Challenges Have Made Us More Creative & Organised
Mayukh Biswas
“Educate All, Employ All, Unite All” is the slogan raised by the 17th All India Conference of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI). Even after seven decades of independence, India has not been able to ensure that all its children can go to school. Access to education has become a distant dream for many today. As per the Global Hunger Index 2022, India ranks 107, meaning that the country is home to a great number of children who go to bed with an empty stomach every day. Education has become a privilege, instead of a right. If we take a look at who remains at the margins of the education system and who have been forced to drop out either before completing a course or reaching higher education, we see that a huge number of them belong to India’s deprived sections. The pandemic has further aggravated this situation, as teaching and learning shifted to the online mode. Female, Adivasi, Dalit, and working class children bore the the brunt of the ill-effects of this shift the most.
The percentage of children enrolled in higher education is less than 30%, and among them, 67% are enrolled in private institutions. Our slogan, “Educate All” is crucial in this context, as it focuses on the need to build a robust public education system. India needs better schools, colleges and universities. The SFI demands that students from the most marginalised communities must be able to access quality education, and the task ahead of the organisation is to intensify our struggle towards this.
However, attaining education is not the only goal. What about the educated?
India is currently witnessing a sharp rise in unemployment. While around 10 lakh central government posts lie vacant, the contract system has become the new normal. Moreover, nearly all public sector undertakings are being privatised. What will happen when public sector jobs are dissolved? There will be no reservation, no social justice and no job security. Additionally, underemployment remains rampant. Through “Employ All”, the SFI demands that not only should there be jobs for all, but also policies to protect the dignity of workers and to ensure quality jobs.
Thirdly, an atmosphere of hatred has been created in India, through divisive policies and the spread of communal acrimony. It’s time to unite us all, and to wage a united struggle of peasants, workers, students, the unemployed youth and all deprived and oppressed sections.
We need meaningful, universal, public education, jobs for all, and we also need to unite the people to build mass movements against the regime which takes away our dreams.
Major Struggles of the SFI
The SFI has always been at the forefront of raising students’ pressing issues, ever since its formation. In the recent past too, the organisation has taken up the cause in several arenas.
During the ‘Fees Must Fall’ movement which spread across many major campuses in the country including the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Pondicherry University (PU), and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), the SFI was at the helm of the protests. The organisation also mobilised students against the anti-constitutional Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC). The organisation also protested against the BJP-led union government’s cutting down or complete stoppage of various fellowships. In Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and many other states, our movement demanding better facilities in welfare hostels have forced the authorities to improve the infrastructure. The SFI actively participated in the historic farmers’ movement which lasted more than a year. We could mobilise students’ unions from across India to wage a united struggle at a national level, under the banner “Unions in Action”. “Chalo Delhi” was another major campaign. During Covid-19, we provided food and medicines to the public. We distributed digital gadgets among students in need, and mobilised students against the digital divide in the country. Following the pandemic, we successfully organised a nationwide march with the slogan “Save Education, Save Constitution and Save India”, covering 23 states. Moreover, the SFI also formed our first international unit in the United Kingdom and conducted and participated in various protests concerning Indian students in the UK.
Challenges
It was definitely a challenging period as well. Campuses were closed for more than two years following the pandemic. The Modi-regime used the pandemic as an opportunity to push forth anti-people and anti-student agenda – institutionalising online education being one of them. Online education in a country where even half of the population does not have access to proper internet connection is in itself the institutionalisation of discrimination. Prolonged lockdowns affected the organised power of the student community. The SFI tried to overcome these challenges by mobilising students at the local level – in villages and remote areas.
The New Education Policy (NEP) 2020, introduced during the pandemic, intensifies the government’s project to communalise, commercialise and centralise education.
It was certainly hard to raise our protest during the pandemic, as traditional methods of political organising were not available. Nonetheless, we discovered alternatives and the hard times did not weaken our movement. Instead, it was made more creative and organised.
The Way Ahead
“Bring Back Classrooms” was one of the major campaigns that the SFI undertook during the pandemic. Many students were forced to drop their studies due to Covid-19, and a majority of these were women, Dalits and Adivasi students. The SFI needs to and will continue fighting fee hikes and discrimination unleashed in the name of caste, religion, gender etc.
Even though we have expanded to newer areas in recent years, the SFI has to reach students engaged in the study of professional courses. The SFI must and will also focus on new and less focused areas like sports and environment. The organisation will make its presence felt in the ‘Hindi belt’ as well in the North East. From being the ‘organisation of organisers’, the SFI will be known as the ‘organisation of student masses’, by focusing on local issue-based sustained movements in such regions. Indian students in other countries too face multiple challenges. Recognising this, the organisation will try to set up units in more countries.
We need to be engaged in ideological struggles to unite students against the politics of hate. All of this will be discussed in further detail at the 17th All India Conference of the SFI taking place at Hyderabad, from the 13th to 16th of this month.
Mayukh Biswas is the General Secretary of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) and the Chief Editor of Student Struggle.
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