Students and politics

The recent statement made by a student leader about the legitimacy of the present Congress Government in the State and the quick backlash by the party brings to the fore a burning question. Just how much politics should a students' organisation indulge in? The student leader in the above case was not saying anything new when he declared with a fair degree of misplaced authority, that the present State Government does not have the mandate of the people. This allegation has been doing rounds for more than a year now. But what actually offended the party was that the students leader made his stand, stale and uninspiring as it was, at an occasion when it was just not relevant or necessary. It was a ploy to gain some mileage in the media, sort of a swan song; if you will, since the boy was stepping down from the presidentship of the organisaiton. Nothing more than one last attempt to provoke and seek attention before fading away into oblivion as all such hare-brained student-activists are destined to. It was just his lot to have chosen a relatively irrelevant place and time to do so.

Yet, this sort of student-activism is not new or unique phenomenon restricted in Nagaland alone. Students all over the world and during all eras have displayed a keen and active interest in the politics of the day. Which is all very fine except that many such youth tend to get carried away by politics and lose sight of real task at hand, that is, pursuing an education that will help equip them to address such issues in a proper manner in the days to come. Moreover, many politicians tend to use such students' unions and their leaders to gain political mileage for themselves. And the worst part is that almost always these students fail to realise that they are being used by others. They sort of become apprentice politicians under such unscrupulous political veterans. And lured on by the sight of raw power and stupefying wealth, many youth leaders end up as corrupted second-rate politicians themselves. Hardly a laudable phenomenon.

The task of a students' organisation is to safeguard the rights of the students. Nothing more, nothing less. In Nagaland, the Naga Students' Federation has been pampered and spoilt to the extent that these student-activists have long forgotten that the primary task of a student is to study, the real place of a student is besides his books. Unfortunately, in the heady idealism of youth, many of them choose to think otherwise.

Our students have this penchant for taking to the streets at the drop of a hat. Processions and student rallies have a carnival like atmosphere and for most of the students participating in them, these processions and rallies are nothing more than a welcome relief from the uniform monotony of our school and colleges. Many of the students are unaware of the real issues behind such attention seeking stunts, and most do not even care. It could all be dismissed as the idiosyncrasies of a youthful heart except that, all too often, the whole thing backfires and terrible consequences follow.

All over the world, student-activism has lead to deaths on the streets and hooliganism inside campuses. It is at times such as these that the students find themselves out on a limbo. The politicians whose vassals these students become, are nowhere in the picture. Is it surprising then to find so many of our young people with shattered dreams and bitter experiences about the system? At the end of the day it always boils down to this — the 'system'. The omnipotent, dream crushing, callous 'system'. Little do they realise how large a role they themselves have played in keeping the system well-oiled and functioning. Young men come and young men go, but the system goes on forever.

The young must realise how much disservice they do to themselves when they get distracted from their academic pursuit and step into a world they are so hopelessly incapable of coping with, let alone succeeding in it. These students must understand that tough it is all very well to have an opinion on anything and everything, it is only in later, more measured moments that they will find themselves capable of standing up to the challenges. At present, their duty lies inside the campus, in pursuit of an education that will equip today's rebels for tomorrow's controversies.

North-East Herald

A demography problem

Belatedly, the Central Government has become aware of the danger posed by the continuous influx of Bangladeshi nationals to the North East. For Assam, the unabated entry of migrants is a six-decade old problem though in the pre-independence period it was not illegal since movement of people from one part of the country to another was not barred by any law. Nevertheless, Census Commissioner C.S. Mullan visualised in 1930 the demographic change in Assam due to entry of land hungry peasants from the eastern part of undivided Bengal, adding that the indigenous
Assamese people would be pushed to such a position that they would become a minority segment in Assam's population except in the Sivasagar district. However, it goes to the leadership of Lokapriya Gopinath Bardoloi when he was the Opposition leader in the Assam Assembly with Sir Mohammed Saadullah as Chief Minister that some measures like the Line System and blocks were evolved to control the inflow of peasants from Mymensin and Rangpur, but later during the Second World War, the Saadullah government in a deliberate and planned manner in the name of Grow More Food Scheme brought more immigrants that caused demographic changes which was termed by the then Viceroy Lord Wavell as a design 'to grow more Muslims'. In spite of such danger caused by illegal immigrant the problem has remained as serious as before.

It was in this context that the present Governor of Assam, Lt. General (Retd.) S.K. Sinha, had on his own sent a comprehensive report to President K.R. Narayanan, spotlighting the growing menace of illegal migration from East Bengal, now Bangladesh. True, the six-year-old agitation by the All Assam Students Union (AASU) resulted in an accord between the Centre and the AASU leadership by which the influx of illegal migrants was supposed to have been tackled under the illegal Migrants was supposed to have been tackled under the illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, but this measure has proved to be absolutely inadequate to deal with the gigantic problem of illegal immigrants because the process of detection and deportation of this category of people is cumbersome. This is more than proved by the fact that only 9,000 have been identified as deportable.

The Assam Tribune