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As EVM machine buttons in colleges are deciding the fate of the politics of our varsity, it is time to wonder why for a Varsity as politically aware as ours, we choose to stay aloof from our own elections.

The University of Delhi (DU) and the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections are the epitome of what student politics in our country looks like. DUSU politics is an extension of national politics. Money and muscle power sway results, caste matters much more than we would like to believe, women are horribly underrepresented, freebies are secretly welcome, and just like national politics, the privileged do not bother turning up to vote. Like a 70s Bollywood film, DUSU politics has it all
– money, muscle power, a protagonist, and an army of self-righteous men, supporting their leader as if their life depends on it.

Elections in DU are a stepping stone to national politics. Becoming a DUSU office-bearer is the equivalent of winning a wild-card entry into the more significant horizon of state or national level politics. There is analogy, used in the varsity on and off, that there are 70 MLAs and 7 MPs in Delhi, but only one Delhi University Students’ Union President. The result of these elections result in a victory march of sorts, surrounded by supporters and the kind of mad frenzy that revolves in the air, highlights exactly how powerful this position is. As the winners climb on the Vivekananda statue in the Faculty of Arts, that moment signifies lakhs of rupees worth of campaigning, thousands of supporters, hundreds of cars that blocked the campus roads, and almost one year of unofficial lobbying.

When we try to understand why we don’t vote in DUSU elections, we need to understand why we don’t need to vote, in the first place. We don’t feel the need to stand in a two-hour long queue to press a button or understand which political party is offering subsidised canteen food v/s which is offering hostel facilities because we simply do not care and our day-to-day functioning is not affected by it. By virtue of how Delhi University functions-on the basis of high cut-offs- a fair share of its student body, especially in top ranking colleges hails from your stereotypical, private, CBSE/ISC school background where they had the luxury, guidance, and resources to chase a number as unrealistic as 98%. These students, who hail from privileged, upper-middle class families, need not bother about politics, just the way privileged individuals almost always do not care about politics because they’re above it, at least in principle. Schemes brought out for the majority aren’t applicable to them.

The power of one vote is cliché, to the point that the concept has stopped moving us. I will not urge you to exercise your democratic right by turning up to vote because every vote counts. I am sure you have heard that line before. But if you are one of the people who know by virtue of their birth, have their luxury to dissociate from politics, who are not plagued by the fear that the wrongly elected representatives could negatively impact your lives. If you are confident that with time, your life will continue as is, irrespective of how the results are, then I would tell you that you are extremely privileged.To have the luxury of not worrying about who would win, because you know you would be alright, is the primary symptom of being privileged.

The general student body of DU is woke. Students here volunteer,protest, resist, and take pride in fighting their battles. Therefore, the kind of hypocritical elitism they show towards DUSU politics is appalling. As we snub and stay complacent towards DU politics, another election season with its blatant caste-ism, sexism, and “might is right” attitude comes to a close. DUSU politics isn’t ugly because it has inherently been so, it is ugly because we refuse to engage in it. We have given bigger players in national politics the free reign to turn DUSU into their own little game of tennis, with the ball being in either sides of the court at all times. By refusing to engage with it, we have lost the right to claim to be above it. As you sit today, probably in a classroom or cafeteria of your college where you pursue a subsidised education, I would urge you to go ahead and vote. DUSU politics was never too ugly, we just neglected what was ours for too long.

Kinjal Pandey
[email protected]

Somewhere on the walls of North Campus, there is written “Free Professor Saibaba.” The readings on the wall are clear, but are you paying attention? This Teachers’ Day, lets be criminals together.

On the afternoon of 9th May 2014, G.N. Saibaba, an English Professor at Ram Lal Anand College, was heading back home from the university when a group of policemen in plain clothes arrested him. His family was not informed about his arrest and this prompted his wife to file a missing persons report. The 90% disabled professor was charged under the notorious Unlawful Activities (Prevention) for his alleged Maoist links. The charges against him rested on letters, pamphlets, books, and videos seized during raids that were conducted in his house. After active efforts by his lawyers and public pressure, he was given unconditional bail from the Supreme Court in April 2016 on health grounds, however, he wasn’t reinstated at the college.

