Change in student politics

Political activism by Bangladeshi students, often marked by violence and unrest apart from nationalist and democratic demonstrations, is an old culture and so is their alignment with political parties. Such partisan campus politics in the recent past coincided with rapid fall in quality of education as reflected in the poor ranking of Bangladeshi universities. An absence of healthy politics including debates on national issues on the campus stopped the process of grooming future leaders. Leaders of such student bodies are mostly serving the purpose of mother organisations and meeting parochial personal interests.

However, in developed countries and also in many developing countries, students remain free from influence of any political party and debate issues such as environment, socio-economic issues and even quality of education. They work as ambassadors of the nation upholding public interest. They go for demonstration without creating disturbance to citizens, if there is a crisis. An aggressive and rampant protest culture has made student politics largely irrelevant to the Bangladesh people. We are now waiting for agents of change who would set a new trend in student politics for national advancement.

Ninadul Haque,

East West University, Dhaka