aisa

Broadening Horizons Mov AISA in JNU: Br oadening Horizons of the Student Movement
powerful anti-communal campaign in the north Indian campuses and created history by defeating the ABVP to win Students Union elections in campuses like BHU, Allahabad University, Kumaon University and JNU. Whenever AISA has been in the leadership of JNUSU, we have succeeded in achieving significant advances for the student community. In the recent most instance, during 2007-2008, when AISA swept the JNUSU elections, winning all four of the central panel posts, JNUSU undertook a range of agenda to democratize the university and its decision making bodies, with many initiatives taken up for the first time. These included the recognition of madarsa certificates in JNUs admission, identifying and resisting the faulty cut-off criteria of OBC reservation and fighting it out up to the Supreme Court, setting up a university-level Career counseling and placement bureau; ensuring the rights and infrastructural facilities of PH students; expanded facilities and student representation in the Librar y Committees; democratization of Fee Waiver Committee for Foreign students; and ensuring the rewriting of illegal contracts to ensure workers rights and minimum wages. Significant Policy Level Interventions for a Socially-Inclusive, Egalitarian JNU Over last 2 decades, when neo-liberal policies were being forced upon in campus after campus, AISA and AISA-led JNUSUs have confronted the assaults head on. At each point, we conceptualized, formulated and fought for significant policy level changes in the university to make JNU accessible to the deprived sections of the society, to ensure student representation and participation in all decision-making bodies, to struggle against casteism and for gender equality, to resist corporate intervention in campus spaces and services, and to link student politics to the larger democratic peoples struggles of our time. The decisive imprint of the policy-level interventions can be seen and felt in the democratic and egalitarian orientation of the academic, social and political life of this campus:

We are living in times when higher education is increasingly being turned into a commodity available only to those who can afford it. Range of new Education Policies and Regulations are being introduced to ensure corporate take-over of higher education and turning it into exclusive enclaves of the rich and the privileged. Concomitant with heavy reduction in state-funding, colleges and universities are now extracting user charges, and charging students for even basic facilities like water, electricity, health care, libraries and chemicals used in laboratories. Campus spaces and facilities are being blatantly commercialized in public educational institutions. Provisions for social justice, like the OBC reservations have been repeatedly and deliberately scuttled. And there has been an outright attack on the power of students to unionize and collectively fight for their rights in the form of the Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations.

In this backdrop, it is the need of the hour to have aware, vigilant, responsible and politically informed student unions to safeguard the interests of the student community and lead the student movement. The powers-that-be will try their level best to scuttle mass student mobilizations and active student representation in decision-making bodies. However, the student community has to ensure that each and every anti-student move is robustly resisted. This is precisely the tradition of the student movement in JNU a tradition that needs to be nurtured and built up in these trying times and in the face of fresh challenges. Forging JNUSU as A Seat of Struggle: Imagining and Introducing Policies for Democratising JNU On this campus, as an organization and as a constituent of JNUSU, AISA has always articulated and fought for a radical, pro-student, pro-people vision of student politics. From its foundation in August 1990, AISA emerged as the platform of students committed to revolutionary change. During 1992, when the communal mobilization of RSS-BJPABVP was at its peak, AISA challenged the monster of communalism in its very bastions of UP. In the wake of Babri Masjid demolition in 1992, AISA spearheaded a

