EDITORIAL: For several days the Progressive Students Collective has set up a sit-in camp in front of the Assembly Cambers in Lahore, demanding restoration of student unions. So far to no avail. The Sindh Assembly, however, has passed a bill allowing student unions, banned by military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq way back in 1984 as part of his policy to suppress all voices of dissent. The ban has stayed in place all these years.
Although, as expected of them, major political parties have been promising in their respective manifestoes to bring back student bodies, when in power they have refused to lift the lid on student activism. In fact, in ’89 when he was chief minister of Punjab, PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif reinstated student unions, but lost interest after Muslim Students Federation, affiliated to his party, fell behind the Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing, Islami Jamiat-e-Tuleba (IJT), in the electoral contests.
The vacuum created by the bar on genuine student representative bodies was to be filled by different religio-ethnic groups such as the IJT, All Pakistan Muhajir Students Organisation — precursor of the MQM — and during the recent years by the ANP-allied Pakhtoon Students Federation.
As a result, student problems related to academic life, administrative matters and other issues such as fees and higher public education budget took a back seat as these organisations, focused on their own agendas, have been fighting one another for dominance. In Punjab, the IJT — backed by the Zia regime for as long as it lasted — not only appointed itself as a keeper of student morality in co-ed universities and colleges creating all sorts of problems, but also hounded out well-qualified progressive professors from the country’s oldest institution of higher learning, University of the Punjab, causing an inexorable deterioration in academic standards. Under the prevailing conditions, nothing seems to be on the right track.
Student unions provide young people with a platform where they can acquire life and leadership skills and also learn to listen to others’ opinions —something severely missing in this society. That is where many prominent present-day politicians honed their leadership abilities. Unfortunately, however, student activism is seen as a threat to the bigger picture since young people tend to raise difficult questions about the way things are done. That though should not worry elected governments; they are expected to listen to both critical and uncritical voices which can help bring about positive change. All governments in the provinces must reinstate student unions so they can address student concerns and promote healthy activities on and off the campuses.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022