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Saheli Card Launch in Delhi: Why Women Seek Safety Before Free Travel

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The Delhi government’s new Saheli Smart Card offers free bus travel for women and transgender residents, but Delhi University students and commuters question its impact. With safety concerns and limited metro coverage, experts say true mobility requires stronger security, inclusive access, and reliable infrastructure beyond just free fares.

The Delhi Government is set to launch the Pink Saheli SmartCard on the auspicious festival of Bhai Dooj with the aim of digitising travel and replacing the Pink Tickets for DTC buses launched in 2019. This is a personalised travel smart card offering free travel on DTC and cluster buses for women and transgender residents, along with the option to recharge for other modes of transport. But does it really remove all the barriers which cause women to deter using buses? 

This card will be personalised with the name and photo of the user under the NCMC framework. The free rides will be restricted for the women and transgender residents of Delhi aged 12+. Applicants can register online on the DTC portal and complete KYC and Delhi resident verification for the card to be issued. The card can be recharged for paid use on other modes (e.g., Delhi Metro), but reports clarify metro rides are not automatically free under the scheme. It replaces the older paper-pink-ticket regime—but raises concerns about the exclusion of migrants, informal-housing residents and others without formal documents. 

Though, the willingness of women to use public transport is not an issue that can be cured by this initiative. Recent reports and viral accounts constantly remind us how unsafe and uncomfortable travelling in public transport buses and metros can be, even with the designated women’s coach. Especially for students, it is a major concern, as they have to regularly use public transport on a daily basis. A broader survey by UN Women from 2010 found that about 50% of women reported being harassed while using public transport in Delhi. And another source states that up to 8 in every 10 women surveyed in Delhi have faced sexual harassment during commuting or in urban public spaces. These numbers are extreme, but it’s agonising how they’re not really surprising for any of us. 

A large share of daily commuters in Delhi include students travelling every day across the city to different campuses. So it’s obvious that this policy is expected to include a student angle, which is especially imperative for the students at Delhi University—as DU student activism and union records show long-standing demands for subsidised metro passes and better university-run transport. Equity in transport access is clearly linked with academic participation, and women’s safety during this travel is one of the most important concerns. The student reaction to the Saheli card has been mixed, as it criticises the card for excluding metro travel, which is now more reliable than using buses. There is also a constant call for designated student passes for the metro to reduce dependence on long bus commutes. 

In conclusion, the Saheli Card can empower women only if free travel is paired with real safety reforms. Ensuring active presence of female wardens, better lighting in top commuter hubs, ensuring constant CCTV watch, and metro concessions will make Delhi’s transport both accessible and secure—turning affordability into genuine freedom of movement.

Read Also: Crisis Erupts at SAU: Students Protest After Alleged Gang Rape

Shreya Bhushan
[email protected]

Image Credits: Anonymous

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Arts & Culture

The Crisis of Internet Archive 

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500,000 books scrapped from the Internet Archive. Why? Is it because they lost the lawsuit against the powerful few? Or is it because they were declared guilty of copyright infringement, surpassing the fair use doctrine? The reason lies much deeper, yet in plain sight.

In a significant legal decision, the Internet Archive has lost the lawsuit filed by major publishers, including Hachette, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley. The lawsuit challenged the Archive’s National Emergency Library initiative, which had suspended waitlists and allowed unlimited digital lending of scanned books during the COVID-19 pandemic—a departure from its original policy of one digital copy per physical.

The court ruled that this practice infringed upon the publishers’ copyrights, emphasizing that the Archive’s actions exceeded the bounds of fair use. As a result, the Internet Archive is required to remove approximately 500,000 books from its digital collection, limiting public access to these works.

But is copyright the real issue here?

Not quite. At the heart of the matter lies profit and the public right to access information without being financially burdened under the exorbitant costs of the knowledge resources that one, especially a student, is all too familiar with. The Internet Archive’s loss marks the latest blow in a long line of struggles over public access to knowledge.

Expressing his disappointment, Chris Freeland, Internet Archive’s director of library services, said:

We are reviewing the court’s opinion and will continue to defend the rights of libraries to own, lend, and preserve books.

