Look Who it Was Random video

Police Action Inside the Campus Simply Cannot be Allowed: Brinda Bose

2,673 views · Published 2 September 2015 · 14:52 · Indexed 6 November 2026

Channel: NewsClickin · 2015 · News & Politics

Watch on YouTube

Newsclick interviewed Brinda Bose, Associate Professor, Centre for English Studies, JNU, on the recent spate of violence inside campuses and the overall state of higher education in India. Bose says that there is a concerted effort now by the public university to hone a certain kind of student who will be a certain kind of citizen - one who will conform to the ideological apparatus of the state. She finds the constant interference of the central government led by the BJP inside academic institutions a continuation of the policy of the previous UPA government. She mentions the inroads made by the social media in the staging of protests and feels that modes of protests such as sloganeering, mass meetings and hunger strikes, though illegal, are taken recourse to only because of a failure in the process of dialogue. She feels that there is a constant fear of the public in the university administration and hence there are knee-jerk reactions of hushing things up by internal inquiries which are seldom effective. It is only when the matters come out in public that efforts are made to work on complaints. The protests by students, therefore, is a mechanism by which matters are made public and the moment when public universities stand the test of a public scrutiny. Bose suggests that instead of working on lowest common denominators such as the CBCS, the government must work on specific strengths and weaknesses of specific universities so that a network is created among universities which can work together.

More from this channel