Politics, TRPs playing havoc with students

The events over the last few days in Delhi University, when students owing allegiance to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) and All India Students Association (AISA) clashed on the campus, have brought into sharp focus the deep penetration of political parties into campus politics and the deleterious effects of this.

While ABVP as the youth wing of the BJP, and AISA a wing of the CPI-ML supported by the Left flexed their muscles as a carryover of the legacy of hate from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), the manner in which the Congress party and the Aam Aadmi Party too jumped into the fray left no one in doubt that the student wings were playing proxy for the political parties.

Politics is a dirty word in India and when political parties start their sinister games of deception and wheeling dealing in the campuses, the results cannot but be disastrous. The silent majority of students who just want to focus on their education and career are hijacked by the political minority who call the shots.

When students have the protection of political parties, it gives them a licence to indulge in violence. As compared to education institutions in the West, we have far more cases of vandalism, deaths and general indiscipline. Can we afford that?

The recent Delhi University clashes between the ABVP and AISA were sparked off by an invitation to a seminar for a student leader of JNU, Umar Khalid, who is facing charges of raising seditious slogans and making speeches that were pre-judicial to national interest. While the invitation was withdrawn due to an outcry before the scheduled day of the seminar, the ABVP and the AISA swung into action against each other. Soon, the political parties jumped into the battle with ferocity.

Students should always be focusing on their rights but instead, they are manipulated by politicians of all parties and fight the fights of their political masters. Indian politics is a dirty reality. Do we want this dirt to pile up in our haloed educational institutions?

There are numerous examples of educational institutions in our country barring political parties from meddling in their affairs. Why shouldn’t Delhi University and JNU be such institutions too? Why should they not banish political leaders who are a source of mischief? Both have been prestigious centres of learning but are losing their sheen due to the messing around by politicians.

The teachers cannot remain unaffected with negative political winds blowing. Inevitably, the Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) has got heavily politicised and teachers tend to take positions not on the basis of perceived merits but on political grounds. Sadly, they have long ceased to be role models for students barring a few exceptions.

Sanctimonious as the media may try to behave, the fault-lines are sharp and discernible. The tribe of impartial journalists who are not bitten by the bug of sensationalism is diminishing fast. With the coming of the electronic channels, there is a race for TRPs that is unhealthy to the point of being obnoxious.The print media is emulating the negative standards set by the electronic channels in sensationalising events and slinging mud at individuals and institutions.

How else can one explain the manner in which the media has fanned flames in DU and JNU, blowing up non-issues and trivialities? Take the case of the reporting of the 20-year-old Delhi University student, Gurmehar Kaur, who expressed revulsion over the behaviour of the ABVP. In a free country Gurmehar, the daughter of a martyr who died young in the 1999 Kargil war, was perfectly entitled to express her disgust. But the reactions of some politicians and the media’s mischief in blowing these up beyond all proportions have added fuel to the fire.

Take the statement of Union Minister of State for Home Affair, Kiren Rijiju, who asked on Twitter: “who is polluting this young girl's mind?” Rijju may have made a political statement that smacked of prejudice but that was enough to cause such a hue and cry. In a healthy discourse, was he too not entitled to his own spin? But the media found a golden opportunity to sensationalise his statement.

Then there was ex-cricketer Virender Sehwag who in jest copied Gurmehar Kaur’s style of activism and held a placard that mocked an earlier message of hers that suggested war, and not Pakistan killed her father. Sehwag's message said: “My bat, not I, scored the centuries for my country.”

Sehwag's tweet was cheered on by actor Randeep Hooda, who in turn tweeted “she is being used as a prop.” These were ridiculous and petty but they did not warrant the kind of media hype that was created around them. The threats held out to Gurmehar were most condemnable but isn’t Twitter a handle in which no holds are barred?

It is small wonder then that out of disgust Gurmehar has abandoned her role in the movement against the ABVP and gone back to her home in Jalandhar in Punjab. Could the media not have desisted from dragging her name into headlines and turned her into a subject of wild comment?

While the issue of political parties making capital at the cost of young, impressionable minds needs pondering over, so does the degree to which our media has been indulging in crass sensationalism. The need of the hour is to restore a sense of balance in all walks of life.

The author is a political commentator and columnist. He has authored four books.