A zonal rally and convention of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) was organised in Pune on January 24. Thousands of students from different parts of Maharashtra and neighbouring Madhya Pradesh attended the rally. The main slogans of the rally were ‘Oppose Centralisation and Communalisation of Education’ and ‘Scrap RUSA (Rashtriya Ucchatar Shiksha Abhiyan)’.

CPI(M) State Secretariat member Ajit Abhyankar inaugurated the convention at Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Sanskrutik Bhavan. In his address, Abhyankar said the Modi government has increased the burden on the working people through aggressively pursuing the neo-liberal economic policies. Referring to the black money issue, he exposed the capitalist nature of this Modi government. He called upon the student community to build struggle for recovery of this black money so that this money can be utilise to strengthen our education system.

Addressing the convention, SFI all India President V Shivdasan said there is no ‘acche din’ as had been promised by Narendra Modi and BJP before the parliamentary elections. BJP just talked of development, but there has been no development. In reality, inflation has increased, there is no growth in GDP, the central government is reducing the spending on public sector which has affected the public services like education and health. Expenditure on education has been reduced by about Rs 3,900 crore. Besides these neo-liberal economic policies, the government is pursuing its communal agenda. Referring to Modi’s remarks that our ancestral were doing plastic surgery and Lord Ganesha was a good example of this, Sivdasan said this way they are making our education communal.

SFI all-India joint secretary Vikram Singh also addressed the gathering. He said the aim of SFI, as spelled out in our Programme, is to ensure a democratic, scientific, secular and progressive education system. But today instead of making the education system student-centric, the government is making changed to appease the corporate houses. Commercialization of education is affecting the common people. We must strive for scientific and secular education. But the BJP government is using science in an unscientific way. BJP/RSS is using education to propagate unscientific attitude among general public and students in particular. The need of the hour is to expose this and strengthen the people’s voice. The BJP government does not want to develop a rational society, which will ask questions as it will cause trouble to their cause of Hindu Rashtra. SFI has continuously waged struggles against this and will continue to do so for betterment of students.

SFI’s Madhya Pradesh state president Kuldeep Pipal also addressed the meeting explaining the policies affecting the students in Madhya Pradesh as there is a BJP-led government for the past 15 years. Sanjay Dabhade, a well known education activist, congratulated SFI for organising such convention against the policies of the Modi government. Former SFI state secretary Maharudra Dake also addressed the public meeting.

Presidential speech was delivered by state president Mohan Jadhav. He congratulated the Pune district committee of SFI for organising this programme. The convention demanded strengthening of the public education sector. By destroying the public education sector, the central government is liquidating the public space and is promoting commercialisation. The convention also demanded setting up of government schools -- from primary to higher secondary level -- in every village, and reservation for students from rural areas in central and state universities and institutes. The government should provide nutritional food to the students, free books, free uniform and transport facility. On these demands the convention decided to participate in the ‘March to Parliament’ called by SFI on February 26.