100 hr barricade against corruption 2011

 Restoring Deprivation Points: In 1993-1994, the very first AISA-led JNUSU fought to restore the unique deprivation point system in JNUs admission system, allowing women and students from backward areas and classes to come and study in JNU. This system, which was prevalent in JNU earlier, had been scrapped in 1983. It is indeed unfortunate that SFI, which led the JNUSU for most of the terms during 1983-1993, never struggled to restore the deprivation point system for 10 long years! Resisting Privatisation: In 1995, the AISA-led JNUSU led a landmark struggle against privatization and fee-hike due to which the fee structure of JNU remains unhampered and accessible even today. Spearheading GSCASH: Even before the Supreme Courts Visakha Judgement (1997), which made creation of a Committee Against Sexual harassment in every workplace mandatory, AISA raised the issue of an autonomous committee on Sexual harassment in JNU in July 1996 itself. Because of this early debate and prepared ground, JNU became one of the first universities to create its GSCASH in 1999, immediately after the SC verdict. Kicking Out Nestle, Resisting Corporate Takeover: In April 2004, a 24x7 Nestle outlet was set up on campus as a result of a dubious agreement between the SFI-led JNUSU of 2002-2003 and the JNU administration. AISA immediately started a popular movement against this Nestle Outlet. In 2004-05, the AISA-led JNUSU spearheaded the anti-corporatization spirit of the campus and demanded immediate scrapping of the Nestle outlet. In a historic UGBM in January 2005, 544 students voted against the Nestle outlet, while SFI with 114 cadres stood in shameful defense of Nestle. As a result, the JNU administration was forced to scrap its contract with Nestle. The present 24X7 dhaba and North-east dhaba came up in the erstwhile Nestle spot. At all subsequent junctures, too, AISA has resolutely upheld proclaimed that shops and campus spaces should be allotted to socially deserving sections rather than to corporate interests. Enhancing MCM Scholarships: JNUSU has consistently struggled for more fellowships and scholarships to enable students to pursue their studies. AISAs presence in JNUSU has ensured the steady increase in Means Cum Merit fellowship from Rs 280 in 2003 to Rs 600 in 2004-05, then to Rs. 1500 in 2006-07. Movement for Workers Rights: Through our struggles and campaigns, JNUSU has resolutely defied the idea that JNU is an island, far-removed from the social and political reality that surrounds us. It is precisely this vision that drove the AISA in JNUSU to lead a historic

movement in 2006 and 2007 for ensuring workers rights and minimum wages in JNU. Consequently, the JNU administration was forced to rewrite all its illegal contracts and ensure the payment of minimum wages. JNUSU representatives led a large movement in solidarity with the protesting workers, and during the course of this movement, JNUSU office bearers were rusticated for supporting the workers of JNU in their struggle. Interestingly, SFI dissociated itself from the movement and demanded Proctorial Enquiry against the rusticated student protestors! Recognition of Madarsa certificates in JNU Admissions: From 2006 onwards, AISA was spearheading the movement for the recognition of madarsa certificates in admissions in JNU. The struggle continued through signature-campaign, public meetings, survey of madarsas and several protests. Finally, in April 2008, following an eleven-day Hunger Strike by AISAled JNUSU, the Academic Council Meeting of 30 April 2008 resolved to give recognition to Madarsa Certitificates in JNU. Thus, for the first time in JNUs 40 years history, the doors of JNU were opened to the students from madarsa backgrounds, ending a long period of discriminatory treatment. Ensuring the Rights of Physically Challenged Students: Whenever it has been at the helm of JNUSU, AISA has given the rights of Physically Challenged students a centrality on the campus agenda. In 2007-08 some of the demands achieved include the construction of ramps for making buildings accessible; installing softwares for visually challenged students in each school; increasing the amount of funds for readers/writers to VH students, and expanding the Helen Keller unit with more functional computers. Most significantly, for the first time in April 2008, JNU administration, in a written agreement with JNUSU, promised to ensure representation of PH students in a decision making body like the Campus Development Committee. Elected Student Representation in Academic Council and Board of Studies: During 2004-2005, JNUSU led successful str ug gles to ensure elected student representation in the decision-making bodies of the University the Academic Council (AC) and Board of Studies (BoS), and forced a reluctant HRD Ministry to finally approve it September2006.

