February 2019 will mark three years since the sedition row took place in Jawaharlal Nehru University of Delhi. And while conversation surrounding the issue refuses to come to an end, with former Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP) members coming out with statements regarding the staged nature of the whole incident, the JNU row and the series of protests it sparked was in many ways, a seminal moment in the recent history of students movements in India. Movements of this nature continue: just last month, the students of TATA Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad went on strike against the roll-back of the flagship Bachelors in Social Sciences programme.
Protests, of course, are not a recent phenomenon in the history of our country. University spaces have often been at the centre of such protests, with students who are not only dynamic thinkers, but also possess the ability to engage with issues that pertain to their interests. The past couple of years, however, have seen an increase in the number of such oppositions from the student body, across several Indian universities. These include spaces like JNU, Delhi University, Banaras Hindu University, Film and Television Institute of India, TATA Institute of Social Sciences among others. While the nature of the protests have been diverse, there is a common strand that seems to run through all of the strikes and movements – constant questions regarding the role of the state in the running of public universities have been raised by the students.
In terms of statistics, the proportion of the central budget allocated to the Ministry of Human Resource Development has reduced from 6.15% to 3.71% between the years, 2014 and 2018. This has had effects on some of the leading institutions of higher education in the country, who have faced drastic cuts in resources. In places like JNU, there has been a reduction in the number of students being accepted to doctoral and masters programmes. At other universities like DU, teachers employed on a ad-hoc basis have been in a tussle with the authorities over the insecure nature of their employment. In the months of February and March, 2018, TISS campuses at Mumbai, Hyderabad and Guwahati were witness to large scale protests concerning the fee hikes and the fee waivers for students from the SC, ST and OBC backgrounds. While the students raised their demands to the institute, the administration cited lack of funds from the UGC as the reason behind their decision.
While the concerns regarding funding are largely unanswered, the UGC also took the decision to grant full autonomy to over sixty institutions of higher education last year, under the garb of providing greater academic freedom to the universities. This was under the NITI Aayog Action Agenda 2016-2018. What this will mean in practice, is that financial and managerial powers will be in the hands of private trusts, student fees will be raised and courses will have to be self-financed. This points towards the gradual privatisation of higher education, at the cost of the exclusion of the marginalised sections of society who do not possess the requisite economic means. Although neo-liberal policies which allowed for private universities to prosper were in place even before the NDA government assumed power, granting autonomy to institutions would mean a complete breakdown of the public education system. This would be taken over by private universities, which would lead to the creation of spaces that are accessible to a small minority of the population, predominantly upper-caste and upper-class.
While cuts in funds are a way in which the state has withdrawn from the education sector, there have been numerous instances that signal towards a growing interference of the government and its ideology in spaces that were formerly free and open to multiple, often opposing perspectives. The discourse regarding ‘nationalism’ and who then becomes the prototype of a ‘anti-national’ became extremely relevant post the February 2016 JNU incident. Since then, the same arguments have been repeated in universities across the country – Delhi, Rajasthan, Hyderabad – wherein there have been multiple incidents of seminars, conferences, screenings being brought to a halt because the content has been deemed as being against the interests of the nation state, in general. Much of these obstructions have been caused by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad, which is the student wing of the BJP. Other state officials, like the police, have also been complicit in this form of censorship that has been taking place. This has led to wrongful arrests or cases of violence that could have been avoided.
All of this points to a systematic pattern that seeks to erase voices of dissent and by doing so, enforce dominant ideologies. Thus, in many universities, positions of power are occupied by people affiliated to the ruling party. The impact is not only in the form of social and political unrest in places of learning, but incidents of protests are constructed in a manner such that it allows for the state to place restrictions on basic democratic rights such as those of freedom of speech and expression. Such attempts should be seen as attacks on every free thinking citizen who wishes to question or disagree with certain beliefs.
With the 2019 general elections right around the corner, it is, thus, important to question what is really at stake for students. The number of public universities in India that are reputed for the kind of scholarship they produce, are already few and fraught with problems. However, it is this very tiny space – which allows for conversations, debates and dissent, while attempting to be inclusive – is what India’s youth needs to fight for.