March 5: Protest In Solidarity With Pondicherry University

Student Struggle Editorial Team

The students of Pondicherry University, under the leadership of the Students’ Council, have been on protest against their administration for around a month now. The protest, which started around February 6th, is against the administration’s move to steeply increase tuition fee for all courses as well as against the newly introduced transportation fee. The third major demand of the Council is to implement a 25% reservation for students from Puducherry.

The Students Council has maintained that the hike, which amounts to around 83% increase from the existing figure, will make the university entirely inaccessible to a large section of students who come from the margins of the society.

Despite the high intensity of their resistance, which started off and has continued with mass boycott of classes, indefinite hunger strikes and occupation of the administration’s offices, the protesting students of PU and their just demands have only faced neglect from both the media and the university administration.

The administration has remained adamant about the hike and has also sent out notices to students demanding them to give up the protest and get back to classes, lest they face action as per the code of conduct. Instead of lending a ear to their demands, the administration has asked the protesters to move out of the administrative building and protest elsewhere on campus, as though its not the administration’s duty to provide students with affordable education. The university Registrar has also come out with a release explaining the “rationale” behind the hike – which happens to be an increase in the prices of materials, electricity, fuel etc. – and has even gone to the extent of accusing the students of having an “unknown agenda”. National media, on the other hand, apart from some scattered few reports that came out during the beginning of the protest, has not followed up the developments of the protest or paid attention to the students’ demands thoroughly.

The Students’ Council, however, has refused to budge in the face of any of these and has continued their protest into its 28th day today. Students who were on hunger strike for quite some days have been admitted with medical emergencies, yet new protesters have taken their place to continue the resistance.

In solidarity with Pondicherry University’s struggle, the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) has given a nation-wide call to observe tomorrow, March 5th, as ‘National Protest Day’ against Modi government’s attempts to “privatise education”.

Read the full statement below:

Stand with the fighting students of Pondicherry University!

It’s been more than 27 days that the students have been protesting against the arbitrary fee hike by the administration. But instead of solving the issue with discussion, the university administration had invited police and peacefully protesting students were manhandled and locked up.

The students union has given a call for hunger strike which reached 5th day today, but there had not been any effort from the administration to resolve the issue or at least have a fruitful discussion. 

Central Executive Committee of SFI extends its unconditional support to the striking students and appeals all the units across the country to observe tomorrow 5th March as national protest day against privatisation of education, Modi regime and in solidarity with fighting students of Pondicherry University. 

Sd/-

VP Sanu (President)
Mayukh Biswas (General Secretary
)


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