Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union needs to get real, and fast
It is perhaps a reflection of the fact that so discredited is the JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) that nothing better can be expected from it. The reference here is to the latest sally of this entitled bunch of so-called student leaders/activists who have with effect from Monday announced a “total boycott” of an eminently reasonable rule, duly cleared by the appropriate authority which in this case is the Academic Council (AC) of the University, making attendance mandatory for students. Most Central Universities follow the 75 per cent compulsory attendance rule (with in-built exceptions in case of genuine reasons) but JNU for reasons of self-proclaimed intellectual privilege and navel-gazing taken to a whole new level never deigned to have such a rule in place. Better sense seems finally to have prevailed and for the authorities, following due procedure, announced mandatory attendance for students from the winter semester.
In response, JNUSU claims to have collected 2,500 student signatures denouncing “this arbitrary firmaan (diktat)”. “Each of us must ensure a total boycott… attendance was never mandatory in JNU because academics here means engaging, critiquing and thinking; not mere obedience,” a JNUSU statement said. Note first, the derivative nature of this faux Spirit of Paris ‘69 claptrap; and secondly, the use of the adjective ‘mere’ before the malicious introduction of the word ‘obedience’ which finds no place in the AC decision. Any right-thinking person would have no problem accepting the first part of the statement; but how is asking for a bare minimum attendance at lectures either contra-indicative of the stated claims of what a university education should comprise or, indeed, linked to what it is being disingenuous implied is a feudal desire aimed only to ensure student ‘obedience’IJ This is a family newspaper, otherwise one would know exactly what to term such semi-literate, too-clever-by-half outpourings of pseudo angst.
The most appropriate riposte by the nearly 6,000 members student community of JNU who have not signed the JNUSU floated petition would be to do the responsible thing and insist on signing the attendance register every day, beginning today. The University’s unit cost of education (total annual expenditure divided by the number of students enrolled) comes to nearly Rs 2.5 lakh per annum and nobody grudges that as long as self-serving and ideologically motivated agitations that elide accountability don’t become the dominant students’ union discourse. Sensible JNU faculty regardless of political affiliation too should play a role in urging a majority of the approximately 8,500 JNU students to adhere to the attendance rule even while following it themselves. If a thousand flowers read young minds are to bloom, as it were, there has to be a structure within which they do.