The 16th All India Conference of the Students’ Federation of India held in Shimla has elected a 93- member Central Executive Committee ( with 9 vacancies) , which in turn has elected Mayukh Biswas as the new General Secretary and V.P. Sanu as the President of the organization. The CEC also elected a 19 member central secretariat, with 2 vacancies. The newly elected office bearers include Dipsita Dhar & Srijan Bhattacharya ( elected as Joint Secretaries) and Pratikur Rehman (elected as Vice-President) , among others.
SFI was successful in making inroads to newer areas after the 15th All India Conference held at Sikar of Rajasthan in January, 2016. Apart from winning students union elections in the premier higher education institutions such as JNU, HCU, Pondicherry University, Kerala Central University etc. it could also register our unavoidable presence in other central universities such as Gujarat and Karnataka too. There were significant victories in students union elections in states including Rajasthan and Assam, apart from the sweeping victories in Kerala and Tripura.
There are notable organisational achievements during these period such as re-organising the movement in the state of Gujarat after the gap of 14 years, forming a unit in Jammu university, emerging as the single largest organisation in the first ever elections that took place in Ambedkar University of Delhi, so on and so forth.
The last two and half years, since the last All India Conference, the students have been going under a further intensified attack by none other than the NDA led central government. The toxic combination of communalisation and commercialisation have worsened the condition of the student community to an unprecedented level. Attempts were made to turn all the public funded premier higher education centres as mere factories for saffron political propaganda. Year after year, the amount of fund allocated for education is being reduced. This has been repeated in the cases of mid-day meal to the research scholarship. Atmosphere of critical thinking, which is the soul of any University has been replaced by the authoritarian diktats and the selective discipline in the name of ultra-nationalism. The huge drop out of students from marginalised communities and the decrease in their number in every upward level of education is the product of both these policies and the sabotage of reservation. SFI have been in the forefront of vibrant student movement arisen in the country against the authoritarian Government led by the saffron fascists and their anti-student, anti-people policies. SFI has been mobilizing students across the nation to fight the above said twin attacks on education.
Campus democracy has been facing unparalleled challenges. The student movement in Tripura and Bengal are going through a period of brutal repression. It is in the same period one of the brave and committed SFI activist, Abhimanyu Maharajas was murdered by the Islamist fundamentalist forces.
The Conference, which has seriously and thread barely discussed the various dimensions of the current times in general and the education system in particular, will surely be a milestone in gearing up the student movement towards the challenges of the future. The biggest political challenge obviously being the next Lok Sabha Elections. We hope that the new leadership of SFI will fulfill the role which the current times demand from it.
Hasta la Victoria Siempre, Comrades!
Until Victory, always, Comrades!
Socialist India 