Onward to the 14th All India

Conference of SFI

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.

Charles Dickens in his celebrated novel – A Tale of Two Cities – had noted `This is the best of times, this is the worst of times; this is the spring of hope; this is the winter of discontent’.  We are confident enough that from the very womb of challenges, the process of a forward movement will emerge and carry the glorious legacies of ‘Study and Struggle’ and its spearhead – the SFI – forward.