Explore Alternative Options to Address the Accommodation Crisis!!

This academic year has been witness to a severe crisis with regard to accommodation for new students. The crisis is particularly acute for boys, hundreds of whom have not got hostels so far. The gravity of the situation can be gauged from the fact that many students who topped the entrance exams haven’t got hostels yet. Many OBC students who have won admission under general category, who ought to be given hostels as per OBC lists, are instead considered under the general category itself, causing undue delays in the allotment of hostels to them.

The AISA-led JNUSU also had acknowledged the severity of this crisis, but had remained utterly lackadaisical in addressing the issue. The AISA has been leading the union since 2007, and the process of implementation of OBC reservations along with the increase in seats in the university had begun in 2008. It was well-known to the university administration and the AISA that accommodating the increased intake of students following 54% seat increase would require a big expansion of hostel facilities. Yet, in her speeches in the various school GBMs, the incumbent JNUSU President kept stating the lame excuse that a hostel cannot be built in six months. The administration was clearly successful in mollifying the AISA-led union by fast-tracking the first batches of hostel allotment. After having abdicated the responsibility to take cognizance of the issue well in advance and pushing for the construction of new hostels, the AISA-led union was satisfied arguing for more dormitories. The dormitories that have been opened are themselves plagued by a number of problems, including the lack of adequate work spaces and a shortage of plug points even for basic electronic equipments.

The CAG report on JNU had revealed that the funds meant for the expansion of infrastructure in tandem with the proposed seat increase had been diverted for foreign trips, seminars etc. A large number of single seaters were converted into double seaters as the hostel crisis loomed large, hoping to pit different sections of the student community against each other while going back on the obligation to build new hostels. The AISA-led union was caught sleeping all through this period, and did nothing to ensure that the funds were utilised for the purposes they were meant for.

Explore alternatives

When the university administration is reluctant to spend funds to improve the basic infrastructure facilities, the construction of new hostels would require sustained pressure and struggles by the students’ movement. It is worth noting here that it was after a massive struggle led by the SFI-led union in 1999 that the construction of new hostels from Tapti onwards began. During this struggle, following a 14-day hunger strike, 63 students were arrested and 14 students including 3 office-bearers of the JNUSU were illegally detained in Tihar jail for three days. All sections of the JNU community had risen in unison against the high-handedness of the administration, which had to back down and accept the demands of the students. The new union which shall take charge after the JNUSU elections this month, being heirs to this militant legacy, must ensure that an uncompromising struggle is waged to ensure the construction of new hostels. Since it will take some time for new hostels to be built, alternatives must also be explored to address the accommodation crisis in the immediate. In fact following the 1999 agitation, the administration was forced to provide temporary accommodation to the students in Mahanadi hostel and in private accommodation facilities outside the campus. Renting out private accommodation once again is very much a feasible option. Moreover, today in our campus there are many new, spacious staff quarters which are lying vacant. The possibility of accommodating students who have not got hostels in such places on a temporary basis needs to be explored on an urgent basis.

Sd/-

Kopal, Siddik Rabiyath, Samuel Philip Mathew, Garima Sodhi, Viswanathan V

(For the SFI Unit Organising Committee, JNU)

Our Struggle for More Hostels Long Live!!

Students’ Unity Long Live!!

 

The Terrorists of Naroda Patiya Sentenced to Life Imprisonment!

SFI Release dated 01.09.2012

Public Meeting on "Bengal Under Mamata's Rule"

The agrarian question is one which the Left and the state governments that it led in India have historically attached utmost importance to. The record of the Left-led governments in West Bengal has been among the most noteworthy in this regard. While the net area sown in West Bengal as a proportion of net area sown in India was only 3.9% (as of 2003-04), the extent of agricultural land distributed under land reform in West Bengal as a proportion of land distributed in the country as a whole was 22.6 per cent. Of the total number of gainers from land distribution programmes in the country, more than half — a full 54.5 per cent — are from West Bengal. As on February 15, 2008, 50,39,665 people had been the direct beneficiaries of land reforms in Bengal, as recipients of agricultural land (29,71,857), recorded bargadars (15,10,657) and as recipients of homestead land (5,57,151). 55% of the recipients of agricultural land under land reform belonged to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribe (which is significantly higher than the proportion of SCs and STs in the state’s population (28.1 per cent). 