The case against Prof. Saibaba should not be seen in isolation. Nandini Sundar, a Delhi University professor and an internationally acclaimed academician, who has been working with Adivasi population in Chattisgarh for years now was booked for the murder of a tribal man in November 2016. The case was later struck off after the wife of the deceased said that she had given no names to the police. The page two of this newspaper will tell you that her book Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar, along with Against Ecological Romanticism: Verrier Elwin and the Making of an Anti-modern Tribal Identity by Archana Prasad, can be dropped from the postgraduate curriculum of History after DU’s academic council recommended these readings to be removed for ‘glorifying Naxals’ and ‘legitimising conversion of tribals to Christianity’. Recently, Pune Police arrested five wellknown lawyers, poets, and activists namely: Varavara Rao, Sudha Bharadwaj, Gautam Navlakha, Vernon Gonsalves, and Arun Ferreira in connection with a probe on the Bhima-Koregaon riots in January, the assassination plot of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and having Maoist links. These arrests raised the #UrbanNaxal debate on social media.

The apparent similarity in all these cases is that they all have been accused of being Naxalites since they talked about issues of lesser-known state oppression and there is little or no rationale behind these arrests. Arun Ferreira, a human rights lawyer, was released as innocent after spending five years in prison, and Binayak Sen is out on bail since 2011. Every story is the same when we reported on the updates about G.N. Saibaba’s trail, we heard the same arguments, when we reported on curriculum change the same questions about “Maoist sympathies” were raised. After a while, you figure out the suo-motto method of silencing the questions. Whether or not they are right or wrong you can decide for yourself, but the question is will you care enough to decide? To not ignore, but to acknowledge what the dissenters, and closer to home some of our professors, are trying to say is the least yet somehow, the most one can do.

The students at Delhi School of Journalism, tired after over 30 hours of continuous protest, gave a love letter to their professors, acknowledging their vulnerable position as ad-hocs. This teachers’ day, unless you are too cool to celebrate it all together, don’t reduce the essence of a teacher-student relationship to WhatsApp quotes. You can still give them handmade cards, but you know what’s better? Handmade placards that you can carry in the next Delhi University Teachers’ Association protest, be it against autonomy, unreliable job provisions, or the arrest of another professor. Attending classes is cool but if you join your ad-hoc teachers at the Faculty of Arts next time they host a sit-in against the vile rules of vacancy or permanent recruitment then it will be better. Be a good student and raise hell alongside your professors. Read the study material, pointers on the blackboard, and most importantly go through the readings on the wall.

Niharika Dabral

[email protected] 

 

Society auditions seem to be the ultimate gateway into finding friends and purpose in college. With so much at stake, how does one deal with the failure of making into their preferred society? 

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”Winston Churchill. This sounds phony, but it’s true.
The first week of August is over and chances are that the society orientations and auditions must be wrapping up as well. If you are one of those people who auditioned for extra-curricular clubs and societies, but unfortunately didn’t get through then this article is for you. We can’t claim to be experts in offering advice, however, we’ll repeat the lessons you are familiar with but need a reminder about.
The societies and cells in the University of Delhi (DU), be it the ever vibrant dance societies or the smug English debating ones, are repositories of talent. DU owes its spirit to them. It’s only natural that most of us want to be a part of these groups, for which we undergo a strenuous selection process. Some of the more competitive ones amongst us start preparing for it weeks in advance.
On the D-day, several things can go wrong. And even if they go right, you might still not find yourself amongst the chosen lot. And obviously, your heart will break, plain and simple. You’ll yearn to join those Dramatic Society members whenever you see them practicing in their high-pitched and compelling voices and reverberating energy. All of this will hurt and in all honesty, it sucks. There is no other adjective to explain this dismay and dejection.