While the publishers seem to care about royalties and fair compensation for their writers, many point out the elitism in the argument itself, including Dave Hansen, executive director of the Authors Alliance, a nonprofit that frequently advocates for wider digital access to books who says:

This ruling may benefit the bottom line of the largest publishers and most prominent authors, but for most it will end up harming more than it will help.

The ruling’s impact goes beyond the financial arguments of publishers. The Internet Archive is a lifeline for those who can’t afford the exorbitant costs of books, particularly students and researchers without access to well-funded libraries. Following the ruling, the Archive stated:

This injunction will result in a significant loss of access to valuable knowledge for the public. People who are not part of elite institutions or who do not live near a well-funded public library will lose access to books they cannot read otherwise. It is a sad day for the Internet Archive, our patrons, and for all libraries.

Zooming out from this particular case, a broader pattern emerges: powerful institutions, whether governments or corporations, are increasingly limiting public access to information. The Internet Archive’s loss is not an isolated incident; it joins a growing list of similar cases where access to knowledge is restricted in the name of fair compensation and other such rights.

Take the prolonged chase of Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, who faces espionage charges for leaking classified documents that exposed government corruption. Or consider the arrest of Pavel Durov, CEO of Telegram, after refusing to provide encryption keys to the Russian government. These examples, while seemingly unrelated, share a common thread: they are all about controlling access to information and knowledge, denying the public the right to transparency, privacy, and free access.

Assange’s efforts to make government secrets public have been presented as a crime. Similarly, Durov’s refusal to sacrifice user privacy led to his prosecution. While the Internet Archive’s campaign focuses on books, it is part of a larger narrative in which these institutions strive to limit access in order to protect their interests, leaving the public with less avenues to explore, learn, and question.

The coming of surveillance tools such as Pegasus spyware originates from a need to control, to see what people are reading, writing, and discussing. Governments and corporations alike are moving closer to an Orwellian “Big Brother” scenario in which information is closely controlled and public access to knowledge is conditional rather than guaranteed.

The question is, can society push back against this tide? Is it possible to save public access to information in an increasingly privatized world?

Maybe that’s too far of a reading from a legal case study, or, one is compelled to question, is it? The battle over information control is not just about books or individual legal cases. It’s about who gets to decide what the public can know, learn, and share. Given the trend of ‘hoarding’,  whether money or knowledge, can the societal pushback save the internet archive from its impending doom? That’s for you to decide. With your actions and words.

 

Featured Image Credits: BBC- Serenity Strull/ Getty Images

 

Read Also: DU Sanctions Rs.110 Crore for Expansion of Central Library

 

Afza Khan

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Privacy in the Times of Aarogya Setu

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To curb the spread of the Coronavirus, Governments all over the world have resorted to actions that have potentially infringed upon the rights of individuals. In India, Aarogya Setu has sparked a debate on privacy.

“Big Brother is Watching You” just got a whole lot really, according to some privacy experts, when the Government of India rolled out ‘Aarogya Setu’, an application that aims to inform the people of their risk of contracting the Coronavirus and educate them on the best practices and medical advisories pertaining to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

However, the app has not exactly gone down well with certain people who argue that the system by which the app uses contact tracing and shares details with the government essentially makes it a ‘surveillance system’. Congress politician Rahul Gandhi too tweeted in this regard, and his theory was ‘proved’ by French ethical hacker, Elliot Anderson. Through this article, I am going to analyse whether or not these claims hold weight, and whether the application is truly worth it.

The first concern would be that downloading the app gives the Indian Government access to your location and personal data at all times. However, that is untrue. Firstly, the application replaces all your data with a Device Identification Number on sign-up, and this DiD becomes the basis of all future interactions. It is this DiD that is used to interact with other phones when they come in range with each other and calculate your health risk and communicate it to the server. It is only when the risk of infection to a person is too high that the personal information is reconciled with the DiD to alert the individual.

