People's Democracy

  All India Education Bandh Scores Huge Success

THE All India Education Bandh on December 11, organised in order to press the demand for a central legislation empowering the state governments to control and regulate the private unaided institutions, turned out to be a big success. The call for the bandh was given by the Students Federation of India (SFI) and its central executive committee has congratulated the students and activists who made the action a resounding success.

The information received from the states showed that more than 25 million students took part in the education bandh, cutting across the state boundaries. Apart from all the universities in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, all the major university centres like Lucknow University, Punjabi University, Allahabad University, Ranchi University, Jodhpur University, Osmania University, Andhra University, Bangalore University and many more remained closed on the day. The action gave the governments in power a warning to wake up and heed to the demands of the students, at least now.

Students expressed their anger against the free hand given to the private unaided institutions by the Supreme Court, which has increased the pace of commercialisation of education. The ‘user-charge’ principle recommended by the court is preventing many meritorious but poor students from accessing higher education. The private managements are interpreting the judgement in such a way as to further augment their profits and are refusing to submit to whatever little social control was suggested by the court. The students have thus registered their protest against commercialisation of education, which is also leading to several vices and evils like paper leakages, as was witnessed in the recent CAT examination.

On December 11, students came out openly to press their demands, braving the repression unleashed by several state governments that tried to suppress the voices of protest and curb the students’ right to express dissent through democratic forms of action.

In West Bengal, goons belonging to the Trinamool Congress and Congress tried to disrupt the strike by physically assaulting SFI activists. Debjyoti Jana and Devashis Das, district committee members of SFI in Kolkota, and Raju Malick, a college leader in Hooghly, were seriously injured and admitted to hospitals. The brutality of the Tamilnadu government came to the fore again when the police arrested several students who were demonstrating peacefully. The SFI CEC has condemned these attacks and demanded immediate action against the culprits.

Through a statement issued on the day, the SFI CEC demanded that the union government enact legislation in the (then continuing) winter session of parliament in order to honour the demands being raised by millions of students in the country. The statement said the immense and spontaneous response to the bandh call was a warning to the powers that be, who were threatening to deny the common mass of students an access to education and to deprive them of their democratic rights. (INN)