But a major reversal of such gains made by the working people during the tenure of the Left Front governments has been taking place today under the rule of the Trinamool Congress. Reports of large-scale evictions of peasants from their rightful land are pouring in from various parts of the state. Places such as Haroa block in North 24 Parganas, Bolpur block in Birbhum, Bhangar & Sonarpur blocks in South 24 Parganas, and Purbasthali block in Burdwan have witnessed the eviction of thousands of Adivasi, Dalit and Muslim peasants who had been landless earlier and were granted pattas during the term of the Left Front governments. The most brutal violence on Left Front supporters has accompanied this regressive turn of events – since May 2009, more than 450 supporters of the Left Front (the vast majority of whom are CPI(M) supporters) – have been murdered by goons belonging to the TMC or the CPI(Maoist). Other facets of the rule of the Mamata Banerjee government, such as the utter callousness shown by ministers and government functionaries in cases of assaults on women, attacks on the freedom of expression and so on have been relatively well-documented. All these and more shall be discussed in today’s Public Meeting, to be addressed by Malini Bhattacharya.

Sd/-
Akhila Vimal, Viswanathan V, Kopal (For the SFI Unit Organising Committee, JNU)

Discussion Session on Gender and Migration

SFI Pamphlet dated 29 August 2012

Over the past three days, we have been witness to the AISA – the student outfit of an insignificant sectarian left force in the country – making tall claims regarding the “achievements” of the Students’ Union they have been leading. The biggest of these claims is that the issue of discrimination against students from deprived sections and backward regions in the viva voce for entrance examinations has been addressed “for the first time in JNU’s history”. They claim that in the past forty years, unions led by SFI-AISF have not addressed this issue at all. This is nothing but a blatant falsification of history.

The legacy of SFI-AISF-led unions in the fight for a socially just, inclusive admission policy

Way back in 1972-73, the JNUSU advocated a new admission policy which would enable students from poorer backgrounds and backward regions to enter JNU. It was the first major struggle led by the JNUSU, and it resulted in a path-breaking admission policy being adopted by the university, according to which weightages were given for students from deprived socio-economic backgrounds and those hailing from backward regions. Student-faculty committees (SFCs) were also set up with elected students in each centre.  During the term of the 1973-74 union, the admission procedure was regularised with the students having a say through the SFCs, which would scrutinise the entrance tests and finalise the results. Members from the SFCs used to be present when the viva voce was held to ensure that discrimination or harassment did not occur. A very important upshot of this admission policy was that the representation of students from the deprived sections was more than the proportions mandated by the Constitution later on. We believe that any genuine effort to prevent social discrimination in the viva voce must entail not only the reduction of the weightage given to viva voce, but also bringing back the role of the SFCs in sitting through the viva voce.

It was the alarm of the ruling classes in the increased empowerment of the deprived sections that led to the scrapping of the Old Admission Policy in 1983, when there was a brutal police crackdown on student activists in an attempt to break the back of student militancy, and the university was closed down sine die.

And yet the AISA, which was born in the crucible of the notorious anti-Mandal agitation, shamelessly claims that in the forty years of its activism in the campus, SFI has been oblivious to the concerns of SC/ST/OBC/PH students in this campus. In fact the AISA’s failure in ensuring the timely and correct implementation of OBC reservations in JNU is consistent with their positions over the years. Vinod Mishra, the then General Secretary of the CPI-ML Liberation (AISA’s parent party) had written in 1990: “Just as we do not approve of those politicians who want to take revenge on the present-day progeny of Babar, we also reject those theoreticians who would punish the present-day offsprings of Manu for the crimes of their ancestors.” (CPI(ML) Liberation Central Committee’s Message to the IPF Rally held on 8 October 1990, Liberation, November 1990, http://cpiml.org/archive/vm_swork/3central_committee.htm). He continued in a similar vein: “Students and youth, particularly in and around Delhi, felt badly betrayed by a man (VP Singh) on whom they had reposed great faith... Instead, they found in him a scheming politician who was robbing them of whatever little job opportunities that were there.” ("The Fall of VP Singh and After", Liberation, January 1991, http://cpiml.org/archive/vm_swork/4fall_of_vp_singh_and_after.htm). This is exactly the logic that the casteist Youth For (In)Equality had given while opposing OBC reservations – that reservations mean robbing the youth of their opportunities in education and employment. Kavita Krishnan, then the National President of AISA, had said after her organisation’s victory in the JNUSU elections in 2007, “AISA did not press for a pro or anti stand on quota” (interview given to the Times of India, September 7, 2007).

We appeal to the student community to remain vigilant against the devious politics of the AISA and to unite in the continuing fight for a socially just and equitable admission policy.

