ABVP’s surprise win reshapes PU politics

THE fact that the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the BJP, has won the president's post in the recent Panjab University Campus Students' Council (PUCSC) elections has left many observers, political and academic, puzzled. Quite understandably so. For never before has the ABVP registered an impactful presence in local student politics. The last time it bagged any post in these elections was in 2000. It's the first time that this outfit has claimed the much-coveted top post.

The ABVP and other student outfits affiliated with political parties — the National Students Union of India (NSUI), a Congress affiliate, the Student Organisation of India (SOI), the student wing of the SAD, and Chhatra Yuva Sangharsh Samiti (CYSS), propped up by AAP — have not played a dominant role in the PUCSC. It was in 1997 that the NSUI bagged the president's post. The CYSS claimed it in 2022, which incidentally coincided with the AAP securing a staggering 92 seats in the Punjab Assembly.

Significantly, though girls constitute almost 80 per cent of the student population, only once in its 50-year electoral history has the PUCSC elected a girl as president — in 2018.

One may ask: Is there any connection between the fortunes of a political party in the region and the upswing in the fortunes of its student wing? The PUCSC's history does not point to any such connection, barring one or two cases. By and large, the student politics of Panjab University and its affiliated colleges in Chandigarh don't throw up any predictable pattern.

Over the past two-and-a-half decades, student politics has been dominated by two student outfits, viz, Panjab University Student's Union (PUSU), set up in 1977, and Students Organisation of Panjab University (SOPU), established in 1985. However, both are now fighting for survival, having been largely replaced by student bodies affiliated with national political parties.

In their heyday, both these outfits claimed to be student-centric and without direct political patronage. It's another matter that after the completion of their terms as office-bearers, many of these leaders launched their political careers, courtesy some political party or the other.

The political parties often use student outfits as 'puppets' and have no qualms about manipulating impressionable young adults for political outreach, even nefarious ends. Panjab University student politics is no exception. While traditional wisdom demands that students be initiated into the best practices of grassroot democracy, in practice, student politics merely mirrors the worst ills of mainstream electoral politics.

Be it making false promises, offering freebies, a brazen display of money and muscle power during campaigns or intimidation in the name of caste, creed, language, region or religion, student leaders pull out every trick in their electoral bag, as is often deployed by state or national-level leaders, to maximise political gains.

Worse, these student leaders often fall prey to the machinations of the faculty and administrators in colleges and universities. The latter too, being political animals, have political affiliations and the interplay of this dynamics only makes the existing mess murkier.

In such a scenario, to expect student leaders to fight for causes or genuine demands of the student community, is perhaps asking for the moon. Demands of student leaders are often politically motivated, even dictated to, as their agendas depend on who the political masters are and the direction they wish to steer student politics in a given context.

Often, these demands have no connect with ground reality. Genuine demands such as better facilities and improved sanitary conditions in hostels, installation of heaters, geysers, washing marts or improved quality of food in the mess are rarely raised.

Besides, year after year, we get to hear of complaints from the student leaders in the opposition about numerous anomalies in the manner the annual budget of the student council (in the case of PUCSC, it is around Rs 40 lakh) is spent, or worse, misspent.

One wonders, if student politics, either in Panjab University or elsewhere, can chart a course different from the one in which our political ecosystem is embedded. It would be myopic to expect student leaders to work selflessly for their community when their political masters present role models that are hardly worthy of emulation.

Isn't a university or a college more of a microcosm of the macrocosm that our society or polity is? How can student politics be result-oriented or student-centric if the political masters practice zero accountability or apathy towards the needs of the people, whose destinies they claim to preside over? After all, isn't student politics only a reflection of the politics we espouse, practise and perpetuate?

Rana Nayar is former Professor of English, Panjab University.