The Privacy Policy for the application, along with its Data Access protocol, explicitly states the purposes for which the data can be used and limits the possibility for misuse. One major concern remains in the fact that the data is shared not only with the Health Ministry but with any related ministry at the central or state level that is involved in addressing the pandemic, but a case could be made against the same looking at the various actors involved in the COVID response. Another concern comes from the fact that DiDs that do not change can lead to privacy issues, but the Government is currently addressing this by creating a dynamic ID that generates multiple times and offers more security.

Hacker Elliott Anderson tweeted about certain ‘risks’ which included data of the users being at risk and local files being accessed. However, various people proficient with coding have come out to deny these claims, arguing that Elliott ran basic scripts to access the data stored on his own device and portrayed it as a security issue when it isn’t. Adding to it, the creators of the app themselves chose to engage with the hacker and clarified their response to his claims. It has been by and large proved that these claims held no weight at all and should be disregarded. An important point to be noted is that this is the same person who claimed that he hacked TRAI Chairman RS Sharma’s information based on his Aadhar Number. However, it was later found that the information he ‘hacked’ was available in the public domain already and could be easily found through search engines. As Michael Scott would say “Fool me once, strike one. But fool me twice, strike three.”

More importantly, the rules and privacy policy clearly specify the duration for which the data can be stored. The application deletes all personal data 30 days from collection, and the servers purge the information after 45-60 days, depending on whether or not a particular person tested positive for the virus. This contact and location data can in any case not be retained beyond 180 days and the demographic data is deleted within six months, provided the pandemic does not extend beyond that period. Thus, the possibility of the government retaining or sharing this data for other purposes does not exist.

Contact Tracing is a difficult, labour intensive process and often leaves out people in the way it’s been conventionally done. For example, a person goes to the market to buy vegetables and meets someone they do not know who later turns out to be positive for the virus. At that point in time, it becomes almost impossible for health officials to trace who was at xyz vegetable vendor at 11:00 hours on a day. This is where the app steps in, even if the person doesn’t know the person who contracted the virus, they will be notified of the risk and be asked to take steps accordingly, thus making the contact-tracing process not only less difficult but also more comprehensive.

A case is made that apps like these cannot be put to use by people who don’t have smartphones. It’s important to note that the app isn’t a replacement for contact tracing, it is an assistance mechanism. A lack of accessibility by the entire population cannot count as an argument for the ones who can access it to not be asked to install it and use it. Even if one person can self-isolate and reduce the spread of the virus due to the app, it means tens or hundreds of others who they would have come in contact with are saved. Every single life saved is a major victory for the application. In fact, until now, the app has been used to notify 1.4 lakh people of potential exposure to the virus and asked them to take necessary precautions. Even if one percent of those, i.e., 1400 people test positive for the virus later but had taken precautions to contain its spread thanks to the notifications issued, it’s a win not only for the app but for the country.

It is a moral obligation of every citizen to try and ensure that we try and reduce the spread of the virus as much as possible and take whatever steps necessary. Aarogya Setu, with its benefits, is a huge step, and all of us who can download it should make sure that we do.

Of course, the government needs to do better in two regards. Firstly, the government must implement Aarogya Setu only through law. If an action threatens to hinder a fundamental right (such as the Right to Privacy here), it needs to be implemented through legislation that limits potential government misuse. While in the status quo, it is understandable why the app is being pushed so strongly, there are better ways to do it, especially in the absence of a Data Protection law in the country.

Secondly, app security is a major issue. Thus, the app should be made open source so that developers can check it for bugs and potential security issues, and thus make it safer and easier to use for everyone.

The Aarogya Setu app is not perfect, but there can be no denying that it can be of huge help in the fight against COVID-19. The government has actually taken measures to ensure that user privacy is respected to the extent possible, which is a welcome change from its actions from the past. Given how crucial it is, it is imperative that we download the application as a measure to not only safeguard our own health but that of others around us too.

Featured Image Credit: Flipboard

Khush Vardhan Dembla

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Coronavirus

SFI Demands Student Financial Support during COVID-19

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The Students’ Federation of India (SFI) released a statement about the need for financial support for students facing problems during the COVID-19 pandemic and released a set of demands regarding the same.

