Details

News

06 February 2015

A zonal rally and convention of Students’ Federation of India was organized in Pune (Maharashtra) on 24th of Jan, at Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Sanskrutik Bhavan. Thousands of the students attended the rally. Apart from Maharashtra, students from Madhya Pradesh also participated in the rally. The main slogan of the rally was ‘oppose the centralization and communalisation and of education and to scrap the RUSA. 

Details

News

14 January 2015

 The Students’ Federation of India (SFI), Maharashtra state committee led a month-long statewide protest of students in the Industrial Technical Institutes (ITIs) with the main demand to scrap the negative marking system which was newly introduced for ITI students and which led to thousands of students failing in their examinations. More than 25,000 students successfully participated in these SFI-led protests in 20 districts of Maharashtra. It must be remembered that ITI students form part of the future working class of our country.

Details

News

11 January 2015

The indefinite hunger strike as part of SFI led occupy campus movement in Calicut university, Kerala raising the issues of hostel crisis and fighting the attempts to smash public education enters the 92th day and is getting strengthened day after day after gaining support from various sections of the society and until now unforeseen participation of the student community.

  The hunger strike began as a voice of resistance against the vicious attempts by the congress led UDF govt to destroy the democratic atmosphere of universities ever since they came to power in 2011. One of the first initiatives they have taken was to dissolve the democratically elected syndicate and senate in different universities and set up new bodies with the members nominated by congress and its allies. Ever since the current VC , Abdul salam, took the charge in the office the only thing he has been doing is that of playing the role of a lackey of the incumber UDF government to perfection. One after another the decisions taken by VC did nothing to improve the academic status of the largest university in Kerala , but it always involved snatching away all the democratic rights from the students making their academic life more difficult and putting it to the point of uncertainty. Banning protests and demonstrations in the university, introducing punching system for research scholars who will have to go for for field work and other research purposes out of the campus, stopping the scholarships from being distributed, cutting down a huge number of trees in the campus and damaging the rich ecological diversity, selling the university land to private authorities are jus few of the dirty games played by the obedient lackeys of the right wing government in the state.

  The VC continues to impose his autocratic decisions on not only students but teachers, staff and karmacharies and this time around they too have chose the option of struggle protesting the injustices meted out. SFI is at the forefront of the fights to protect democratic rights and dignity of student community. The hunger strike began when the VC opened the already scarce hostel facility of the regular students to other pernicious money-making schemes.

As the strike is passing through its 92th day, around fourty comrades have been arrested and hospitalised with serious health problems. Still more students are coming to the forefront and the struggle continues with a determined mind that it will be victorious. The administration and government are trying their maximum to oppress the struggle using police and threatening the students with disciplinary action. None could weaken the spirit of the brave movement and it becomes an inspiration for all the students who fights neoliberal-anti democratic onslaught on education across the nation.

Details

News

11 January 2015

THE Students Federation of India (SFI) organised a successful three days long school for its activists in the Hindi speaking states was successfully in Chandigarh from June 3 to 5. A total of 91 activists from 10 states participated in the school which was first such exercise after a similar school in Delhi in 2007. Spread over five sessions, the school covered Marxist philosophy, current political situation, identity politics, organisation, and educational policy framework.

WHY A SCHOOL FOR HINDI STATES

The Hindi speaking states represent a majority of Indian population and the inability to break the organisational stagnation in this huge region has also translated into the inability to build a substantial students’ organisation at the all India level. Further, the entire region has certain definite socio-political similarities, apart from the linguistic similarity.

Firstly, all these states have historically shown poor educational standards, and particularly in the last 20 years the condition of whatever little public institutions were there has worsened, with neo-liberal dictum of ‘cuts’ directly translating into insufficient infrastructure in higher education as well as school education. Moreover, the number of private institutions in the region has meteorically increased and most of them are found flouting the norms, with active involvement of politicians of the ruling class parties in the management of these institutions.

Secondly, the rise of identity politics is clearly visible in the university campuses and colleges of the region with an ever increasing number of caste and region based groups. This has meant that while the assault on education is growing unabatedly in absence of any effective resistance, the possibilities of any wide unity are also being thwarted by identity based groups. It becomes necessary, therefore, that the activists are equipped with the politics and ideology with which they cannot only face this reality, but also gear the organisation towards expansion. It was with this understanding that a separate school for the Hindi linguistic states was organised.

