Something very distasteful and extremely upsetting was conveyed to me today morning. My aunt is a mathematics professor since the last 30 odds years. She has been teaching in a suburban college of West Bengal (WB) for a while now.
She is not just a person whom I’m terribly fond of, she is genuinely a good teacher and loves to teach and will devote all her time if need be, to her students.
The incident occured two days ago- admissions for the next year were being held in her college and they had been completed with when a large group of students (read Congress Party thugs in the guise of overgrown, overaged students) came charging in and demanded to be accomodated in the following academic year.
On being told that there were no vacancies, they expressed their dissatisfaction in the following manner:
-they tore up books
-they broke furniture
-they physically assaulted the faculty (one of whom was my aunt)
-they used filthy, abusive language (the least severe of their offences).
The shit-for-brains, no-balled,pathetic-excuse-for-a-human-being principal refused to lodge a complaint with the police bcause he feared the reprisal and a political imbroglio would probably have put paid to his tenure at the college.
So now, you have people threatening the lives of our educators in the name of “right to education”. These student union top brasses themselves are people who have seldom finished their education. They usually drift into politics because of the hold they have over the students or their oratory skills and continue to be the leader of the youth wing long after the sweet bird of youth has flown the coop!
And what about the people they terrorise in the name of freedom of speech and the plethora of freedoms provided under the umbrella of democracy? Well, they get twisted and turned to each individual’s convenience, while the party honchos willingly look the other way to keep the vote bank alive.
i’ve always wondered where the need arose to have so much of hoopla about students and their unions in an educational institution? You’ve come to study. Fine! Study,get your damn degree and be on your way. Why propogate party tenets any established political party in the name of “being there for the students”?
What is even more painful for me to swallow is that my home state is in a state of decline. It’s not that politicking and hooliganism doesn’t occur in all states of India. But few states are as deeply entrenched in the age old clutches of politics as WB.
The state has seen more than it’s share of misery due to its age-old handshake with the CPM government. The Naxal movement occured and people watched from the sidelines. True, there were reactions against it, but look at Naxalites flourishing even today and look at the havoc they create! Regular encounters with the police lead to a one-upmanship among the two on a daily basis practically. And the body count keeps piling up.
I am so revolted today, so angry and disillusioned that it actually hurts. Melodramatic? maybe but losing faith never came easy to anyone.
I just wish there was a way there was to still salvage something from all this.
But personally, for the time being, swift and painful retribution will suffice.
Random. Structured. Haphazard. All Me. 