In a statement dated for 17th April 2020, SFI released a press comment regarding the triangular problems being faced by students during the Coronavirus lockdown and urged the government to provide financial support for the same.

The SFI condemned the BJP-led government’s abrupt announcement of the lockdown without any prior notification for the students to prepare for the situation. They commented that though necessary, the statement for a lockdown came upon every citizen “like a bomb”, and though the lockdown is set for 3rd May, it is likely to extend further.

“The wage labourers and unorganised sector workers who live from hand to mouth are the ones who are facing the worst repercussions of the lockdown. But the brunt of the lockdown is felt by all sections of the population, and by all industries. While a huge portion of the Indian population is facing dire livelihood issues, with the unemployment rate touching a 1/4th of the population, it is futile to expect families to support their children in schools, colleges and universities. many families can’t afford it. If this is left unchecked, it could lead to a great increase in drop-out rates.

Many students are stranded in universities and college in various cities across the country in hostels. They are stranded not only because we were all told to remain where we were and not travel, but also because the lockdown announcement gave no time for students (or anyone) to make preparatory decisions. The government had demanded the students to remain as they are, thereby we demand the government to provide financial assistance to these students. Moreover, students are from disparate economic backgrounds and given the present economic condition, to expect their families to financially support these students is irresponsible”, as stated by SFI’s Delhi State Committee.

SFI has, as a result, released a set of demands for the government to help the students being affected by this pandemic. These include:

  • Provision of a minimum amount of sum to students’ bank accounts
  • Disbursing Fellowships/Scholarships and Grants for Bachelors to PhD
  • Waiving college fee of two months
  • No hostel fee to be charged during the lockdown
  • Government to pay the rent for students staying on rent
  • Necessary steps to be taken to ensure that students’ basic needs are met.

Feature Image Credits: The Sentinel

Shreya Juyal

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A Sea of Protests: Different Forms of Expression of Dissent

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If we take into consideration the political plight of our Country, countless protests and mass agitations have taken place all over the nation and caught the attention of thousands of people worldwide. 

As the Indian Constitution came into existence on the 26th of January, 1950, it promised to protect the rights of the people of India. The Constitution is one such document that possesses the power to hold the wrongdoers accountable for their actions. It also gives rights to citizens to express their dissatisfaction with the Government by peaceful means only. Protests are by far the most powerful weapons that can be used by people to bring forth their demands.  However, it is very important to keep into account that protests must never hurt the sentiments of anyone and should be at all costs peaceful. 

Protests can be categorized into different forms to gain clarity over how mass agitations work. Here is a list of the forms of protests that can be encountered in a stressful political environment: 

  1. Rally/ Demonstration 

Rallies and demonstrations majorly involve speeches by infamous speakers, singing of prayers and chanting of slogans in unison by a huge gathering in one spot. 

  1. March

Marches include moving from one location to another. The locations chosen for the marches may or may not be government-associated areas, but it majorly depends on the reason why the march took place. 

  1. Vigil

Vigils are comparatively quiet, as the protesters focus on expression through graphic means rather than verbal, such as leaflets, banners, posters, placards, etc. Although the participants choose to express their dissent through posters and placards, marches never fail to fulfil their purposes. 

  1. Civil Disobedience

It is a form of protest that involves deliberate defiance of the guidelines, laws, and rules set by the Government. It also includes sit-ins where civilians are not allowed and entering prohibited areas.

 

Feature Image Credits: DU Beat Archives

Suhani Malhotra

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DU Students Come together in Support of All India General Strike : Bharat Bandh

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On Wednesday, 8th January 2020, students of University of Delhi (DU) gathered in hundreds and took to roads to express their agitation towards the Government in a peaceful protest. 

Commencing from the Faculty of Arts, North Campus, the March comprised of not only students but teachers and various political organisations as well. This commotion was followed by the immoral series of events that recently took place in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) after similar incidents happened in Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). Students of DU protested in solidarity with those who were victims of police brutality and hooliganism inside college campuses.