To say that you have to be and can be bigger than your failure is unerring, but it also stems from this over expectation of healing. Take your time to crib and curse. The recovery needs to be neither graceful nor easy. Allow yourself the luxury of sorrow and once you are done, it would be time for an after-action review. Sit and analyse what went wrong, ask the members of the selection panel for feedback. It’s imperative that you reflect on what you did and avoid similar mistakes in the future. While this contemplation is never straightforward, it’s totally possible that the reason you didn’t get in has nothing to do with what you did wrong but with different expectations of the selectors. Maybe you are amazing at Indian classical music, but the society folks wanted someone who can beatbox. Your takeaway from this rejection should be self-assessment and experience. Make most of it even when you feel like murdering an entire clan.
At the onset of new sessions, societies recruit members liberally and what usually happens is, by the next month or so, a few recruits leave the society for several reasons. This opens up space for new members again, hence, your chances to join your desired fraternity are still available. Make sure you tell your seniors about your availability and try again.

Now, it’s time to use the ‘when one door closes, another opens’ analogy. Look around and scout for other opportunities that are still open. You may never know about your cinephile credentials unless you sign up for the Film Club. You might never unearth your abilities in entrepreneurial action unless you join the Enactus unit of your college. A huge part of college life is also about discovering oneself and it’s time you try as many things as possible. Keep your mind and your options open. There is a saying that sometimes it takes a wrong turn to get you to the right place. So maybe, just maybe, your destiny and passion lies in an obscure club waiting for you to locate it.
There is more to college life than societies. Have faith, seek beauty in the mundane, and you will fare the failure. We are rooting for you.

 

Feature Image Credits: Kartik Kakar for DU Beat

Niharika Dabral

[email protected]

College is the place where we rediscover ourselves. However, the process may not always be as straightforward as we are led to believe.

Popular culture has given us problematic ideas about what to expect from college. We hope to find friends, love, increased self-confidence, and the prospect of being gainfully employed in these three years. We hope to find solutions to the problems that have plagued us all our lives, both internally and externally, over these three years.

During our boards and across the latter years of our school life, the thought that things would be different during college was our greatest consolation. We hope to fix everything we dislike about ourselves in this one place, hoping that crossing the threshold of our to-be alma maters fills us the excitement, self-love, and success we never found. But college, and the kind of change it brings, has been largely exaggerated. Sure, we may have lost our uniforms and some of us have started living away from home, but deep down, we are the same people we have always been.

 

According to pop culture, the fundamental solution to all problems is outside us – it can be a person, an incident, or an experience. Sadly, life-changing stimuli that is neatly wrapped with a bow is not waiting there for us. There won’t be a Bunny to our Naina, waiting around in a college corridor, who will teach us how to live our life fully. For change to be truly constructive, it needs to stem from within.

We may get a new haircut before college starts, hoping that it solves our self-acceptance issues, but truth be told, issues that stem from within can never be solved by a change of scene. A lot of people experience major transformations and become altogether different individuals in college. This does not mean that it was college that led to these changes – it was the inherent desire within them to fearlessly embrace change and improve.

It is important that those who are just on the verge of a new beginning start out with a realistic thought of what the next three years would look like. You will not meet your best friends for life unless you seek new people, you won’t become a great debater unless you go out and try public speaking. You most likely will still have the same problems you have always faced; the only way to create fundamental change in yourself and for the better is to seek opportunity rather than waiting for it to find you. Apply for an internship at that organisation you aspire to be part of, write to the people you look upto, make new friends from different cultures and backgrounds, take
trips that are both planned and unplanned, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. For us to get what we want, it is imperative that we seek what we hope to find.

To the Batch of 2021, I would just like to say, for us to get what we want, it is imperative we seek what we hope to find.

 

Kinjal Pandey
[email protected]