at Jaitaputur anti-nuke protest 2011 against Boucher Visit Aug 2008

at Manipur 2004

 24x7 Health Centre facility: In September 2009, in the wake of two tragic deaths in the campus due to the absence of any emergency health service facility in the campus at night, the long standing demand for 24x7 health facility in a residential campus like JNU gained momentum. AISA-led JNUSU launched a massive agitation. After 8 day long hunger strike and demonstration at UGC, the insensitive administration was forced to agree for the first time to keep JNU Health Centre open all night and arrange for a fully-equipped ambulance to be available round the clock. Fighting Casteist Cut-Off Ploy, Realising OBC Reservations In 2006, when Youth for Equality took up an ugly and casteist campaign against OBC quotas in higher education institutes, AISA confronted them every inch of the way with a 34-day pro-reservation hunger strike and a consistent campaign of public meetings, debates, film screenings. This more-than-a-month-long Hunger Strike and campaign, challenged YFEs casteist frenzy head on and successfully rebuffed the media-hyped agenda to project JNU and other such institutes as A more serious challenge was posed in 2008, when OBC reservations were finally implemented. JNU Administration adopted a highly casteist and discriminatory trick by misinterpreting the Supreme Court prescribed cut-off criterion for OBC students. This led to massive non-fulfillment and subsequent transfer of more than 400 OBC seats to general category during 2008-2011. The JNU administrations attempts to subvert OBC reservations did not go unchallenged. Right from 2008 itself, the administrations interpretation of cut-off was robustly challenged by the AISA-led JNUSU. Through repeated demonstrations, hunger strikes and public meetings, by mobilizing students, teachers and legal experts, a protracted struggle was waged. It also required meticulous collection and analysis of admission data to substantiate the critical issue of cut-off that had remained unnoticed in the labyrinth of court orders and administrative whims. Three years of struggle and painstaking research finally let our case be proved, first in the Delhi High Court in Sep. 2011 and then in the Apex Court in Aug.2011. The historic Supreme Court verdict of 18 August 2011 has finally put an end to the attempts to steal OBC seats. Now, in all central universities across the country (including JNU, DU, Allahabad and other universities which had been blatantly stealing OBC
anti-Nestle Struggle 2004-05

seats), administrations and anti-reservation forces will not be able to misinterpret the cut-off criterion to scuttle OBC reservations. However, the struggle for establishing that the faulty cutoff criterion is the main obstacle preventing the fulfillment of OBC reservations and open robbery of OBC seats was not an easy one. The task was made all the more difficult by the highly irresponsible and hostile role of organisations like SFI and DSU, which while claiming to be proreservation, trained all their energy against AISA rather than against the casteist cut-off ploy of the JNU administration. They refused to even acknowledge the centrality of the cut-off problem till as late as March 2010. Instead they ran a vitriolic campaign against AISA and JNUSUs efforts. Their misplaced hostility against AISA only strengthened the JNU administration to continue with its casteist trick and confusion on the issue. After the historic 7th Sep 2010 Delhi HC verdict, SFI was so shocked that AISAs position had been validated by the HC, that it did not even welcome the verdict for 48 hours! Despite this hostility, we never got deflected in our efforts. Along with numerous protest actions, AISA filed extensive RTIs and collected admission data for 25 centres to nail the JNU administrations ploys; we contacted progressive voices in JNU and beyond-including academics, lawyers and bureaucrats- who extended crucial support. Thus, a struggle that began with AISAs initiatives in JNU and fought against all odds, led to a verdict of national significance that will salvage and defend OBC reservations across the country. Wipe Out The Rule Of Corruption, Corporate Loot and State Repression The UPA-II rule is marked by steady exposures of corruption and scams-from CWG to 2G, Antrix to Krishna Godavari Basin, from mines of Bellary to grab of land and forests in Orissa-Jharkhand-Chattisgarh. Each scam dwarfed the earlier one - all indicating the massive loot of countrys precious natural and peoples resources by corporates facilitated by the neo-liberal policies of the government. From the beginning of 2011, AISA started a sustained campaign against this corruption and corporate loot. A Nationwide Student-Youth Campaign Against Corruption and Corporate Loot was launched, and throughout the summer months of May, June and July, AISA activists campaigned everyday in bazaars and coaching centres, in railway stations and buses, in hostels as well as rented accommodations across the country. As the demand