 Maitreyi, member of Pinjra tod said, “DU students came together in large numbers today to send a message to this fascist government that the students and citizens of this country won’t be scared into silence. The terror they have unleashed within universities like Jamia, AMU, and JNU clearly shows that the government fears students and wants to suppress any kind of dissent. The thousands of students that turned up today to protest against this fascist government shows that they’ve failed. Colleges like St. Stephen’s which is deemed to be highly isolated from campus politics and larger politics as well saw that 400 hundred students protested and marched within the campus and then marched towards arts faculty. Most colleges have a turnout of hundreds of students here today. The government has failed to instil fear in students through Delhi police. We will march and we will fight this government every step of the way. we won’t forget Kashmir or the trans bill and demand that this fascist state immediately rolls back the CAA and cancels the NRC/NPR. We will continue to be on the streets until this is done.”

Rain in January’s cold weather didn’t deter the students from expressing their dissent against the Government. The crowd chanted slogans against Akhil Bharatiya Vidya Parishad (ABVP). Students also showed up with Dhapli (Tambourine), making the protest musical. The outcry of students heard slogans like Inquilab Zindabad and CAA wapis lo (Revoke CAA). The rally covered the entire North Campus with constant energy throughout.

Simran Chawdhary, Member of United Against Hate (Umar Khalid’s organisation) said, “This is against the violence that penetrates on our campuses that are supposed to be our safe spaces for us to debate and deliberate. You can’t enter campuses with lathis and axes and getaway. This fight won’t end until each one of us feels safe. Our campuses are our home and no one will get away with violence. This is against ABVP goons who get funded by the right wing organisations. It’s high time Modi and Amit Shah stop behaving like arrogant goons.”

 At the end of the rally, various speakers took turns to express their resentment against the Government. Gautam Bhatia, renowned advocate spoke about how the recently proposed actions of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tarnishes the efforts of those great leaders who made India, the Nation it is today. Gulfisha from Seelampur also addressed the crowd and shared with them how she and dozens of other women stand strong even after the atrocities faced by them in Seelampur.

The protest didn’t stay restricted to one cause but rather, different groups of people uprose on different issues and came together to support each other.

Featured Image Credits: Avni Dhawan for DU Beat

Avni Dhawan

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DU Employees Suffer As the Delhi Government Fails to Pay Salaries

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Over 2,700 teaching and non-teaching staff of 12 Delhi University (DU) colleges did not get salaries for the last two months as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Government continues to withhold release of funds over non-formation of Governing Bodies (GB).

Out of the 28 DU colleges, 16 get only 5% of their funds from the Delhi Government while 12 receive 100% funding.

The GBs, comprising members nominated by the university and the Delhi Government, take all decisions for the smooth functioning of a college, including the appointment of teaching and non-teaching staff.

Some Principals of various colleges across DU wondered why the GB term could not be extended. “In the past, the term has been extended for almost six months. It can also be done now until the process of formation of the Governing Body is completed,” said a Principal whose college receives 100% funding. “The government should understand that we have to pay salary to the staff and their arrears.”

Dhananjoy Shaw, Principal of Indira Gandhi Institute of Physical Education and Sports Sciences (IGIPESS), said the fund crunch has affected student activities as well. “We haven’t been able to pay salaries to our staff for two months. Since some student activities had been planned before, we are executing them at the lowest possible cost,” he said, adding that managing day-to-day expenses will be difficult from October.

A contrary argument came to the fore when an official in the Delhi Government said that DU is insisting on not forming GBs in these colleges. “It is clear that there is an attempt to shield colleges from accountability and intent to continue corruption,” the official said.

“I am able to manage our daily expenditure somehow as this is not my only income source. But there are many employees whose day-to-day expenditures depend completely on their salary. Due to the ego clashes between the Vice Chancellor Yogesh Tyagi, and the AAP Government, it is the employee who is suffering.” another DU official grieves. 

