On SFI’s First International Unit
Nikhil Varghese Mathew
In 2015-16, there were over 5.75 lakh Indian students studying abroad. This number has mushroomed to over 13.20 lakh by March 2022, according to data made public by the Government of India. The USA, Canada, UAE, Australia, and UK, amongst other countries, account for the largest shares of Indian students opting for an overseas education. Projections indicate that this number will only increase in the foreseeable future.
This phenomenon needs to be rightly seen as a symptom of the deepening hold of neoliberalism in India. With the state seeking to abdicate itself completely from any role in education, higher education in India has become a market-mediated affair largely financed by Indian households. The attack on public education, evidenced in the first instance by a sharp decline in funds available for the vast majority of India’s public educational institutions, when aligned with the deteriorating employment situation in the country has resulted in a situation wherein a section of households are increasingly willing to send their children overseas. As the largest progressive mass organisation of the united and broad-based democratic student movement, it is essential that SFI engages with this reality. It is towards this end that SFI’s first international unit was set up this year, with the first SFI United Kingdom Unit Conference being held on the 4th of June. This conference was inaugurated by Comrade VP Sanu, SFI All India President, and Comrade Mayukh Biswas, SFI General Secretary.
In the year preceding June 2022, nearly 1.18 lakh Indian students opted to study in the UK – a 215% increase from 2019. With the world capitalist system in the throes of a systemic crisis, students from the Global South are increasingly viewed as sources of cheap labour in countries such as the UK. Employed in most instances on the bases of oral contracts and working in patently unjust conditions, Indian students amongst others are used as disposable labour to prop up a declining economy. Organising such working students to demand their rights, in conjunction and solidarity with other sections of the working populace, is to be considered a crucial task in undermining the stranglehold of imperialism across the world, and is to be necessarily understood as drawing from SFI’s legacy of anti-imperialist struggle. Given our understanding of the global political economy, SFI, in arguing the case internationally of “education and jobs for all”, should take charge of the mantle of international solidarity. Although a nascent beginning, SFI has been able to move in this direction by organising in solidarity with the ongoing wave of strikes in the UK. Progressive organisations seeking to mobilise student citizens of the UK have further begun organising within universities such as the University of Edinburgh, after actively seeking SFI’s input in their setting up.
An example of the differentiated impact that financialization of education has had on students in the UK from the Global South can be seen through the housing crisis, wherein it is next to impossible for such students to get safe and affordable accommodation upon having relocated to a new country. With even university-accommodation facilities being established with the intent of accumulating profit, a steep increase in rents and the absolute lack of transparency in the student housing market present an obvious impediment to students in adequately engaging with their academic and familial responsibilities.
When SFI UK undertook a survey to assess the nature of the crisis, the following facts came to the fore:
Students spent, on an average, over 30 days in finding a place to stay after moving to the UK. There are multiple students who have reported not finding accommodation even after two months, with students even stating that it took them 120 days of moving from couch to couch to finally get a place of their own. It is to be noted that most such students move to the UK for a one-year Master’s degree. That it can take a student so long to find a decent place to stay is a damning indictment of the woeful living conditions that the government and universities have allowed to perpetuate through systemic neglect. Multiple students have reported being forced to live out of their suitcases for weeks on end due to patently unaffordable housing. Students are asked to pay multiple months’ rent as deposit, with a number of students even reporting being forced to consider dropping out of their registered courses owing to the steep and upfront nature of these deposits.
With limited access to financial resources, many students have resorted to staying far away from their campuses, resulting in long commutes and often in them even being forced to miss classes. Students have reported being subjected to racial and gender discrimination and harassment by agents. Furthermore, there are multiple reported instances of students being cheated by agencies and scammed out of their deposits. All of the above have resulted in severe instances of deterioration in mental health and overall wellbeing. It is in this background that SFI UK has decided to campaign around the student-housing crisis. This was raised by comrades even before the formal institution of the unit, with representations being made before Members of the Scottish Parliament in March 2022. Our concerns were subsequently raised in the Scottish Parliament. The current campaign seeks to similarly raise this issue throughout the UK in an attempt to rally all students who are afflicted by the commercialisation of education.
In an attempt to deal with the sharp rates of inflation and the resulting unaffordability of daily necessities, students are now forced to work in increasingly precarious conditions. With many students reporting working 12-14 and even 18 hour shifts and with scant hours being spent in the university, it is easy to see how engagement with organised student politics and organisations becomes a difficult task. The frontier for mobilising students therefore in such countries cannot remain restricted to campus spaces, but must also engage with the lives of students as workers. It is thus that the organisation seeks to intervene increasingly in the particular issues faced by working students, be it either through working with trade unions, or directly in cases of complaints received reporting mistreatment and exploitation.
Noting that a significant section of students who move to the UK have been kept isolated from the democratic struggles of the Indian masses, SFI takes the role of political education in building a mature and militant progressive student consciousness seriously. The unit has taken this forward through a series of protests highlighting the right-wing assault by the RSS-BJP combine upon India’s constitutional fabric, public lectures – including one by the former SFI All-India President Comrade Sitaram Yechury – and movie screenings, amongst others. It is to be particularly noted, however, that SFI UK has also attempted to work towards the organisation’s programmatic goal of achieving an education system that can ensure education and jobs for all, by intervening in a limited capacity in issues of policy making. This it has done, for instance, by placing representations before the Government of Kerala delegation to the UK in October 2022, wherein it raised concerns regarding regulatory, facilitative, and institution-building issues. The unit is also working towards representations highlighting policy failures surrounding the implementation of overseas scholarships, particularly for SC, ST, and OBC students.
Nikhil Varghese Mathew is a PhD Candidate at the International Department of the University of Edinburgh.
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