Protest against slum eviction during CWG 2010

for a strong Jan Lokpal Bill to punish the corrupt caught the imagination of the country, AISAs campaign asserted the crying need to link corruption with the issue of neoliberal economic policies of privatisation. Our slogan was Liberalisation-Privatisation Breeds Corruption! Fight Privatisation! End Corruption! AISA asserted that corruption today is not only a matter of morally corrupt individuals. Rather it has been institutionalised by the present phase of rampant privatization policies that have opened the doors for corporate loot of extremely valuable resources like land, minerals, spectrum, etc in the country. These policies have resulted in an unprecedented increase in the scale of corruption, leading to scams amounting to lakhs of crores in these sectors like minerals, natural resources and spectrum. And as thousands and thousands of people become aware of corruption and take to the streets, they are being faced with brutal crackdowns. Therefore, the movement against corruption today has inextricably got linked to the vital questions of civil rights, space of common peoples voices and dissent in a living democracy. A high point of AISAs anti-corruption campaign was the 100-hour barricade against corruption and corporate loot at Jantar Mantar from 9 th -13 th August 2011, where thousands of students from across the country participated. This barricade was organised at a time when the beleaguered UPA had banned protests and continuous gatherings at Jantar Mantar in an attempt to quell the growing anti-corruption movement. AISA activists faced arrests and detentions, and on the strength of the participants militancy and determination, succeeded in reclaiming Jantar Mantar as a space of protest. This was a significant blow to the attempts of the UPA to shrink the spaces of protest in the national capital. AISAs campaign also robustly asserted that the anti-corruption movement cannot be silent on the burning issues of democracy and secularism that the country faces.

being among the first to express solidarity with the workers after their brutalisation by the Haryana Police. 2004 When the women of Manipur shook the conscience of the nation with their nude protest against the rape and killing of Manorama Devi by Armed forces, AISA mobilised the students of JNU in several protests and campaigns against AFSPA. The AISA President and JNUSU President from AISA visited Manipur at the height of the movement. 2004 The AISA-led JNUSU responded promptly to the tsunami tragedy, organising massive collection drives in which the entire JNU student community participated. AISA also sent a relief team to the affected areas of Nagapattinam. 2005 To familiarise JNU with the struggles of tribals against Mining MNCs, starvation and state repression in the Kashipur-Koraput-Kalahandi zone of Orissa, AISA councillors from SSS organised an exposure trip of students to the area in the summer vacation of June 2005. 2005 When Manmohan Singh visited JNU campus on 14 November 2005, AISA gave a call for Black Flag protest against UPAs repressive role in North-East and Kashmir through hated laws like AFSPA, Manmohan Singhs Oxford speech hailing British rule, his surrender before US imperialist diktats, Indias vote against Iran at IAEA and his slew of neo-liberal assaults on life and livelihood of Indian people. Black flag protestors were brutally beaten up by NSUI and ABVP goons at the venue. SFI, then allied to UPA, opposed the black flag protest and sided with the right-wing elements. Subsequently, SFI joined the NSUI and ABVP, in a first ever move in JNUs history to censure and impeach the then JNUSU President from AISA, Mona Das, through an extraordinary-UGBM on 27 November for the crime of showing Black Flag to the Prime Minister! Progressive and democratic students of the campus however, rallied with AISA and defeated shameful unity of the right-wing forces and SFI in the EUGBM. 2006 When tribals protesting against TATA steel plant and displacement were gunned down in Kalinganagar on January 2, 2006, the AISA-led JNUSU took a team of students to visit the struggling tribals. 2006 In April 2006, when the Narmada Bachao Andolan came to Delhi to protest against the UPA Govt.s

Confronting the Burning Questions of Our Times

AISA has always believed that our involvement cannot remain confined to seminar rooms and classrooms; the students movement must have an integral link with social movements. This is a link that we have strengthened over several years. 2004 AISA participated in the struggle of the Honda workers at Gurgaon, with the JNUSU President

