Interview with Comrade Vikram Singh at the 34th SFI West Bengal State Conference

Interview with Comrade Vikram Singh at the 34th SFI West Bengal State Conference Comrade Vikram Singh, Joint Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the Students' Federation of India joined us at the West Bengal State Conference of the SFI. We seized this opportunity to interview him on the onslought of neoliberalism and communal politics on education.  In India education has never been truly secular in content he said. There were always subtle allusions to the Gita and the Ramayanas. Saffronisation, however takes this to a whole new level, with deliberation and on purpose. In Gujarat for example textbooks make out Gandhi and Bhagat Singh to be villains, while Hitler is portrayed as a saviour. The class eight textbooks elaborate the internal achievements of the Nazis in Germany. They realise that education is a powerful tool to shape young minds. After the BJP and its allies came to power they've embarked on a massive project to take over education - not only through its institutions but also through its syllabi and textbooks. Behind the facade of "Indianising" the syllabus, they are redefining what India is.  On the question of how the spread of the communal discourse affects girls, he emphasised that girls are the first victims of this onslaught. Afterall the 'return to Indian values' is really the return to Manu's system of values. So one by one they make inroads into the girls' access to education, first imposing a dress code, then insisting on secluding them into girl's colleges,   somewhere denying them the use of phones - restricting and isolating women whenever convenient. This ultimately ensures that girls do not become free thinkers and remain dependent on men when it comes to forming and voicing opinions. Discussing the impact of neoliberal economy on the content of education he underlines the constantly decreasing interest in pedagogy. The new system goes to great lengths to replace the teacher with technology, restricting interaction that could nurture new ideas, eliminating classroom discussion, leaving no room for dissent or the cultivation of critical review through formal education. He cites as an instance the semesterisation of the course reducing teaching hours. The institutions are also increasingly dependent on contractual or guest faculty, and apparently disinterested in hiring permanent faculty members. The syllabi are also being reworked to be more job oriented and responsive to changes in skill requirements, that is more cut out to create industry manpower. This also implicates that the same manpower is less likely to forge resistance, and can be easily neutralised even if they do so by changing the required skill set which they have not been given the necessary knowledge to master anew. On the students' movement in Bengal he expresses a deep respect for the zeal with which students' have braved the violence and terror reigning in the state and the targeting of educational institutions by the leading party. He echoes the voice of the conference that this is the right time to take the struggle back to the campuses and strengthen the units.  On the direction of national students' movement he says that the need of the hour is a single united cross political spectrum platform to combat the central attack on the education sector that was begun by the UPA II and that is being intensified by the new regime. He also emphasises the need to involve the professional courses, the students of technology, medicine, law and different skill based courses in this united struggle.