From a time when student reporters had to run around to capture pictures of protests and then send them to their copy editor to ensure that it goes for the weekly print issue, to posting live stories on Instagram – our journalism has travelled a long way in the past 10 years. Amidst the chaos of getting quotes from people in various administrative hierarchies, student leaders, documenting the events and happenings around the campus, and raising crucial issues regarding gender and sexual health among students – we have played a major role in initiating conversations through our student journalism in the past decade.
In the words of Kofi Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, “Information is the first step towards liberation.” Be it through printed copies across colleges or reports on our social media handles, we have tried our best to keep you updated about what all happens in DU, while sincerely hoping that the experience has been as liberating for you as it has for us. Right from raising issues concerning women’s safety in the campus after the Nirbhaya case in 2012 and the haphazard introduction of the Four Year Undergraduate Program in 2013, to raising the issues regarding the right to dissent and debate post the violence at Ramjas College in February 2017 – we have represented students in media and given a voice to the unheard. As completely independent journalists, we have embraced our responsibility, sometimes even at the cost of our safety.
We are an entirely student-run platform – a badge of honour we wear with pride. From ideating stories, writing, investigating, raising funds to print copies, to regular managerial work, every little thing in our organisation is handled solely by undergraduate students. We recruit students, train them to excel in their various fields, and prepare them to work in professional settings. In the past 10 years, students who have worked at DU Beat in various capacities have gone ahead to lead major teams at Google, pursued journalism in globally influential outlets like The New York Times and Huffington Post, excelled in academics as Commonwealth Scholars, and begun their own media initiatives.

Externally, our journalism has also allowed our readers to succeed in their lives post their time at Delhi University. Many students still write to us, detailing how our news about admissions helped them bag a seat in the college of their choice. Inspired by our journalism, many of our readers have gone ahead to pursue a career in journalism, while others have benefited from our humble initiative of an independent student-run media outlet.

After successfully organising Mushaira, the Literature festival of Hindu College on 30th and 31st January with the Hindu College Parliament, to commemorate 10 years of independent student journalism, our team would like to raise a toast to our long-standing relationship with you, dear reader. Let the University and these printed words stand witness to our effort of making our University a more efficient, democratic, and liberating space.

 

Srivedant Kar
[email protected]

As the long drawn battles of compulsory attendance have garnered attention, with the University and several of its colleges using online applications that can monitor attendance, we stand with the students, reiterating the fact that compulsory attendance never fulfills its purpose.

Several research studies have shown that mandatory attendance does not increase academic success rates. A highly cited article, “A Case Against Compulsory Class Attendance Policies in Higher Education”, published in the Innovative Higher Education journal, examined the research literature on the relationship between attendance and academic achievements. The article inferred that compulsory attendance does not ensure a higher academic grade. The article claimed that attendance is linked to individual motivation, noting, ‘Classroom environments that engage students, emphasise the importance of students’ contributions, and have content directly related to knowledge assessed will undoubtedly provide encouragement to students to attend regularly.’

Students who pursue higher education often aspire to learn from subject experts who can help them not only understand the concepts and ideas of the subject, but also who can engage them in meaningful conversations. On the contrary, a teacher simply reading out texts from the prescribed reading in a monotonous voice never incentivises learning. Moreover, coercing students into attending such classes, where there is no learning incentive, makes the concept of a university highly redundant. In today’s world, where lectures by the world’s best teachers are available online for free and students can learn the subject from the comfort of their homes, the universities need to innovate ways that will motivate students to attend classes.

As students of the regressive school education system that restrains individuality, and as children brought up within the institution of a family where questioning the elders is considered as a sign of disrespect, many students find university to be a safe haven where they can pursue their dreams without any restrictions. Isn’t inculcating the spirit of freedom the very objective of education?

A system which priorities our physical presence over our willingness to learn goes against the inherent spirit of our education. In a time when the University is unable to fill up its permanent faculty positions and provide outstation students with proper accommodation, the step of spending lakhs of rupees to create an application that will monitor the attendance of students displays an extreme case of misplaced priorities. If colleges actually taught students what is relevant, they would not have to coerce them to attend classes. The University should spend its resources on providing for opportunities like the innovation projects and the gyanodaya trips, rather than spending lakhs on monitoring the mere physical presence of students in the classrooms.

Srivedant Kar

[email protected]

Our generation is called out for many things, but it is mostly looked down upon for being selfish in relationships. Why is it considered so wrong to put your needs ahead of someone else’s?

It is 2018, and no one in our generation knows how to date. What’s more interesting is that they are aware of it and making the conscious decision not to step into a relationship at all. It is 2018, and dating is now only casual. Why is that? We are the products of a generation that gave up most things, including dignity, to sustain a relationship and having seen how exhausting it can be, we choose not to date. We are currently living in an era where we are trying to change the essence of relationships from needing to be selfless and forgiving to giving equal importance to ourselves and our goals first.

