People's Democracy

Against Commercialisation Of Education

Students March To Parliament

& Sit On Mass Hunger Strike

 OVER six thousand students from across the country participated in a ‘March to Parliament’ on December 2 organised by three Left student organisations – Students Federation of India (SFI), All India Progressive Students Union (AIPSU) and All India Students’ Bloc (AISB).

In a dramatic move, the three organisations have announced a 48-hour mass hunger strike at the parliament street. At the time of going to press, more than 3000 students are participating in the hunger strike.

The protesters and hunger-strikers were addressed by Nilotpal Basu, Md Salim, (CPI-M),  Devarajan (Forward Bloc), Abani Roy (RSP) and other leaders of the Left movement. K K Ragesh and Kallol Roy from SFI, Aritro Chatterjee from AISB and Rajeev Bnerjee from AIPSU also addressed the gathering.

Later a delegation of the three Left student organisations met the union human resources development minister Arjun Singh and presented a memorandum detailing their demands, prominent among which is the enactment of a central legislation to empower state governments to control rampant self-financing institutions. The organisations felt that such a legislation is necessary to set right the utter chaos prevailing in the field of private-run higher education in our country today. At present there is no set criterion to regulate fee, mode of admission or the appointment of teachers etc in such institutions. Exorbitant fee is being charged in many institutions, thereby making education out of reach of common students.

They also demanded that deemed universities which are running various sub-standard courses across our country be brought under government control.

In the memorandum submitted, the organisations stated that the Supreme Court judgment in the TMA Pai vs State of Karnataka case has resulted in chaos in the arena of higher and professional education. The judgement had ruled against the control of government on the private unaided self-financing institutes. This has given a free hand to the private management’s to decide the mode of admission, the fee to be collected and the appointment of teachers. The private management’s started collecting exorbitant fee and merit was replaced by money in deciding the fate of admissions. Many deserving and qualified students are thus being deprived of their right to education. It the trend towards privatisation of education is not reversed, this rampant commercialisation of education cannot be checked, they stated.

Referring to another major concern of higher education – the permission given to many private institutions to start deemed universities, the student organisations pointed out that many private deemed universities are bereft of infrastructure and fail to maintain the norms required of a university.  “Professional institutions are vying to obtain permission to convert their institutions into deemed universities as it further absolves them from social responsibility and government control. This unhealthy trend is ruining the future of thousands of students studying in such sub-standard institutions. All institutes with dubious credentials should be immediately derecognised. The government should take the responsibility of the students studying in these institutes and ensure that they are suitably given admission in other institutes”, they demanded.

Saying that the policies of globalisation and liberalisation being pursued by the government are leading to large-scale privatisation and commercialisation of education in the country thus shutting off entry to students from poor and middle class background, the student bodies put forth the following demands:

• To enact a central legislation empowering the state governments to control the unaided self-financing institutions.

• To control the deemed universities

• To halt the process of commercialisation of education

(INN)