And possibly it will remain in this slumber as the system in the State does not appear to give students an environment conducive to activism. Student leaders in the State admit that though there is potential in their colleagues, there is no encouragement.
There are also complaints that when there have been attempts by student organisations to take up issues, the response has been less than tepid. They are possibly not wrong in stating this. As the Registrar of Goa University said, “They (Goa University students) don’t indulge in unnecessary politics as they follow a strict mandate.” But though the students may follow a strict mandate, it is politics that they indulge in at Goa University and its affiliated colleges rather than taking up social causes or attempting to right any wrongs.
In recent years, the student movement in Goa means elections to the students’ councils in the colleges and the University. It is only at that time, in the early weeks of the academic year, that there is a semblance of student activism in the State, which for the remainder of the year is then dormant. And this, the elections, is where the rot begins. The candidates in the student elections are backed by political parties and the local politicians. Look at the current Goa University Student’s Union, where the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarti Parishad (ABVP), that is the BJP’s student wing, stayed away from the elections, yet the union that was elected at the University is backed by the BJP. If this is not politics, even unnecessary politics, then what is?
Student elections in Goa over the past few years have been dominated by the ABVP and the National Students Union of India (NSUI), which is the student arm of the Congress. But this was not so always. There was a time in Goa when the student movement was dominated by independent student unions that were not backed by any political party. It was purely a student movement that arose from the classrooms, or perhaps the canteens of the colleges. It was also the time when activism in Goa meant students taking to the streets, and many of those students, men and women, who are today well established in the professions, continue to display that activist streak.
Today what students are more interested in, and this is something that students themselves have admitted, is organising entertainment programmes, cultural events, inter-college competitions, but not in taking up serious discussions. Strangely, the student movement in Goa began its slow death around the time the University was set up in the State. The decline in the movement may not be related to the advent of the university, but it definitely started around that period.
It is time that the students of Goa and in Goa got back their voice. Rather than being detached from issues and being attached to politics, the students need to involve in movements and take up issues that go beyond what solely concerns them. If they’ve managed to get a bus service to the university through dialogue, could they also dialogue and get other issues sorted out successfully? Let students take up issues that involve the environment and social change, and definitely politics. If college students are old enough to vote, then they are also capable to being instruments of political change.
Many a successful revolution across the world has arisen from the student movement. One of the most successful ones was in Assam when the student movement took up the illegal infiltration of foreigners into the State. This led to the formation of the Assom Gana Parishad that was then voted to power. That’s the sort or revolution, bloodless, that the students of Goa need to aspire to.