MARXIST PHILOSOPHY: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Dr Omkar Shad, a former leader of SFI in Himachal Pradesh and currently the state secretary of the All India Kisan Sabha, took the first session on ‘Marxist philosophy’ and brilliantly showed how Marxist philosophy is a scientific method of seeing the world, which goes a step further and arms us to change the world as well. Some points in his presentation were particularly insightful. He outlined how the day-to-day issues of the students in their campuses might lead to spontaneous protest actions, but these have to be channelised and streamlined; for which there is a definite scientific method: “moving from quantitative change to qualitative change,” “keeping in mind the dialectics of this change,” so on and so forth. While shaping the spontaneity is one task of the organisation, the major task is to formulate “concrete slogans according to concrete conditions” and anticipate the response of the student community. The facts that some states have tremendous organisational strength means that the general understanding of the organisation is correct and that the organisation in Hindi states has failed to appropriately formulate correct slogans. Moulding of the subjectivities of the student community according to the objective reality is an essential part of the scientific method of organisation building.

PUTTING POLITICS IN COMMAND

Former all-India general secretary of the SFI, Nilotpal Basu, took the session on the current political situation. He pointed how the attempts of keeping students away from politics are not new and have always been part of the ruling class’ arsenal, but that they have intensified the drive considerably particularly in the last two decades. The student movement has to fight this depoliticisation and put politics right in front of its agenda. This doesn’t makes it ‘political’ in the sense of being merely a front of any political party; rather it stresses the fact that even the simplest of the demands of the student community can’t be achieved without being ‘political.’ The neo-liberal governance model is creating havoc in the field of education and the grievances of the student community are increasing day by day. Apart from the two main national parties of the ruling classes, almost all the regional parties are also in the grip of the neo-liberal ideology today. The student movement has to take up these issues more intensely, gradually build up the movement and move ahead.

CHALLENGE OF THE IDENTITY POLITICS

Suneet Chopra, former member of the SFI central secretariat and currently a joint secretary of the All India Agricultural Workers Union, took the session on identity politics and outlined how identity politics is a strategy of the ruling classed to disrupt the unity of the toilers and prolong its own rule. He underlined this process by citing examples from the pattern of land holdings to the mythologies. But the kind of identity politics that we are seeing currently is specific to international finance capital driven neo-liberalism where the dispossession and misery are at an historical high. Generations of ‘Eklavyas’ have been denied their right to education, with their ‘thumbs cut off’ by the Dhronacharyas of our today’s society. It is the prime duty of an organisation like the SFI to take up the dalit issues, as only by doing so would we be able to isolate the politics of identity groups. Neo-liberalism provides the material basis for the identity politics, as it elevates alienation to such high levels that individuals are reduced to separate compartments. Left politics, unlike this, has to counter the alienation and build the broadest possible unity. “Reaching out to those who are away from us” and “organising the unorganised” is the only way of countering the identity politics.

ON ORGANISATION & EDUCATION POLICIES

Vikram Singh, all-India joint secretary of the SFI, took the session on organisation and pinpointed the wrong tendencies which have hampered the organisation’s growth. He then put forth the correct organisational practices which can help us in expanding. Starting from the mass membership to building movements to consolidating the organisation to building activists and cadres --- the process of organisation building is an art as well as a science. In order to break the deadlock in the Hindi speaking region we will have to rectify the wrong trends in the organisation.

Vijendra Sharma took the fifth and last session on the education policies and demonstrated how the successive governments have enacted legislations to push forth the neo-liberal agenda in the field of education. More specifically, in the period of the twelfth five year plan, they have further intensified these moves and we are witnessing an elaborate legislative framework which would restructure education according to the requirement of the finance capital. Authoritarian regimes and undemocratic university administrations are part and parcel of this whole design and the ongoing process in Delhi University reflects the larger danger lurking ahead. These designs can be countered and effectively fought only by building greater unity among students, teachers, parents and employees.

CREDENTIALS REPORT

Out of a total of 91 delegates, nine were girls. 20 delegates were less than 20 years of age, 48 were between 20 and 25, 19 were between 25 and 30, three between 30 and 35 and one over 35 years of age. Surya Prakash, 16, of Uttar Pradesh was the youngest delegate while Hargobind singh, 43, was the oldest delegate. Six delegates work at the unit level, 37 in the district committees, 32 in the state committees and 18 at the CEC level. Kapil Bhardwaj of Himachal Pradesh has been jailed maximum (27 times) and has been victimised on several occasions for participation in movements. A majority of the delegates want to work in the democratic movement in future, and also felt that such schools should be organised every year.