TISS Hyderabad students start indefinite hunger strike: Here's why
Six students of the of Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Hyderabad have gone on an indefinite hunger strike in a bid to pressurize a negligent administration to address the issues regarding higher education of the marginalized. All four campuses of TISS - Mumbai, Hyderabad, Tuljapur, Guwahati - have been on strike for seven days now against the withdrawal of government's aid for SC/ST/OBC students.
The strike has a strong social media campaign
The protests have been supported by faculty, other institutes
Starting February 21, students across all four campuses of TISS boycotted classes, field work, and submissions as a mark of protest against the administration withdrawing fee waivers for SC/ST/OBC students eligible for the Government of India Post-Matriculate Scholarship (GoI-PMS). The protest has been supported by the faculty and by student organizations from over 50 educational institutes like JNU, DU, NALSAR, HCU, JU etc.
The strike is a symptom of a larger malaise
This is the first time that a strike of this magnitude has been organized by the TISS Students' Union, which historically has a reputation of not being overtly confrontational. It is a symptom a larger malaise plaguing India - namely the steady withdrawal of higher education funds for socio-economically weaker groups which is making the already exclusive higher education space even more exclusionary.
Notably, number of OBC students in TISS has been declining
With fund cuts over the years, data released under an RTI filed by students revealed that the number of OBC students enrolling in TISS has been declining steadily - from 28% in 2013-14 to 18% in 2016-17.
Administrative negligence is also a point of contention
In addition to demands for restoring the GoI-PMS scholarships, in what students described as a fight against the "privatization of education", there have also been issues of administrative negligence, especially for the off-campuses. TISS Hyderabad in particular, which doesn't have a campus of its own, faces several issues such as poor infrastructure, lack of security for women, and health hazards among other things.
Despite ongoing dialogue, no solutions have been reached
Dialogue between the administration and the students haven't yielded anything productive yet. Furthermore, in an admin-student meeting in TISS Mumbai on February 25, the Acting Director and the Registrar of TISS refused to acknowledge an email by the Deputy Director (in-charge of TISS Hyderabad) confessing "miscommunication", "misinterpretation", and "misunderstanding" between the TISS Hyderabad administration and the students regarding the GoI-PMS issue.
A 3rd year B.A. student explains administrative negligence in TISS
Centralized power in TISS has negative consequences in the off-campuses
Apart from the implications of the meeting's proceedings on the integrity and image of the Deputy Director, the attitude of the TISS Mumbai administration towards issues and concerns in 'off-campuses' reflect a larger structural problem in TISS' administrative machinery - namely that of heavy centralization. The lack of financial and administrative autonomy in the off-campuses mars both academic potential and general welfare of students.
