The developments over the last few days with regard to JNU are disturbing for more than one reason.
Firstly, students have been held guilty on the draconian charge of sedition on the basis of video clippings which have not been verified for authenticity, nor have all the people who were present in the objectionable event been identified. The decision to arrest the student union president, Kanhaiya Kumar, has not been reached through proper procedure and has in fact been very hasty. What is the reason for whipping up emotion without investigation, and what is the unwholesome hurry to throw a young student into jail?
After all, the government is tolerant of people who celebrate the birthday of the assassin of the father of the nation.
Secondly, piling a huge police force on the JNU campus, making statements that JNU is "anti-national", and securing a general permission to search and take any student from the campus at any time are ill-conceived and politically-motivated decisions as we don't find any perspective in these measures on handling problems in public institutions; nor have the protocols for identifying wrongdoers from others been observed.
Rather we find an attack, blame game and use of brute police force in the name of nationalism against defenseless students. Even if some students have not been right in doing certain things, we are dismayed by the fact that the older persons in authority have been not just been lacking in sensitivity, maturity and balance to give young people an opportunity to rethink their priorities, but have also turned vindictive and mindlessly hostile towards them.
Thirdly, if anti-national slogans were indeed raised by a bunch of students, the proper and mature response to it would be to take action after a full enquiry that gives them an opportunity to explain their actions, a right which any human including a terrorist is entitled to. The aim of such an enquiry in educational institutions would be to make the errant students understand their transgression through dialogue and leading by example. Students are young and passionate. They also have great commitment to ideals, which are sometimes misplaced.
In a democratic country, the reasonable response to radical student activism is not to deal with an iron hand, but with a discerning approach.
Instead, right from FTII, HCU and now in JNU, what we are witnessing is an authoritarian and dictatorial attitude towards young people. The allegations heaped on them are but an attempt to distract the public from the uncomfortable issues that young people raise about the ills of our education system. The growing number of deaths and suicides of young people in the past few years is an indicator of the harsh reality faced by them in this country.
What is painful is that many incidents of deaths of young people in the recent past have occurred inside educational institutions-discrimination in HCU and overcharging and torturing of young women in a private college in Tamil Nadu and others of the kind. It seems our educational institutions are in danger of becoming pressure zones for students due to misuse of power by authorities. We have to seriously review our approach to students and this is the most important thing for Human Resources Ministry to understand.
Lastly, political activism is important to socialise youth to become responsible citizens. Skill development and technological education alone will only produce automatons. The experience of the rich and prosperous middle-eastern economies, and those of East Asia, where high incomes, smart cities and technological sophistication have been achieved without parallel efforts in building an intellectual culture, gender equality or democratic practice is indicative of what happens when the focus is only on economic growth and technology. In fact, such intellectual and cultural vacuum in a situation of material wealth is likely to breed fundamentalism. If we clamp down on youth activism, plurality of opinion and debate, then there would be no insight or creativity.
Our educational institutions now have thousands of first-generation learners who are coming from remote parts of the country. They learn to live with people from diverse social backgrounds, to passionately explore manifold viewpoints and to treat women and others as equals, due to the ongoing culture of debate and discussion on social issues. As someone who came to JNU from outside and not belonging to any political party, I could see a qualitative difference in this campus in terms of intellectual passion and egalitarian values among the students.
JNU campus is probably the only place in Delhi, and among the few in the country, where women can walk alone, free of fear at anytime, in the middle of the night. I doubt that a government department can create a 1,000-acre space that is safe and hospitable for women. It takes years to build institutions, but days to destroy them.
There are 700 universities in the country today and millions of students who are studying there. Indian students face problems like lack of classrooms, paucity of teachers and absence of library, water and toilet facilities. Girls get harassed and intimidated, while Dalit students get excluded. There is widespread academic fraud with the starting of numerous spurious and fake journals that have been set up to grant academic performance scores to faculty for recruitment and promotion. There is a collapse of quality measures in the assessment of academic performance and thousands of private colleges are mass producing degrees.
Any sensible Human Resources Ministry will focus on these problems that affect the multitude of aspiring youth in the country. Picking up isolated and small events, and targeting individual students indicates lack of vision and direction on the part of the ministry.
(V.Sujatha is a Professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.