Take it easy Mr Modi, student power is dead

Students can be put behind bars on sedition charges for declaring the 2001 Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru a martyr and shouting "Pakistan Zindabad". Police can raid hostels. Students can protest and shout slogans till they go hoarse. Facebook and Twitter posts can go viral. Prime time networks can debate and raise the political temperature.

But Prime Minister Narendra Modi can sit pretty. He faces no political threat.

For, the students' outrage that very often hits headlines is not more than an impotent rage. It is a creation of social media. The students' anger doesn't threaten to jump out of Facebook pages and Twitter handles, reach the streets and corridors of power.

Also read - 'Anti-national' JNU clash over Afzal Guru: Death of free speech on campus

Campuses of premier universities and institutions have been on the boil for months. From the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune to the University of Hyderabad, from IIT Madras and Jadavpur University in Kolkata to Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) - students have been seething with rage. But the rage has mostly remained confined to the respective campuses.

It's not that the students have turned apolitical. It's not that the issues over which the students are angry such as fee hikes or increase in hostel food bills are non-political. It's not even that political parties have withdrawn their student wings from campuses.

Campuses are as politicised as ever and even more so. Thanks to social media, any issues raised and fought by students tend to acquire a national and international dimension. In no time, issues acquire political overtones with the almost predictable outcome of ruling and opposition parties jumping into controversies.

Also read: JNU has betrayed the faith of India

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Arvind Kejriwal are young and they having been doing their best to channelise students' energy into political opposition. The protesters-media-political parties thread get interwoven to turn any potentially controversial issue into a national slugfest.

And then it all dissipates. The rage fails to find wider channels to touch the government, mar its electoral fortunes or make the opposition's prospects. Yet another time, yet another issue and the story moves on.

Had it not been so, the government might have had a formidable student movement to deal with. Nothing of the sort has happened or is about to happen.

Cut to the pre-internet, pre-social media days. During the 1960, 1970s and 1980s almost all major political movements began with student uprisings. And many of them led to the overthrow of the incumbent government.

Also read: Doesn't JNU know, calling for 'India's barbaadi' is not azaadi?

Let's jog our memories. The 1974 JP movement that led to the defeat of Indira Gandhi and the formation of the first non-Congress government at the Centre began as a student movement in Patna. Later, the movement turned against "misrule and corruption" of the state and central government.

The Bihar movement had its root in the 1973 Nav Nirman students' movement in Gujarat that led to the dissolution of the state assembly. In Bihar a student movement in 1967 caused the state Congress government to fall and the formation of first non-Congress government in the state.

The spark of Mandal agitation for and against reservation for the other backward classes (OBCs) morphed into a massive flame in the 1990s, which resulted in epoch-making political changes and making and unmaking of governments.

At a time when radio and newspapers were main source of information, students were inspired by the far-away Paris barricade of 1968, the riots on the London School of Economics campus and protests against the Vietnam War. Information travelled slowly but the impact was huge. One major spark in one corner of the world or the country could fuel major conflagrations in another part.

In the digital age, information travels from one part of the world in nanoseconds but the impact that it creates dissipates equally fast. No major movement of the current century, such as the Occupy movement, has created any major impact on student community in India.

The protracted protests at the FTII didn't create any worthwhile ripple outside its campus even though the issue was on prime time networks for days. The suicide of Hyderabad Central University Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula has been agitating students all over the country, and has galvanised the civil society, and political parties have rushed to make capital out of the issue. But barring sporadic protests here and there, there is no sign of any major movement building on the campuses.

The Anna Hazare movement against corruption in 2011, which led to the formation of the AAP and its landslide victory in the Delhi assembly elections in 2015, was the only major protest movement in the internet era to have been associated with political change. However, it was not a student movement starting from any university campus or initiated by students.

The Anna movement was a Facebook movement and true to the character of social media movements it dissipated after AAP's Delhi story. The movement failed to generate ripple effect in other parts of the country. More importantly, so short-lived and so localised was its impact that neither Anna nor the AAP could check the Modi juggernaut in 2014.

The students' protests in the digital age are short-lived, the anger self-limiting and the impact confined to Facebook and Twitter. Though big in number on social media, the protests are dispersed and defocused, the protesters' attention span divided and fickle, jumping from one issue to another. Students lack the will to carry on long and protracted movements.

Take it easy Mr Modi. Student power is dead.