Flood Relief at Supol 2008

Referendum Against VC, 2010

decision to raise the height of the dam and drown out land and livelihoods, the President of the AISAled JNUSU and other AISA activists sat on a weeklong hunger strike in support of the NBA agitation. 2006 In May 2006, AISA activists undertook an NREGA survey in Darbhanga in Bihar, pointing to huge corruption in the implementation of public works under this scheme. 2006 In December 2006, when farmers began their struggle against displacement and the Tata factory, AISA led a team of students to Singur, also meeting Tapasi Maliks bereaved family. 2008 In May 2008, the AISA-led JNUSU visited the suicidestricken belt of Vidarbha to organize support to the debt-ridden farmers. 2008 When the students of Kashmir University were forcibly removed from their hostels and subject to army excesses on campus before the visit of the Indian President, AISA joined the struggle, with the JNUSU president visiting KU to participate in and express solidarity with the struggle. 2008 When massive floods took place in Bihar, AISA-led JNUSU organized two relief teams of students who visited the flood-affected villages in October and December to distribute relief. 2008 After the bomb blasts in Delhi and the Batla House encounter in September 2008, AISA immediately joined the citizens fact finding team, also organizing massive Public meetings with lawyers, journalists and human rights activists against terror and witch hunting of minorities. 2009 When the farcical Right to Education Bill was tabled in Parliament in July 2009, AISA along with the All India Forum for the Right to Education organized a Public Hearing on Right to Education, against Kapil Sibals 100-day Agenda of all-out commercialisation of education and demanding that the government uphold its responsibilities to provide a genuine, democratic right to education for all. 2011 When HRD minister Kapil Sibal went on a frenzied drive to commercialise higher education with a slew of bills - like Foreign Universities Bill, Education Tribunal Bill and so on - AISA launched a countrywide campaign exposing the dangerous provisions of these bills and their hidden agenda. On the opening day of the parliament session on 21 Februray 2011, we organized a Peoples Parliament on Education at Jantar Mantar, opposing the passage of these bills.

2011 During 23-25 April, AISA led a team of JNU students to join the massive Tarapur to Jaitapur AntiNuclear March, in solidarity with the people of Jaitapur who are resisting the Areva nuclear plant in the face of severe repression. 2011 Innocent Muslim youth from Hyderabad to Batla House, from Malegaon to Azamgarh continue to bear the brunt of victimisation due to biased and prejudiced investigations by the state machinery in the wake of terror blasts in the country. What Aseemanands confession and the trail of investigations kicked off by late Hemant Karkare have laid bare is the dangerous extent to which terror investigations are tainted by majoritarian communal prejudice. If hundreds of Muslim youth were branded as masterminds and arrested, tortured, jailed and even declared convict of crimes which Aseemanand now confesses were perpetrated by saffron groups, it raises a serious question about the credibility of our investigative and judicial process. In continuation with our campaign against minority witch-hunt, and to promote justice for the innocent victims of minority profiling and framed charges, AISA organised two teams of students from different Central Universities to visit Azamgarh and Malegaon from 25 May to 5 June 2011, during the summer vacation. A fact-finding report titled Conspiracy Theories Put to Shame on the witch-hunt of minorities in Malegaon and Azamgarh has also been released. 2007onwards AISA participated in the campaign for the release of Dr. Binayak Sen in a sustained way from his arrest in 2007 onwards. AISA activists went to Raipur to show solidarity. After the trial court in Raipur held Dr. Sen guilty, AISA took the initiative of organizing a massive instant protest at Jantar Mantar on 27 December 2010, continuing the movement until his release. The Stay on JNUSU Elections and Struggle Against Lyngdoh Recommendations In October 2008, however, the Supreme Court (SC) stayed the JNUSU elections. Since then, there have been no JNUSU elections in this university.