In a protest organised by Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA), outside Vidhan Sabha on Friday, staff members said that “uncertainty in getting salaries has led to crisis” in these 12 colleges. “The worst-hit are the teaching and non-teaching staff working on ad hoc or contract basis,” DUTA said in a statement.

Delhi University College Karamchari Union (DUCKU) plan to sit on strike on 1st and 3rd October. 

The Vice-Chancellor and Arvind Kejriwal did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Feature Image Credits: DNA India

 

Bhagyashree Chatterjee 

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Digitisation of Currency: India and Its Financial Future

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With the advent of plastic money, e-banking, Paytm, cryptocurrency, and other digitised methods of payment, can India become a cashless economy?

With the rise of Digital India Campaign, and the growth of e-commerce in the country, it looks like the future of the Indian currency is moving forward in the digital sphere. However, this is not as easy as it may seem. With problems such as the country having an internet penetration rate of just 27%, as compared to the global average of 67%, only 60% of the country having bank accounts, and with 98% of the economic transactions by volume being done through cash, it is evident that the journey ahead is long and difficult.

Adding on to all this, India is a developing country with a very high poverty rate, as a student from the University of Delhi (DU) points out, “I don’t know what our Government is trying to achieve by Digital India when half the people in this country can’t even afford the internet. There are people suffering all over the country but nothing has been done about that”.

Along with this, cryptocurrency has been virtually banned by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), as stated in a circular, prohibiting banks, and financial institutions from rendering all services related to cryptocurrency in 2018. This, in turn, has also led to criticism from many who argue that the RBI has no right to pass this legislation on cryptocurrency, as it is not within the ambit of the Banking Regulation Act, through which the RBI draws most of its power.

In the face of all these statistics and opinions, why is the digitisation of currency even in the conversation? The positives of greater digitisation include paper trails which would make it harder to hide income, and would make finding black money easier, which was also one of the failed objectives of the infamous demonetisation done by the Modi administration. It would save the Government money, with the RBI currently spending INR 2,700 crores in the fiscal year 2018 on just currency issuance and management, it would be easier to conduct international payments, and the entire problem of fake currency would essentially disappear.

One of the arguments put forward against digitisation in India is that India is a majorly agrarian country, with most people depending on rural cooperative banks, most of which might not have an internet connection and the Government would not have the funds to provide it. However, this statement at its base can be proven wrong. According to the Indian Brand Equity Foundation, there are around 94,384 rural banks in India, as of the fiscal year 2017. Assuming all these banks do not have internet service, calculations of the initial cost can be made. Internet service would cost around INR one lakh for the initial licensing and legal admin fees, along with INR three to four lakhs to set up the infrastructure covering one square kilometre of the area around the tower. This leads us to a total cost of INR five lakhs on the highest end of the spectrum. Now, making the assumption that all rural collective banks do not have internet access, multiplying the number of rural banks with the initial cost would amount to around INR 4,719 crores or around USD 655 million. To put this into perspective, the Statue of Unity cost around INR 3,000 crores, and therefore, it is evident that funding this is not out of the reach of the Indian Government.

In this age of globalisation and technological revolution, the world economy and, more importantly for us, the Indian Economy is constantly changing and evolving. While digitisation of currency might be a part of this evolution further down the line, there is a still a long way for this country to go in order to make that possible, with work required in every sphere to even think about fully implementing it.

 

Feature Image Credits: 

Prabhanu Kumar Das

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Economic Slowdown: What Is It and How Does It Affect Us?

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As the recently released government data shows the GDP growth rate hitting a six-year low, we examine what it is and how it affects the lives of students. 

When the National Statistical Office released its official data showing the growth rate of the GDP in the first quarter of the financial year was only 5%, it was perhaps a wake-up call for a lot of us. But the truth is that the economy has been dwindling for a while now. The current GDP growth rate has hit a six-year low and its effects reach far and wide.

There is a slowdown in consumer demand, a decline in manufacturing, and rising global trade tension creating a vicious cycle in the Indian market.

Private consumption, which contributes nearly 55-60 percent to India’s GDP has been slowing down. This is due to demonetization as consumers now prefer to hoard cash or keep it in the bank instead of spending it. Demonetization has also led to small and medium businesses to withhold investment since they too operate on cash, which they are currently facing a dearth of.

