This Govt Hates Students, Universities, And Learning: Jayati Ghosh

Jayati Ghosh

First of all, I’d like to say that I feel extremely privileged to be here, because I do believe that students’ unions and the new uprising among women are our new hope. This is not something that can be contained, so I feel privileged to be part of what I think can become a very important part of change for our country in the future. 

As you just heard, the fascist government of the country is not just fascist in terms of art, society and politics, but also economically. 

What we have today in India is a very strange thing. We have a government which is neo-liberal, but it is a very incompetent neo-liberal. Earlier, it was a bit competent, but not any more. It’s incompetency has made a mess of the economy. We all are aware of the unemployment rates in the country, about the agricultural crisis, and also the fact that even small livelihoods are no longer possible in the country. This is also the government that wants to create a ‘Hindu Rashtra’, and it is therefore doing all political, cultural and institutional damage that it can cause to get closer to that goal.

What many of us couldn’t understand is why we silently took all this ever since the beginning. The first five years and then again in the next elections and everything that followed after – starting from Article 370 or other terrible judgements including Babri Masjid – it seemed that everybody accepted everything. Finally, it turned out that the CAA-NRC was the spark. That spark also, we have to remember, was led by the students of Jamia and AMU and I thank you for that. Because that created a spark which has spread across the country, and is something which has actually broadened that particular movement into a much wider one, because of all the struggles being led in different campuses. They are all relating this to something very fundamental – that this government is about exclusion, about excluding people.

‘Fees Must Fall’ is the struggle against the denial to access of education to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. CAA-NRC is very obviously about excluding Muslims. Once we realise pretty much everything this government is doing is about exclusion, our alternative has got to be inclusion and broad based, what is wonderful is that the student movements that put that spark in the anti CAA-NRC movements have been inclusive despite what people try to portray that they are mostly Muslim, they are actually much more broad based. It is this inclusion that has to become the basis and the force for what goes next. I would also like to remind you that students are in the forefront of the struggle but it also means that you’ll be in the forefront of repression. This is a government that hates students, universities, places of higher education and learning. In fact, it hates learning because universities make you think. Even if the classes are terrible and there’s no teaching, there is a connect among the student community, when they talk and ask questions – this is already very dangerous for a government which wants to impose something unilateral on you.

The systematic hate is visible on the decisions it has taken in the steps of education. The spending on education has reduced from 0.6% of the GDP in 2014 to 0.2% in the current year. You wonder why your college is not providing you with necessary facilities, why libraries dong have books, why the journal access is cut, why infrastructure is crumbling—because per capita spending by the government on students has fallen by half in the last 6 years. This is why state and central funded universities are starved of cash. After this comes the creeping privatization. It works either by pushing people into private universities or by making the public universities unaffordable. It expects students to pay their “fair share”. This basically means that this government really doesn’t think that education is valuable for society, especially higher education. They don’t want education, because they don’t want thinking-questioning citizens. What they want are technicians with skills to create but not to think, to question. Because when one starts thinking, one starts protesting against the unfair system. Hence, the attack on places where people think and question are attacked. JNU has been witnessing this for years but now its spreading to every university spaces. The money instead is being spent on “institutes of eminence” most of which are private. 

We are in a situation where their strategy is to starve higher education and in some cases destroy it, fill the faculty positions with those who are their ‘believers’ and where there is resistance, come down with a heavy hand. However, what I’ve noticed in the past few months is that this strategy doesn’t seem to work with your generation and I’m in awe of it. You are fearless in a way that I really admire and respect, and you’re showing solidarity in a way that is unprecedented at least in my lifetime. I had been around as a student during the Emergency and I can tell you what is happening today is much worse, but even the resistance today is much more impressive and inspiring. When JNU and Jamia were attacked, there were messages of solidarity from the smallest degree colleges in backward areas to top elite institutions. I have been teaching for the last 35 years, but even today, I learn more from my students that I have learnt in my whole life. Its really impressive to see the maturity, the bravery, the solidarity that you’ve been showing. There are a lot of deterrents and divisions in your way; attempts to destroy the movement by creating confusion, etc., but what I have seen already gives me a lot of faith, because you have the capacity and willingness to keep on working on the struggle.

In the entire movement, I feel a huge role is being played by women. The struggles that a woman, who is in a university or college today, has had to face – the battle with family, the battle with the extended neighbourhood, and community – some of them continue to fight just to stay where they are and study further. Going beyond the personal struggle and to battle against the Modi government is something I’m really in awe of. It is echoed in the sit-in protests of Shaheen Bagh and different protest sites in the city. Women of all ages have been at the forefront not in terms of participation alone, but the entire coordination is being done by young women is not just inspiring, but very hopeful for the future. 

The message that I’m trying to give is that what you’re doing right now is unbelievable for the future of the country and what you’re doing is has much greater resonance than your own campus and its struggles even when you don’t realize it. When you realize that your fight is the same fight as those of the workers; those who will be excluded by the CAA-NRC, by those who are denied rights; and you have the power and voice to bring it together because all massive social changes require a voice. And students hold the power to raise a voice it becomes a responsibility but all of you have shown that you can do it. Lastly, I’d really like to say from my heart that we’ve left you with a huge mess and I apologise but I see among you the hope that it will change and you have the courage, the capacity and the capability. I hope you continue to do what you do and spread out more. 

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Transcript of Prof. Jayati Ghosh’s inaugural address at a convention of students’ union representatives from across the country, ‘Unions in Action’, held at New Delhi’s Surjeet Bhavan, 29th February, 2020.

Featured Image © The Hindu

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