‘Student Rights’, now this term may appear a bit vague or
awkward at first but the term makes sense, doesn’t it? In fact, there is a
Wikipedia page also on it and I did not know about it when this term suddenly
popped up in my head. Anyway, I didn’t bother to read the whole Wikipedia page
and what this term actually means because by then I had already painted quite a
picture about it in my mind and apparently there is no such well defined
student rights structure in India so I thought why not to build one right here
on my blog post.
Firstly, why student rights? We have human rights, women
rights, children rights, animal rights, gay rights, all kinds of rights but I
personally feel that student is the community whose rights are most violated.
We are not at all considered as human, treated like animals yet we have no
animal rights. Even when we are children, we have no rights. Being student is
like a punishment you willingly take hoping something good will come out of it,
which, in most of the cases doesn’t happen. Students are regularly insulted and
disrespected by almost everyone. Teachers, parents, college and school staff,
drivers, shop keepers, other students. Every other category of humans in modern
world considers their fundamental right to dominate and insult the students.
The torture of students starts from the first day itself i.e.
when a child becomes a student for the first time, the first day of the school.
Most of the children do not wish to go to school yet they are forcefully sent
and what follows is 14 years of frustration, torture, mental pressure, agony,
name any negative feeling and you will have that in student life. But we are
hopeful, because of one lie. One lie, which always helps us to keep ourselves
together, and continue the struggle. One lie, which is more of an assurance,
that once you reach college life, everything would be fun. There won’t be any
competition in college. There is no study, no pressure to top, and no pressure
to excel. You don’t need to attend any classes. You can bunk them and roam
around wildly without anything on your head. So study hard as much as you can
in schools, make it to a very good college and enjoy your life as you always
wanted to enjoy.
Once you reach college, you realize how your teachers and
parents always lied to you because college life is no different from school
apart from the fact that now you don’t care anymore. Those who care live the
same life as they have lived in school. Those who don’t, roam around, bunk classes
do not study a bit yet it’s not the same as they were promised. There is always
a pressure of performing. You can’t live in the present as you always have to
worry about securing a good job or a good PG college. It’s like same rat race
again but now you know that there is no escape from the rat race.
Do we have any freedom? NO. Can we live a stressful life?
NO. Do we have any rights? NO, NOT AT ALL!!
For parents, we are always careless hopeless creatures who
don’t care about their future, who are wasting their time in useless endeavours that are worthless. You would always be taunted and reminded that you failed to
make it into a good college (most of the cases unless you got an IIT, NIT or
something.. ). You would be compared with other students who are getting good
grades and an explanation would be asked that why are you jeopardizing your
future. You would be nothing more than your grades and consequently you would
be nothing. No matter how much you excel in other areas, you would never be
able to satisfy them and to make things worse we always have some dementors
hovering around our head to make things more ugly and annoying. Our relatives,
who would always be counting several names in front of us and our parents. That
boy got that much package in a company, that boy won competition in some institute,
Gupta Ji’s daughter secured a seat in that prestigious MBA institute. So, in
short, torture doesn’t stop; it exponentially increases as time goes on and so
do the power of the torturers.
If that wasn’t enough, teachers would make sure we suffer
enough to curse our life. I would never understand that whether it’s a
coincidence or what but I am always the part of the worst batch the teacher has
ever seen so far in his/her life. If I am in ‘A’ section then ‘B’ section is
great and ‘A’ is worst and vice versa or I wonder it happens with most of us. There is no good batch, it’s like relativity
theorem, in all frames of reference, in whatever batch a student is in, that
batch is the worst batch for the teacher. You would have to make countless
futile assignments that would never get checked. You have to sit in bizarre
vivas where on god knows what basis they give marks and ask all sort of random
questions. You would have to run behind professors to get signs on your files
and beg again and again to show some mercy on you. You would be insulted again
and again and depending on the teachers mood your work won’t get done. You
would have to wait for long long times and you would be asked to come again
later and the circle goes on. We have no option other than to suffer all these
hoping one day it would end, no rights, no voice, no platform to complain.
Luckily there are some teachers who understands students, who are actually student friendly. Some teachers indeed helps student a lot and thus restore the lost faith. Thus a few teachers get genuine respect from students. But you might not be so lucky in the case of administrative and clerical staff. Lower the position of the worker is ruder he would be to you. They won’t sign your documents, won’t give you your mark sheets, and delay your work as much as they can. These sadists enjoy torturing the students as much as they can as apparently they don’t have any power over any other person. Students are their punching bags where they can emit all their frustration. I wonder whether they ever consider that in place of us some day there would be their own children, but guess they don’t. As a mere student, we have no rights, hence we have no voice, we can complain nowhere about all these injustice as apparently no one is interested in listening to us.
If somehow you complete your college life without any right,
there would come a time where you would realize that you are nothing and that
is the time when you sit for campus recruitment. One feels the most insecure,
helpless, and vulnerable at that time. There is no fair treatment there but you
can’t do anything about it. No one is interested to pick the best chunk or to
judge everyone fairly and assess on the basis of talent. There are no
guidelines or system. You can be selected or rejected mostly on the basis of
luck and you have to wait for long long long time again for your time to come
to go for interview. You have to sit alone, hungry, tired, frustrated but
apparently you have no right. No one would again listen to you that you deserve
some humanly treatment. You have to answer all sorts of irrelevant and random
question and on the basis of interviewer’s personal biases, prejudices and mood
you may or may not get select.
The list never stops. Shop keepers won’t let you stay for
long and sit and talk as you are occupying places and not paying enough.
Everywhere you go in a group, people gives you look like you are smoking marijuana
or taking cocaine in public, thinking students only waste time in having fun
and stuff. Conductors and drivers misbehave with you as you are just student,
what power you have on them. Your landlords treat you like they have rented
their room for free. Seniors bully juniors, juniors disrespect seniors,
classmates have group politics, mind games, back biting and stuff. So long the
list of injustices and the sole reason is you being just a student who has no
right and no privilege to complain anywhere.
Some self proclaimed boastful cool guys may find this post
long, prolix and full of frustration. Indeed, it is, I accept I am frustrated
because of lots of things. But what frustrates me most is our own inner fear.
We fear to complain because we think it would bring harm to us. We choose to
remain silent and diplomatic because we don’t want to get into any mess. We
voluntarily subject ourselves to injustice because we feel helpless inside and
do not dare to do anything. I have
raised my voice many times, I have been in lots of troubles, I have got lesser
grades, been threatened to fail, have disputes with many, got my work delay for
long long time. Many a times people have told me to remain silent and let it go
but there is no fun in letting things go. I have pulled myself at times when it
was necessary but not always. There is a subtle satisfaction in being a rebel.
It’s like implicitly fighting for the rights not provided to us so far. It’s
like demanding what we deserve.
So next time when you feel being mistreated or insulted, raise your voice, complain, fight, argue, make a mess, make a big deal out of it because we deserve to be treated well. We deserve our student rights.
PS: No disrespect or offence meant to any person and my apologies if you feel hurt or disrespected by any part of the post. It's just an attempt to draw a more general picture of the things that are usually wrong and need to be corrected. It's not intended for any specific person as no person is ever good or bad in itself, it's just the system which is wrong most of the time !!