What was the official reason for the SC stay order? Noncompliance with the recommendations of the Lyngdoh Committee report on student union elections. But the stated purpose of the Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations (LCR) is to ensure regular, peaceful, democratic student union polls free of money and muscle power in campuses. For almost fourty years, JNUSU elections have been conducted without even a shadow of violence, money and muscle power. And for several years, JNUSU has stood as a role model for a responsible and democratic student movement consistently carrying forward innumerable struggles for a more just, equitable, gendersensitive, socially inclusive and democratic campus and society. Why then was JNUSU election process targeted and stayed? The reason for this has always been obvious to the JNU student community. As opposed to the JNUSU constitution which actively encourages a democratic culture of debate, discussion and dissent, the Lyngdoh committees recommendations represent a fundamentally flawed vision that seeks to divorce students from radical politics. The powers-that-be always tried to scuttle an organized student movement. And the reason for this is obvious: they fear an organized resistance to their anti-student policies, and nothing could be more dangerous to their agenda than an active and vibrant student union. Ever since the Supreme Court (SC) stayed the JNUSU elections in 2008, the JNU student community under the banner of Joint Struggle Committee (JSC) has fought a long and protracted battle to defend the JNUSU constitution against the arbitrary imposition of the Lyngdoh recommendations in JNU. A positive step ahead was achieved in JNU students legal challenge to Lyngdoh when in November 2009 2-judge bench of the SC ruled that the legislature should not interfere in the conduct of student union elections, and referred the matter to a constitutional bench of the SC. However, the SC did not lift the stay on the JNUSU elections. In other words, JNU students had managed to establish in the court of law that the Lyngdoh committee recommendations were highly questionable. While this was a significant step ahead, the Supreme Courts refusal to lift the stay put the JNUSU elections into indefinite suspension. In view of inordinate delay that the final resolution of our case may entail, filling the vacuum arising from the absence of JNUSU became a genuine felt-need of the student community. So at a UGBM held on 6 Sep 2010, it

was decided that the JSC would enter into negotiations with the Solicitor General (SG) of India, Gopal Subramanium (who was the amicus curie overseeing the implementation of Lyngdoh guidelines in the country) to get maximum relaxations from the Lyngdoh recommendations. The process of negotiations also went through many twists and turns and was finally completed on 20 Sep 2011, when the amicus curie agreed in principle to give some relaxations from LCR for conduct of JNUSU elections as an interim measure, till our case is finally disposed off in the Supreme Court. As soon as these relaxations were announced, some organizations like DSU (which have repeatedly tried to sabotage the process of negotiations) started a virulent anticampaign, asking the student community to reject these relaxations. There can be no denying the fact the relaxations offered by the amicus curiae are definitely an important step forward, though they are by NO MEANS perfect and we in fact agree with some of the criticisms being put forward. However, given the situation where JNUSU Elections have not been held since 2008, student community was faced today with a twin challenge: to recognise and address the urgent need for elected representation and an effective, functional platform of struggle against anti-student policies, AND also to resist the Lyngdoh agenda in JNU and beyond. Unfortunately organizations like DSU, in their rhetoric against Lyngdoh, simply refused to address the problem posed by the long-ter m suspension of elected representation to lead students struggles. We do not feel that the student community can afford to do likewise. We need an effective way in which we can continue the struggle against the Lyngdoh agenda, while also correcting the serious issue of indefinite delay in elected student representation. Even to continue an effective struggle against Lyngdoh we need an elected and united body, more so in a situation where the unity of JSC stands undermined by competitive one-upmanship and deliberate attempts to undermine it by certain groups. This is where AISA feels that the negotiated relaxations in the Lyngdoh recommendations can be accepted by the student community as an interim measure , while we continue our struggle against Lyngdoh. It is with this perspective AISA gave a call to the student community to ratify these relaxations in an UGBM so as to ensure JNUSU elections as well as a united, credible, accountable platform of struggle. In an UGBM held on 3 October 2011, JNU students gave a mandate for conducting the JNUSU elections according to the relaxations from the Lyngdoh recommendations agreed to in principle by the amicus curiae as an interim measure till the final case is disposed off in the Supreme Court. The UGBM also gave the mandate