How is this a bad thing? Why is this transition from unhealthy relationships to self-love looked down upon? We’re in our 20s, not knowing what the future holds in store for us, not being sure of what we need – is it fair to add a relationship to the list when we don’t even know what we want? Our 20s are the only time we’ll get to experiment, to try new things, and to know ourselves better. Whether you decide to date or not to date in this time and age, you will realise how tender this age is to understand others before you even understand yourself.

Gone are the times when people would choose love over their career; it almost feels like there isn’t even an option of “love” anymore. And that is selfish, but being selfish isn’t wrong here. Thinking about yourself first is a sign of maturity that the previous generations were alien to, and putting your needs before someone else’s is a concept that they don’t understand, but should. Don’t let them make you feel bad about your dating life. We’re doing a favour to the next generation by building a foundation of healthier relationships.

 

Anagha Rakta
[email protected]

Everyday magazines, TV shows, celebrities and the entire fashion industry sell us the idea of the perfect body. Who decided what was the “perfect” body? And when did we start shaming others for not fitting in a size?

Two years ago, the “perfect” body consisted of a thigh gap; however, currently in 2017, being “thick” is the new “perfect” and thigh gaps are looked down upon. The rules of fashion change every week and it is hard to keep up – but it isn’t hard to ignore. We usually don’t see what happens after that. With the rules of fashion, the definition of the “perfect” body also changes and with that, comes the eating disorders, the insecurities and self-hate, the suicidal tendencies, and body-shaming. “You can’t wear that,” “This doesn’t suit your body type,” are just some things we hear, and say, on a regular basis. “You have lost weight,” is synonymous with “You look better than before,” and it is taken as a compliment instead of a concern like it should be – but what was the problem with that extra weight before?

And it isn’t just about the extra weight, it is also about the lack of it, the incorrect placement of it, the exact number on the scale, and the relation of that to one’s beauty, that makes body-shaming such an easy thing to prevail in our society. The industry has made us hate almost anything natural about the human body – from stretch marks to love handles, is there anything even left to appreciate about a non-airbrushed body?

Sure, we have plus-sized models in the scene, who are slowing making way on to ramps and magazine covers, but our feeble minds are so used to seeking smooth, tight skins on those ramps and covers, that we forget how to appreciate a natural body. Plus-size models, although inspiring, amazing, and necessary, are called out for “promoting obesity and living an unhealthy lifestyle.” There’s a difference between fitness advice and body shaming, just like there’s a difference between fashion advice and putting people down for their body type or their weight.

Mindy Kaling very rightly said in an interview that sometimes people don’t realise that they’re going back to square one on this issue when they tell her stuff like “you’re setting goals for unconventional body type people.” Calling someone an “unconventional” body type when they’re not medically obese is just factually wrong. Forget about being insensitive, that’s inaccurate.

This, obviously, does not in any way imply that people can’t set fitness goals for themselves. It just comes down to not imposing the same on others and, especially, shaming them for being confident in their own skin (whether it is to your taste or not). Well, like they say: charity begins at home. Our battles against body-shaming can only be won when we look at ourselves in the mirror without cringing, without finding a single flaw in our natural selves.

Image Credits: The KN Clan

 

Anagha Rakta
[email protected]

Now that the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) elections are finally over and you’ve voted to elect your leaders who claimed to transform your college into one that resembled an institution of the west, it’s time to rest. The ‘rest’ doesn’t refer to you relaxing, but rather to the Union.

Every year, the same sequence of events plays out. It has been running for so long that this silence which suddenly appears everywhere after this hullabullah of elections seems normal. The storyline is obvious; the passion and vigour of the student leaders to work for the welfare of the students is so short-lived that even the graffiti which carries their names and is used to deface the city during the elections lasts longer.

How does so much energy suddenly fade into oblivion at the end of the day?

