CAMPAIGNING IS IN FULL swing in West Bengal for the state’s 16th legislative assembly election which begins on April 4 and concludes on May 5. During its first term in office, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government led by the fiery trade unionist Mamata Banerjee, who improbably ended the uninterrupted 34-year rule over the state of the Communist Party of India (CPM)-led Left Front government in May 2011, has not been able to quell campus unrest in the state’s higher education institutions, a defining feature of Communist rule.
In 2014, police assaulted students on the Jadavpur University (JU) campus after they demanded an independent investigation into the molestation of a woman student. In 2015, the vintage Presidency University (estb.1955) witnessed continuous protests by students over several issues including demands for resignation of vice chancellor Anuradha Lohia.
Most recently on February 26, a mob attacked over 100 students with sticks and nail-studded batons inside the state government-run Burdwan University (BU) campus. Sited 100 km from Kolkata, BU, which sprawls across 316 acres, offers undergrad, postgraduate and professional degrees in more than 65 disciplines to 25,000 students.
Trouble began brewing in BU, awarded the status of a ‘four star’ university by NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) in 2001, following delay in releasing year two BA results which were withdrawn and declared afresh three times in February. Several students who were declared to have passed the exams when the first two versions of results were published, were declared failed in the third revised version. Despite this confusion, on February 19 the varsity administration announced final exams on March 18. Reacting with outrage, students from the 73 colleges affiliated with BU demanded postponement of the final year exams. During the protests, 12 students were injured in a police lathi-charge on February 23.
Binod Ghosh, a committee member of the CPM-affiliated Students Federation of India (SFI) alleged that the lathi-charge was unprovoked. “We had announced the protest rally well in advance and the police was aware of it. Despite this, they started beating us without provocation. At least 25 SFI supporters, including district secretary Dipankar Dey, were injured,” says Ghosh.
Three days later on February 26, 13 SFI students who staged a hunger-strike demanding postponement of the third year exams for 30 days, were allegedly assaulted by members of the Trinamool Congress Chhatra Parishad — the youth wing of the ruling TMC.
Pabitra Sarkar, former vice chancellor of the Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata and former vice chairman of the West Bengal State Council of Higher Education, blames maladministration and student indiscipline on campus which the TMC government hasn’t been able to curb. “The turmoil at BU is not a one-off incident but a manifestation of rising anarchy in West Bengal’s institutions of higher education. Rampant student unrest at several colleges and universities in the past five years is proof of the failure of the state government to manage the education sector to which chief minister Mamata Banerjee had promised to give special importance and focus,” laments Sarkar.
Yet at bottom, it’s quite clear that continuous violence is rooted in students union politics with the TMC Chhatra Parishad activists striving to break the stranglehold of well-entrenched CPM-affiliated students and teachers unions in West Bengal’s academy. If TMC wins the forthcoming assembly elections as widely expected, this objective will become closer to realisation.
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