Black flag Protest Against Manmohan Singh ,2005

for the JNUSU which will be elected to carry forward the ongoing struggle against Lyngdoh. In the days to come, when JNUSU comes to office, it is necessary that the entire student community come together to ensure that JNUSU remains a powerful platform of struggle against the entire gamut of anti-student policies, including Lyngdoh. This is the challenge before the JNU student community, and we are sure that JNU will live up to this challenge in the days to come. It is important to recognize that the struggle to defend the JNUSU constitution however does not begin and end with a legal battle in the courts to lift the stay on the JNUSU elections, or to get some relaxations from the Lyngdoh recommendations. Rather it is a battle of contending perspectives about student politics and the student movement. In other words, the struggle is equally a political struggle. From the outset, AISA was the only national student organization which took a position against the Lyngdoh Committee Recommendations. Following the stay on JNUSU elections, AISA played a pivotal role in the functioning of the Joint Struggle Committee of JNU students whether with regard to mobilizing public opinion, organizing protests or collecting funds. Outside the campus as well, AISA undertook several initiatives to focus attention on the Lyngdoh Report and its stifling impact on campus democracy. On 21st and 22nd November 2008, a 48 hour long hunger strike was obser ved against these recommendations. From 4th-11th Fenruary 2009, a Chhatra Adhikaar Abhiyaan was organized in campuses across the country to protest against the undeclared emergency that prevails in campuses today and to unit students to fight for their rights. Struggling Against an Autocratic Administration, Politics of Commercialization and Corruption Following the stay on JNUSU elections, the administrative regime in JNU, under the leadership of the previous ViceChancellor B.B. Bhattacharya saw a golden opportunity to commercialize campus spaces and facilities. They believed that in the absence of a fully-functional JNUSU, the students would not be able to raise their voice against repressive or anti-student measures of the administration. But against claims of the increasing de-politicization of the campus in the absence of an elected JNUSU, the past two years has seen some of the most spirited mass mobilizations in the history of JNU. Thousands of students have gathered in front of the Ad Block opposing commercialization moves of the JNU administration, at India Gate against imposition of the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations in JNU, thousands have participated in several UGBMs to discuss and debate on issues central to the student movement. In each of these

mobilizations, AISA has played a crucial role. Thus, in 2009-2010, the administration: Tried to rent out the ecologically fragile PSR rocks to advertisement agencies. Installed electricity meters in Koyna hostel and tried to extract user charges for electricity from students. Allowed a Maruti franchisee to advertise and sell cars right inside the Academic Complex. Came up with a plan to set up a massive Food Court with 10 canteens near the JNU library that was not only absurd and unnecessary, but would also have entailed massive deforestation. Tried to open a Caf Coffee Day outlet in the SLS building, without any prior permission from the Campus Development Committee. At each juncture, AISA spearheaded timely protests, resisted and successfully stalled each of these moves which symbolized commercialization on one hand and massive financial corruption by the JNU administration on the other. In September 2009, when the Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD) came up with a circular calling for an austerity drive, directing all central universities to hike fees, extract user charges and commercialize campus spaces and facilities, the AISA-led JNUSU once again led a massive movement to ensure that this proposal was never implemented in JNU. AISA has consistently stood against the politics of corporatization and commercialization, arguing that students from all backgrounds should be able to enter JNU and shops and spaces in the campus should be allotted to socially deserving sections rather than corporate interests. A Students Referendum on the VC: A First-Of-Its Kind Effort In April 2010, when our former VC Prof. B.B. Bhattacharya was desperately seeking a second term, AISA initiated the move of holding a students referendum on the 2nd term of the VC. All the organizations agreed for the move and a huge referendum on the 2nd term of the VC was held on 20th April. B.B. Bhattacharya, who became notorious for his undemocratic, corrupt and casteist practices and views was given a resounding NO for his second term. Indeed it was a historic event and first of its kind in the history of students movement anywhere, when students, through secret ballot, in a formally conducted election process, exercised their right to give opinion about those who run their institution! Other Organizations Where AISA has sought to articulate and fight for a radical, pro-student, propeople vision of politics on this campus,

