We don’t need no revolution…

In Delhi Universtiy, pretty faces, especially the ‘female factor’, fetch more votes while good candidates get knocked out

Nasrin Sultana Delhi

Great ideology that rocks the nation and turns into a revolution? Commitment that transcends ambition and self? Glamour that will face-lift a political career? The arrogant power it guarantees? Enthusiasm or the struggle for students’ welfare? What is it that drives students into college and university politics?

There is a fear gnawing that somewhere in the whirlwind of students’ politics, the importance of being a student is rapidly being lost. The youthful, eclectic, spontaneous, anti-establishment rebellion is getting trapped in a predictable future shock — a money minting machine or the rat-traps of power. In current times, the nation has witnessed a bizarre mix of restless anger and mob politics.

The anti-reservation movement, the murder of a teacher in Ujjain by ABVP leaders, protests in the MCMDAV Girls College in Chandigarh against the ban on mobile phones in the campus, the violent reaction of girls in Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut, where they broke pots and glasspanes of the Proctor’s office, bloody fights between students at Mansarovar Hostel in Delhi University (DU), the student agitation against the admission process in Jamia Millia Islamia in the backdrop of the Proctor’s brazen use of violence and force.

During the Chandigarh protests, filmmaker Satish Kaushik found Yamini Sharma, and her family and the media went berserk. So how did she transform overnight from a radical firebrand fighting for the ‘right to use mobiles in the campus’ to a wannabe Bollywood starlet?

“Politics is a cerebral and idealistic activity. It is healthy if it means awareness, consciousness and goals. Campus politics often means just ganging up and doing lip-service to the orders of politicians. This is goondaism under the name of politics; the students’ body language and attitude shows extreme disrespect. Today student politics has taken a scary turn. I am shocked to see that the media didn’t pick up the issue of the murder of Prof. Sabharwal in a serious and sensitive manner. It was a gruesome act. Even after his death, the student political groups were accusing his son of playing political games,” said Mita Bose, who teaches English at Indraprastha College For Women (IP) in Delhi University.

Shashikant Sharma, the recently elected secretary of the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU), disagrees: “I joined students’ politics because this is the way I would be serving the nation. I also want to be a civil servant for the same cause. I joined the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI – wing of the Congress) in 2003 after my admission to Delhi University.”

NSUI regained power in the recently held DUSU elections. On September 8, about 80,000 students voted in the DUSU polls. Out of the four office-bearers’ posts, NSUI captured three, including the president, secretary and joint-secretary. Their rivals ABVP won the lone post of vice-president with just about 35 votes.

So how was this brazenly lavish campaign conducted? Did it follow an iota of the Lyngdoh Committee’s stoic, and rather utopian, recommendations? So how much money did the student leaders and their mentors in the political parties blow to win this powerful union?