Dear Prime Minister,We fear that this will be a one-sided conversation. And yet, one must exhaust all existing possibilities of communication before devising new ones.
To begin with, there is much you must learn about the ‘youth’, the largest section of our populace. The one that you once considered to be central to your politics.
The students of Pakistan are confronted by a serious crisis. Despite the promises made to us in our constitution, it is a fact that no Government in Pakistan, including yours, has ever been able to provide education to all. Today, even those of us who have been fortunate enough to enjoy this constitutional right, may soon find themselves unable to afford it. Tuition fees, increasing at an alarming rate, have reached an all-time high, and these increments show no signs of slowing down.
We spend no more than a paltry 2.5% of our GDP on education, which explains why there is such an alarming dearth of public sector infrastructure to accommodate students. Last year, more than 100,000 students who passed matriculation did not get into any public sector college. For more than 120 million youth, there are only 94 public sector universities. Balochistan has only two, while the whole higher education infrastructure of Gilgit-Baltistan comprises of just a single university. This space, with active assistance of government departments, is taken up by money-hungry corporate investors, who have managed to establish private campuses to make fortunes out of education. 168 fake campuses and countless unrecognized departments within recognized public universities have cropped up everywhere. The HEC is a partner in crime, and all it has done is to upload a list of these unrecognized institutions on its website, while they continue to function unabashed, and rob us in broad daylight.
Those of us who are students at the few legitimate educational institutions of Pakistan, are treated, upon expressing their grievances, as if we are criminals or potential terrorists, and are even charged under anti-terrorism laws for protesting for our rights.
Our brothers and sisters from provinces other than the Punjab are forced to travel great distances to study because there is no educational infrastructure in their hometowns. The quota for these underprivileged students is being reduced and these students are being forced to pay for an education that used to be free.
Hostel facilities, marked by policies that exist to demean students and rob them of their dignity, are worse than those of a typical jail cell. They live like prisoners on poor quality food, subject to diseases and malnutrition.
Women continue to be harassed, mentally and sexually, by their peers and faculty, but even under your Government, no public sector campus has felt the need to implement HEC’s own sexual harassment policy.
The universities allow students to have literally no space to exercise their freedom of speech. They cannot protest malnutrition in hostels, presence of questionable and outdated material in their curriculum, the penalization of critical thinking, the growing difference in the quality of private and public sector education, or even something as basic as cleanliness in the bathrooms.
Did it come to your notice that students have started to commit suicides because of the plight they are forced to live in?
Do you remember that Mashal Khan was killed on campus under your Government and there were no consequent attempts to decrease right wing extremism in educational institutions?
The fundamental crisis, Dear Mr. Prime Minister, does not lie in the fact that we have been forced to live in such misery, but in the bitter reality that the only ones who are not allowed to speak for its betterment is us!
It is but natural that those who are affected by a predicament must have a voice, the central say in how to eradicate it. Students have been denied the right to unionize and all mechanisms of student representation on campuses have been taken away. Their campuses have been securitized at the cost of their dignity, and are being run by irrelevant and untrained state officials. The campuses are no more places for critical thinking, creativity, or cultural expression, rather they are being managed like military barracks or prison cells. There is this ongoing onslaught to curb all forms of freedom to express that do not submit to the logic of the state. Spending money on raising walls of all campuses has not solved the problem. It has, at best, just been an appropriate metaphor for the life that breeds inside.
Students unions were banned because of a potential contiguity between student politics and violence, but how come violence on campuses has only grown after the ban? The answer is simple. Unless the state recognizes that campuses, where students spend the most productive parts of their days, are bound to develop indigenous political trends that must have constitutional and representative outlets, the growing concerns of the students shall only be hijacked by right wing organizations, which our state has historically supported for its own use, in order to use violence to strengthen their vested interests.
Given this continual crisis, students are organizing on campuses across the country. We are organizing a Students’ Solidarity March on Friday, November 30, 2018. We shall gather at the Istanbul Chowk, Mall Road, Lahore and march towards the Punjab Assembly (and we won’t be taking any u-turns along the way). On the same day, students will hold protests and marches in 12 different cities, including Islamabad, Karachi, Hyderabad, Gujranwala, Gilgit, Kotli, Quetta, Skardu, Faisalabad, Multan, Loralai, and Peshawar.
As students of this country, we expect you and your cabinet members to participate and engage with students protesting across the country over our rightful demands.
Following are the demands put forth by the organizers of the Students’ Solidarity March:
1. Student representation should be ensured in all decision-making committees on campus.
2. Student unions must be restored immediately.
3. The state must hold all those responsible for the establishment of fake campuses around the country accountable and make sure that the degrees of students affected by these campuses are issued.
4. The state must establish universities in all marginalized parts of the country and increase quotas for students from outside of Punjab.
5. The state must form functional sexual harassment committees and make active mechanisms for the implementation of sexual harassment policy.
6. The state must spend at least 5% of the GDP on education.
7. The state must take back the recent increase in tuition fee and pledge that no such increase shall take place within the next five years.
8. The state must modernize education on a rational, scientific or critically informed basis and establish an educational system which is equal for all.
9. University budgets and audit reports must be made accessible to the students.
10. The state must ensure freedom of expression on campus.
11. The state must ensure the provision of basic facilities on campus such as library, internet, free transport, clean drinking water, quality food and hostels, etc.
12. The state must end all forms of discriminatory behaviour with the students in the name of securitization.
13. The state must end discrimination on the basis of ethnicity and language with all students from outside of Punjab.
14. All extremist and hateful content must be immediately removed from the curriculum.
15. Students must be allowed to study all regional languages as elective subjects in all campuses across the country.
16. The hostel curfew timings should remain same for all students regardless of their gender.
17. The state must declare 13th April as Mashal Khan Day and announce it as an annual public holiday.
Our demands are reasonable if not simply elementary. The fact that these are demands and not the status quo is a sign that these are troubled times we live in. You and your party have promised change. Well, there can certainly be no change till it is recognised that the youth of this country is indeed quite literally the future of this country. And unless the condition of the youth is improved, the future seems bleak.
So what change do you envision? A descent into chaos, or a long march towards dignity?
Published in Daily Times, November 30th 2018.
