With the DUSU elections around the corner, parties are engaged in full blown campaigning. One cannot miss supporters rallying in the streets and engaged in promotion. We interviewed Mohit Nagar, who is the outgoing President of Delhi University Students’ Union, on his experience and future plans.
Q. Tell us about your greatest success so far.
Mohit: The union has lots of achievements to brag about. The FYUP rollback was a historic achievement for us. Revaluation has been restarted with the efforts of DUSU. Readmission has been restarted in DU. AICTE approval for all (28) DU colleges offering engineering has been attained. Shuttle bus service in South Campus and offline admission center in North Campus were also possible only because of DUSU.
Related reading: Interview with Mohit Nagar midway his tenure by DUB
Q. In your manifesto you had talked about providing separate hostels for North Eastern students. By providing separate accommodation do you not think that you increasing their chances of being perceived as a separate community?
Mohit: There are always two sides of a coin. I believe in working for the unpredictable. Most people will believe it is an act of separatism but that is what we need to change. North Eastern students have always suffered the worst conditions and have been ignored in the society. North Eastern students feel unsafe, insecure and suffer bias in this community. Not all of them can afford an expensive lifestyle in a city like Delhi and a hostel will be a blessing for them. There is a deep fear among North Eastern students about losing their culture and sense of identity. Hostels will be welcome among them as there is a good percentage of students from the North East.
Related reading: Mohit Nagar in conversation with DUB when he was the presidential candidate
Q. What is ABVP’s election strategy?
Mohit: DUSU elections imply heavy campaigning. The whole point of campaigning is to uplift the ability of a candidate from zero to being the people’s choice. At the same time, paper campaigning turns out to be a major source of annoyance and disappointment for all the students. During the election season, you find roads, classrooms, college campuses and metro stations flooded with paper pamphlets and name cards of the DUSU candidates. Therefore, ABVP has decided to shun the use of paper to avoid littering college campuses. As huge supporters of Swacch Bharat Abhiyan, we have decided to preserve the beauty of the campus by keeping it clean.
Q. Your policies are more or less similar to those of NSUI and AISA. What makes ABVP stand out?
Mohit: As for what makes ABVP stand out, with great pride, I can say that ABVP is not just India’s but the world’s biggest independent student organisation. We are an organisation which lives by its word and makes sure it never leaves promises unfulfilled. We stay active throughout the year. Other organisations like NSUI and AISA are mostly seen around campus during the election time. ABVP, irrespective of its candidature in DUSU, works for student welfare and their rights. We have addressed all the major and minor issues of the University, some of which the other parties fail to even recognise.
Q. DUSU is often said to the stepping stone to national politics. What are your plans after DUSU?
Mohit: That’s true to some extent. As a student, I would like to work for students’ rights further.
Further reading: DUB also interviewed the incumbent VP of the students’ union, Parvesh Malik
Congress’ student wing – N.S.U.I. musters support against F.Y.U.P. by means of signature campaign at North Campus, D.U.[/caption]
Sunny Kumar, State Secretary for Delhi, AISA in response to the same question, said that “It is high time the focus shifts to students’ issues from muscle-and-money politics. Therefore it’s not just the question of NSUI – every party has to raise students’ issues to survive. NSUI has now realized that the rage against F.Y.U.P. is not something they can tame and hence they oppose it now.” Calling ABVP, a passive opposition, Kumar said that any action against FYUP by the central government cannot imply that the party has done any ‘concrete work in the same direction’.
In their defense, Amrish Ranjan Pandey, NSUI national spokesperson, told IANS that, “It was something new last year, so we neither supported nor protested against the structure, but now after a year, we conducted a survey and have found that it is not good academically and students are not happy with it”.
Nonetheless, the coming together of all the parties is a clear sign that the students and teachers of DU unanimously agree that FYUP is not something they want and should indeed be rolled back.
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