Waiting for an End….. JNU!!

The spiraling protests and the counter protests at the Jawaharlal Nehru University are refusing to die out. What started as an event to mark the anniversary of 2001 parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, by alleged students of the university, at the campus has snowballed in to a gigantic political controversy, resulting in detentions under sedition charges, assault on journalists and amongst other things.
Basically, The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) imbroglio has produced two important issues for public discussion. The first focuses on the limits that sedition (patriotism?) places on freedom of speech. It asks, for example, whether shouting anti-India slogans, by unknown persons as the First Information Report says, constitutes a ground for booking the students’ union president under sedition laws. If fine distinctions were to be made between slogans, protests, speeches, dissent, and incitement, and further between fuzzy and definite consequences of such actions, would not only some (very few) free speech expressions be considered seditious? These are crucial issues for our constitutional democracy today, and the JNU case has presented our courts with a great opportunity to give us a doctrine on the limits to free speech in India.
The second issue, entangled in the first, is with respect to the place of JNU in the postcolonial nation’s public life as the university nears its 50th year. I belong to the first decade of JNU, a magical period during which we gained perspective and learned the power of ideas and of democratic deliberation. It was a time when we became passionate about causes and when no tyranny was fearful enough to suppress our dissent.
Although, the whole university has condemned the “India ki barbadi tak” slogans raised in JNU on 9 February. That the university’s premises were used for such an act has also been condemned in the strongest of voices. It is yet not even certain whether students raising those objectionable slogans were from the University. JNU premises are open spaces because the University ethos claims that one needs open mental and physical space for proper thinking. Indeed, the University has strongly rejected being a surveillance campus and contrary to what some news anchors said, not everyone’s ID cards are checked when they enter. Students on foot, in autos, bikes and buses enter and leave as they please.

Yes the slogans were raised. However, were these slogans seditious? Did they incite violence so much so that it would lead to the breaking up of the country? No, no and no. In a country where Salman Khan is let off for lack of evidence and Sanjay Dutt, in a TADA case, makes a mockery of his sentence by being more on parole than being in jail, can you blame a JNU student for questioning the legitimacy of the Afzhal Guru trial? A trial where the judgment itself stated that Guru was being sent to the gallows more to satiate the collective conscience of the people than for satisfactory evidence.

Before people start frothing at their mouths for the slogans that followed, the entire JNU community condemns them and stands for a university-level enquiry into the incident. The student organizers deserve at least a fair enquiry, if nothing else. But before anyone could look into the incident, find out who said what and sieve fact from fiction the government had begun its trial and the media had given its verdict. The minimum the government could have done was to get the tapes checked in a forensic lab before arresting the University’s student union (JNUSU) president for sedition. They could have set up a university-level enquiry first. It is difficult to say who fed on whom but news channels had a field day maligning the one University of repute in this country.

But still there is question that remains that was it nationalistic to insult JNU, its 47 year old reputation, its students, its culture, its research and its education nationally as well as internationally? What prospects do now remain for students who are applying for Fulbright and Ford Foundation fellowships; for those who are going to present their papers across India and the world and for those applying for postdoctoral studies abroad? How has such a swift condemnation of every student of JNU and the institution brought any honor to India’s name? How can any nationalist be proud of this?

                                              

Educational frauds that is to leave students in a mess

With the ongoing trend of tempting and misleading the students and their parents through equivocal gimmicks, the ubiquitous coaching Institutions, today, have occupied the every possible and accessible space in the narrow streets of our thronged society. Sticking, pinning and putting up the billboards, impersonating themselves as the top ranking institutions in specialized exams, the institutes are mesmerizing or must be said hypnotizing the students who are desperately looking for a superior and finer institute to advance their capabilities  to get or remain in the topmost students. The promotional activities, which have to be staunchly restricted, are running rampant due to cutthroat competition among the Institutions that leads the ultimate money-oriented and commercialization of the most precious and respectable profession, which, instead, should be kept away from all temptative and profit making activities.

True, with passage of time, Educational criteria should be advanced, but that too without compromising its soul and concept of being spreaded. But, undeservedly, it has, now, appeared out to be the cash cow for educational traders and, most probably, has taken a shape of an industry without regulations. With the educational traders exploiting the credibility of the most pious profession that has changed it into a mere supply and demand cycle. The most unfortunate part is, the people, who are engaged in changing the educational sector into the business, are mostly the intellectuals who have forgotten the significance of education in shaping the future of upcoming generation and power of building virtuous society or nation under the hypocrisy of capitalism, and those intellectuals should keep that in mind that the profession of teaching should never be commoditized just for profit maximization.
Some instances of frauds by leading coaching institutes have been reported and some institutes even questioned by government regulating bodies or agencies for the frauds like naming the same candidates, who have successfully cleared a competitive exam, by various coaching institutes for their advertising. There are also some incidents of the successful students, who bring the laurels to their families without any professional help of any institute, are lured by these institutes with money to give their name for advertisement. The most unfortunate is that some of the bright students even surrender against the amount they are offered which encourages those educational traders to recur these practices.    

Through inadequate and inaccurate regulating guidelines and false and promises of clinching the top rankings, the students are pushed to pursue certain specific subjects or streams which only make them sheep that follow the herd. The regulating bodies should be entitled to tackle these restrictive practices among the coaching institutions more strictly. There should be think-tank to monitor their spurious and fake advertising and unregulated fee hikes which is the most distressing for the middle and lower class parents who may not afford those facilities for their children. Parents, too, should understand the bitter fact that mere attractive advertising, and striking and fascinating infrastructure does not make an institute more successful and provide a better environment for their children to study.