Tsunami Relief at Nagapattinam 2005

there exist other student groups with political agendas at quite a remove from ours. Take the ABVP. Its activists have repeatedly engaged in acts of violence, lumpenism, and venomous communal campaigns. They have shown a complete absence of concern for genuine student issues. They have openly and wholeheartedly supported the Sangh Parivars pogrom of terror, rape, and have tried to turn JNU into a laboratory for their hate campaigns against Muslims. YFE was born in the wake of OBC reservations with the single point agenda to spread casteist frenzy against social justice. Subsequently, with the implementation of OBC reservation, most of its cadres have returned to their original home of ABVP. YFE, however, continues through periodic leaflets to whip up hatred against deprived sections. The NSUI generally remains silent and absent, occasionally arousing itself to welcome Congress leaders or defend the UPA Governments assault on lives and livelihoods. On this campus and beyond, SFI has become a spokesman for the politics of displacement and corporatization. They stood by the administration in crackdowns on students, ran dubious campaigns against proper implementation of OBC reservation and reduced politics to one of slander and personalized attacks. We have seen this when they never worked to restore the deprivation points in JNUs admission, which stood scrapped during 198393, despite the fact that it was SFI which led JNUSUs for most of the terms during this period when they championed the opening of the Nestle outlet in this campus in 2004-05, when they betrayed the struggle for minimum wages in 2006-07 by demanding punitive action on protesting students and striking workers, in their total abstinence from the struggle for the correct implementation of OBC reservations and against the illegal cut-off criterion imposed by the JNU Administration, and by their silence on the recent moves of the government to further commercialize and privatize education. SFI, like its parent party the CPI(M), driven out of power in West Bengal and Kerala as a result of Singur and Nandigram and its steady compromise on the issues of the day, has no moral authority left to talk about any substantial issues of politics and student interests. As a result, most of their time is engaged in vitriolic, personalized slander

against AISA and its activists. In fact, far from confronting the right-wing and administrative assaults, it is anti-AISAism which has become the sole plank of SFIs politics. DSU, which supports the anarchist-militarist Maoist stream is only interested in empty radical phrase-mongering and mindless targeting of AISA by hook or crook, desperate to prove itself more radical than thou. It is indeed interesting, that both these so-called left organistions - SFI and DSU- far from engaging in or enriching any creative democratic politics, are obsessed with anti-AISAism in all their stances. Their hostile role against AISA for years on the cut-off struggle for proper implementation of OBC reservation is the one of the recent most examples of their blind anti-AISA obsession.

We call upon....

At this crucial juncture, it is important to once again recognize the real challenges confronting us in the for m of commercialization, assaults on campus democracy and the inclusive character of JNU. The model of student politics that we need to articulate at this juncture cannot be one of petty politics and slander. It cannot be one that espouses divisive agendas of communal and caste politics. It cannot speak in the voice of the corporates, but must speak in the voice of the people. By resisting attacks, by imagining new futures, and institutionalizing progressive changes, AISA has evolved and articulated a radical and creative vision of politics in JNU. It has played a vanguard role in addressing the burning questions of our time. AISA appeals to you to be a part of this movement, to stand with a vision of creative student politics that resists the neo-liberal and corporate agenda, combats communalism, that fights for social justice and gender equality, and which upholds campus democracy. We need to build a strong, robust resistance to assaults on student rights; we need to defend the spirit of JNUSU which has always struggled for a democratic, inclusive, secular and progressive JNU.

We Shall Bear Witness To Their Liberation!

Were Witness To the Suffering of Our Struggling People,

Students team at Malegaon 2011