Feature

Student Politics and its Implications

Chowdhury Kamrul Hasan

Bangladesh has a golden history of student politics. It is believed that the spirit of the liberation war of 1971 had originally grown from the language movement, which was principally led by the students. It is an undeniable fact that the student organisations of universities and colleges had significant role in ousting the autocratic government and establishing the democracy for the first time in Bangladesh since independence. But since early 1990s, the country saw a paradigm shift in student politics. Before that, the principles of student organizations coupled with dedication of the past heroic leaders would attract general students to join those organisations. When they saw that the student fronts were nothing but a center of external and internal cadres to whom revolver and automatic machine gun were easy objects, general and peace-loving students started showing unwillingness to join the groups. Since the transitional period, the so-called student organisations affiliated to the major political parties would force and in some cases intimidate them to join the party. Given the worst consequences of the present-day student politics on every tiers of the society, my stance is categorically against it. To me student politics should be banned from all the academic institutions. Practically, it does have multifarious implications for the society.

Student politics ruins a family. With high hopes and aspirations, parents send their son or daughter to the university. But their long cherished hopes often get nipped in the bud, when they receive the corpse of their son or daughter who died either in a cross-fire or in his involvement in a gun battle being one of the members of the rival groups. In some instances, this scenario gets even more disastrous when he or she is the only child of the family, for whom all properties have already been sold. Now, the family has nothing to do but to beg from door to door. Sometimes, parents cannot bear a sudden shock and become psychologically depressed or pass rest of their lives with various different illnesses.

Rarely are there any countries where the term 'session-jam' is as frequently used as in Bangladesh. In most of the public universities, session jam takes away valuable time from a student's life. A number of causes relate to its creation in the campus. People believe that some student organisations and their ill-practices of politics remain one of the causes of session jam in the campus. As a result, students cannot complete their graduation in due time. Thus, the country is not getting services from the bright graduates who may significantly contribute to the country's economic development. Indirectly, student politics thwarts economic progress.

Pertinently, questions may arise: why has the face of the student politics changed? One of the reasons is the moral degradation of student leaders. But the political analysts put it some other way. They blame mainstream political parties that control student leaders and use them to achieve their ill-motive. As they have direct connection to the ruling party leaders, student leaders exercise this power and run a reign of terror in the campus. In fact, the very essence of student politics has been altered by them, creating a grim impression among the general mass who think that such practices of student politics can no longer be allowed to continue.

While student politics should not be allowed to exist in the academic institutions, an alternative form of student organisation is necessary to uphold the students' rights and to work for their welfare. For example, Student Welfare Association may be formed in every department. Such forum of students exists in the foreign universities. And it is true that the world's renowned universities are running smoothly without student politics. If students wish to enrich their extracurricular knowledge, it is enough to join a student forum or association rather than so-called student organisations that will lead them to darkness from where they will never see light. Let us dream of a country, having educational institutions free from evil politics and being centers of excellence for authentic education and research as well as sound practice of extracurricular activities.

(E-mail: kamrul@imscu.ac.bd)