Sd/-

Subin Dennis, Viswanathan V, Rajeev Raushan (For the SFI Unit Organising Committee, JNU)

Public Meeting on "The Current Political Situation"

"SFI-JNU" - Its Origin and Future

“SFI-JNU” is a month-old offshoot of a divisive, petty-bourgeois tendency within the former unit of SFI in our campus. Its birth was necessitated after a section of the erstwhile leadership of SFI in the campus pushed for a wrong and divisive political line enthused by the resignation of Prasenjit Bose, who was their in-charge from the CPI(M), over the CPI(M)'s support to Pranab Mukherjee in the Indian Presidential elections. In the course of events that unfolded subsequently, a resolution criticising the CPI(M)'s decision was adopted at a thinly attended GBM on 5 July amidst opposition from a sizable section of the members present against the adoption of such a course of action and cautioning against playing into the hands of the bourgeois right wing media. In the GBM the erstwhile leadership even attributed the electoral defeat of the SFI since 2007 in the campus to the SFI’s organic link with the larger left and democratic movement in the country.

The so-called ultra/fashionable left AISA immediately termed it as “SFI-JNU's distancing from the right wing positions of the CPI(M)” (AISA pamphlet dated 10.07.2012) and expectedly appealed to “SFI-JNU” to join the struggles led by the AISA. “SFI-JNU’s” claim that “the developments since 2007 have made the SFI vulnerable to attacks of “double speak” by the ultra Left” (“SFI-JNU” pamphlet dated 7.07.2012) was welcomed by the AISA in the campus, as “SFI-JNU’s” position was essentially one that tails the AISA line of attacking the organised Left – a position gleefully promoted by the ruling classes. As a matter of fact, there was open criticism in the form of pamphlets from members within SFI as well against the erstwhile leadership’s erroneous line (pamphlets titled “Where the Leaders of “SFI-JNU” Erred – Part I & II).

The intervention of the SFI higher leadership put an end to the whole disorder, after which a handful among the erstwhile leadership floated the organisation named “SFI-JNU”. As its name signifies and as overtly explained in their membership leaflet, it has a twin short-term agenda of free riding and building on the political legacy of the SFI in the campus and to remain subservient to the ruling class agenda of attacking the organised Left as their future course in the campus. This double-edged tactics was clearly visible even in their membership campaign (where they deviously gave out memberships to the non-existent “Students’ Federation of India – Jawaharlal Nehru University unit” so as to take along a few who were misinformed about the organisational affiliation of the outfit) as well as in their mobilisations since 10 July, which had an evidently anti-organised Left (CPI(M) & CPI) content. Questions from many students regarding the political identity of “”SFI-JNU” were addressed with its leaders suggesting a mythical course of action towards organisational affiliation at a date suited to their electoralist opportunism. The days to come would see the operation of this tactic of confusing genuine SFI sympathisers combined with efforts to corner a share in the pie of the anti-SFI, anti-organised Left polarisation (which includes the right-wing) of which the AISA has been a virtual beneficiary all through. The “SFI-JNU” resolution of 4 August also clearly establishes the idea of openly floating a new outfit by November.

Going by the ideological positions of the leaders of “SFI-JNU” regarding 21st Century Socialism and their anathema towards the Leninist organisational principles which have been the bedrock of all socialist experiments till date, the political character of this divisive tendency comes out loud and clear. The basic raisons d’etre behind the principle of democratic centralism – that no revolution is allowed to advance democratically and peacefully, that every revolution has to face attacks by imperialism and the class enemies, that the party has to face the power of the centralised bourgeois state apparatus – have been conveniently forgotten. It needs to be remembered that those parties which abandoned democratic centralism either ceased to be Communist parties or disintegrated, the classic example being the Italian Communist Party, the biggest Communist party outside the socialist countries till the early eighties. Much before the collapse of the Soviet Union, it began the journey to liquidation by first giving up democratic centralism and culminating in giving up Marxism. In the Soviet Union itself, in the last days of the Communist Party of Soviet Union under the Gorbachevian leadership, factions were permitted and this contributed to hastening the disintegration of the Soviet party. While it is important to learn proper lessons from the democratic transformation going on in Latin America, posing it against the erstwhile socialist experiments reeks of the petty-bourgeois mentality that Lenin had rightly warned against. Given SFI-JNU’s predilection with these trends and their single point agenda of attacking the organized left in the country to gain brownie points inside the campus, it can be stated without any shadow of doubt that this SFI-JNU is the exact opposite of the non-sectarian, broad-based and progressive student movement that they proclaim themselves to be.

Sd/-
Kopal, Arnab Roy, Siddik Rabiyath, Viswanathan V (For the SFI Unit Organising Committee, JNU)