“The leaders are, after all, students and are lazy just like you and me.” Even if one decides to buy this logic, the argument that follows fails to be convincing on any level. There is no reason for any sort of leader to ignore his or her responsibilities one he or she has come to power on the back of people’s votes. Accountability is key. Another reason might be that this vigour doesn’t actually belong to the students of the University but is, in fact, artificially created by the outsiders who are mostly the caste-based supporters brought into the varsity by these candidates. Hence, this ‘outsourced’ vigour doesn’t survive even a day after it has served its purpose. Out of both of these reasons, the latter portrays the reality.

If one digs deeper in search of the reason behind this inactivity, the story becomes clear. A simple look into the manifestoes floated by parties before the election uncovers the entire picture. This year, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) promised to start U-special buses and increase the number of hostels for students of the varsity. This is an unreasonable promise as out of these, one comes under the onus of the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) which is a body of the Delhi government, while the latter entirely rests upon the university administration and governing bodies of the colleges. In both cases, the Union has no real power to do anything except for protesting and writing letters. Similar pictures emerge with the National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) and other parties. These tall promises by candidates and parties are akin to showing students the dream of reaching the moon when in reality, they don’t even have the technology of building a rocket. This is precisely why the same issues are raised every year, with absolutely no success.

In the condition of having promised the moon, and with no promises of the things that they can actually do within their power, these leaders embark upon the slippery slope of being absent for major parts of the year. They only make their presence known until something controversial pops up, such as the Ramjas College issue which can offer them another chance of greater media visibility.

In a scenario where our leaders are absent for the majority of the year, it’s we, the students, who suffer the most. It’s high time these elections stop referring to things that the Union cannot do, and instead start becoming a fight about what the Union can, and should, do.

 

Srivedant Kar

[email protected]

With the onset of the election season in the University, there are students who distance and disassociate themselves from the whole process because the politics of DUSU are too “dirty” for them. How problematic is this? Why do we forget about the students who cannot afford to be indifferent to the “dirty” politics?

Often, when the election season prevails in the University of Delhi, social media are flooded with posts and pictures of how campaigning by the parties cause inconvenience for students. The posts are usually captioned with something along the lines of: ‘This is why I hate the election season’ or ‘This is why I chose to be apolitical.’ A lot of students in the University decide to be indifferent to the politics because they think it is “dirty” and “tiresome” and that the political parties are the reason for a lot of ruckus within the University. These students chose to distance themselves from everything and anything related to the elections by not exercising their right to vote, amongst other things. This is problematic for a lot of reasons. The first and foremost being that being apolitical in a democratic location is equal to being indifferent to a flood in your city because you live in house on stills.

The voter turnout for the DUSU elections of 2016 was merely 35.3%, and it is evident that the rest made a conscious decision to stay neutral. Desmond Tutu very aptly said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Students decide to remain apolitical even after injustice and oppression has prevailed in the campus for years; they don’t turn up to vote because they feel both sides – the left and the right – are iniquitous. But these students often forget that they hold the power to choose NOTA (none of the above) in the election polls. NOTA is quite a convenient way to tell the student parties that they aren’t the right ones for the job, even with their money, muscle and political backing.

As students, the right to vote is the power that we hold to choose who works for us. Often, amongst our privileged background, settled family and a stable financial income, we forget what it is like for the other people of the equation. There are colleges within Delhi University where metros, or even local buses, aren’t available, where there aren’t any hostels and where many basic facilities aren’t accessible. There are a lot of concerns within the University that concern the colleges outside North Campus that we aren’t even aware about. So, with every student who declares him/herself as “apolitical”, there is also a student who has to wait for hours just to get on a bus to a college that is on the outskirts of the city.

Granted, the election season does cause a lot of inconvenience for everyone; the protest marches cause traffic, the entire campus is covered in pamphlets and party posters, and classes are interrupted on a daily basis because of the campaigning. But that shouldn’t be a cause to hate the entire political procedure. If you don’t support paper wastage, then vote for a party that has a paperless campaign; if you think the ruling party did not make any progress in the last tenure, then vote for the opposition; if you think none of the parties deserve to win, the cast your vote as NOTA. The point is: go out and vote. It might sound like a cliché but every vote counts, and help make a huge difference. Your privilege may allow you to become indifferent to which party wins, but privilege can cause you to become silent in the times of need. And silence is just another word for a death sentence.
Anagha Rakta
[email protected]