The most important factor here, perhaps, is that there is also a global economic slowdown that is happening and given the fact that India is primarily an exporter, there has been a slump. Thus, it can be said that the ongoing global crisis also has contributed to this slowdown.

And while the economic slowdown seems like a topic far away from our carefree lives as students, its indirect effects have started to seep in.

This slow rate of growth is a huge setback for the country as the country requires an accelerated growth. to employ millions entering the job market every year. Thus, what the slowdown means for professionals and fresh graduates is that they would be finding it harder to land jobs as well as see their salaries rise on yearly basis.

Businesses face the brunt of the slowdown but small start-ups are the ones affected the most. Students often intern with the small start-ups during their free months to boost their experience and gain some extra cash however the opportunity seems unpromising as small companies might choose not to hire in favour of dedicating their funds to keeping their business afloat. Bhavya Pandey, an Economics Honours student from Daulat Ram College also discerns the same and agrees.

Additionally, as the priorities shift to fixing the economy and earning a livelihood, education takes a backseat. Funds to education reduce to get allocated to sectors which give immediate outcome, affecting students, especially those from a lower economic stratum, directly or indirectly. “The economic failure has caused unemployment to rise and hence may affect the stability of the families of students’ belonging to the lower economic strata of the society. Further, students may also miss many opportunities because of lack of funds.” Says Abhinandan Kaul, a student at St Stephen’s.

What is evident is that the economic problems are here to stay for now. How deep its effects run, though, is not something we would get to know precisely anytime soon.

Feature Image Credits: The Economic Times

Satviki Sanjay

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NSUI Protests Against the Changes Made to RTI by the Government

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The National Student’s Union of India (NSUI) held a protest march against the amendments made to the Right to Information Act (RTI) by the Government. Read on to know more. 

On 1st August 2019, the NSUI held a protest march in front of the Faculty of Arts, North Campus, showing its strong displeasure towards the move taken by the Government to make amends to the RTI Act. The members of the students’ political party marched from the Faculty of Arts to Kirori Mal College, all the while chanting slogans like “RTI Bachao, Desh Bacho“. 

Neeraj Kundan, National President, NSUI said, “Today the RTI is one of the most important laws in the country, it directly affects the people. In 2017, when the BJP Government saw that the RTI could expose high government officials like Smriti Irani, and even Prime Minister Narendra Modi, they started trying to curb its power. The Government is now trying to reduce its autonomy and cage it. NSUI is going to hold protests all over the country until our rights are given back to us.”

Students and associations like The North East Students’ Society, Delhi University (NESSDU) turned up in large numbers to support the NSUI’s protest against the RTI amendments. They marched with bold banners and enthusiastic slogans. The presence of the Delhi Armed Police and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) showed how protests in the DU are feared to turn violent, but this was an extremely peaceful protest.

Surbhi Dwivedi, National General Secretary of NSUI and the RTI Team Convener emphasised on the importance of the RTI for the student community. She said, “The RTI is the most effective tool in student politics. It helps students to find discrepancies in the University. A strong RTI is our right.” Robin Chaudhary, National Secretary of NSUI, said that they were determined to fight for democracy and that if the Government did not heed to their demands, they would go on a hunger strike.

The RTI Act, 2015 is an Act of the Parliament of India “to provide for setting out the practical regime of right to information for citizens”. It has made the workings of the Government more transparent, helped to reduce corruption and has facilitated in the workings of this democracy. The RTI Commissioners used have fixed five-year tenure and their salaries were equal to certain posts in the Election Commission and the bureaucracy. The recent amendments made to the act by the BJP Government have changed this. According to the new amendments, the central government now has direct control over the Chief Information Commissioner and Information Commissioners’ term of office and salaries. The changes made to the RTI are being seen by many as the Government trying to control it, and as a result of this many voices in objection to the RTI amendments are being raised all over the country.

 

 

Feature Image Credits: NSUI

 

Juhi Bhargava

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