governments in controlling the unaided institutes will be reviewed and future course of action will be planned. On February 7, 2004, there will be a massive student rally which will culminate in a public meeting. Biman Basu, the founder general secretary of the organization, will inaugurate the special conference.

The central executive committee of the Student’s Federation of India (SFI) met on December 28-30, 2003 and reviewed its activities and chalked out its future course of action. The CEC denounced the attitude of the HRD ministry and the BJP-led NDA government towards education. “The union government is misleading the people with its advertisement campaign ‘Shining India’, when the statistics of the international educational agency UNICEF are proving that India cannot achieve the goal of education for all by 2005 and erase gender disparity in education”, stated the SFI.

On the ‘Model Act on Universities 2003’ proposed by the union government, the SFI observed that it is intended to commercialise university education and to facilitate the government’s abdication of its responsibility of providing education. The SFI opposed this draconian act and appealed to all students and the entire academic community to stand united in the protests against it.

The SFI also opposed the attack on the autonomy of the Aligarh Muslim University, saying this once again exposes the communal and authoritarian nature of the central government. The SFI gave a call to the students to be prepared and join the struggles to resist these anti-student policies of the central government.