JNU row: University is suicidal for intellectuals today
The young are rapidly running out of patience, as the facade created by the government of a developing and improving economy falls apart in front of their eyes. The level of unemployment and worse underemployment hits them like a speeding truck on the highway as soon as they walk out of college gates and into a job interview.
It's more of a structural problem. The BJP has ignored three things, one is that students in the long run know there are no jobs, unemployment stalks them and they are expected to third grade demeaning jobs after graduation. Students are beginning to realise the irony of education and that is what they are objecting against.
Two, they are objecting to the fact that mature and knowledgeable individuals are being treated like retards, being punished like ten-year-old children.
Third, is the lack of quality, while scholarships are being reduced instead of increasing them, the syllabus being taught is outdated. How do they respond to all this?
To top it all you bring in the forces to beat up students. Radicals, dissenters, marginals are not encouraged on any campus. If you take BHU because Sandeep Pandey had a radical critique of technology, he was displaced.
In JNU, you are accused of sedition merely because you have a different viewpoint on death penalty. A university has become a suicidal place to be an intellectual and I think it's time we recognise the signs.
(As told to Karishma Goenka.)