New Delhi: While the recent protests against Rahul Gandhi's visits to campuses in Varanasi and Allahabad may have brought his interactive sessions with students back in the news, there is another side to this picture: his initiatives have done little to improve the acceptability of the National Students' Union of India (NSUI) among students.
Despite Rahul's flying visits to many universities, the students' wing of the Congress has been getting a drubbing on campus after campus in union elections. It was in September 2007 that Rahul was inducted as party general secretary and given the charge of the Youth Congress and NSUI. Exhorting youth to join politics, he sought to end the nomination culture in the party by introducing "internal elections" in these organisations.
To give a spur to this "process of democratisation", Rahul has been visiting college and university campuses across the country and holding interactive sessions, intended to give Gen Next an idea of his ideals and vision.
The recent university results indicate that his overtures have failed, and NSUI sources attribute it to "loopholes" in Rahul's strategy. The NSUI leader was referring to one of Rahul's experiments in the Delhi University Students' Union (DUSU) polls. To guard against leaders making the nominations, the NSUI asked office-bearers of elected college units to select their DUSU panel of candidates. But the results put a question mark on the efficacy of this experiment.
Weeks before the Rajasthan University election, the NSUI tried another experiment, modelled on the MBA entrance tests. Students wishing to get NSUI membership had to write a test, which reportedly consisted of questions on the recommendations of the Lyngdoh Committee on students' union elections, as well as the Raghavan committee's on ragging. The written test was followed by an interview and a group discussion. The RU election results showed little impact of these exercises.
NSUI president Hibi Eden, however, sees nothing unusual in the setbacks suffered by the students' wing. "If you look at the history of these campuses, be it Hyderabad or Himachal Pradesh, they have been dominated by the Left for the past 15 years, just as Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University. We don't see anything unusual in the results there. But the Himachal Pradesh regional campus has our president. On the whole, we have increased our vote share."
As for the dismal performance in the DUSU pols, Eden sought to blame the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations (limiting the duration of the election exercise). "We got just three days for campaigning and it was impossible to reach out to two lakh students. There should be some creative platforms like a presidential debate where candidates could explain their agenda to students."
Asked why Rahul had not been able to make a mark, Eden says: "I am the NSUI president and it is my responsibility. Rahul Gandhi is the general secretary and it is not for him to collect votes. Tell me one leader other than him who is acceptable among the students' community."
Source: Indian Express