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| Dirty politics, politicking plague students, too | | | SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT
NEW DELHI, AUG. 31: Politicians and political parties in India have no plans to keep students away from politics, even as the all new aggresive face of student politics includes everything-- be it threats, violence or even murder, as it happend in Ujjain's Madhav College.
For those who arrived on the national political scenario, riding on their success as active student politicians, these are embarrasing times. "There should be leadership camps for students. There is no training nowadays," says Tariq Ahmed, general secretary of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).
Former students leaders say that they are apalled. They insist that this kind of behaviour was unheard of during their times and the guru-shisya relationship was always considered above politics and served as a fine line that was never meant to be crossed. The BJP spokesperson, Ravi Shankar Prasad, has stated: "I am not very happy with the trend of students in politics. It needs to be strengthened so that we can respond to the current challenges".
But in a society which is driven by consumerism and material desires, do causes really matter? A proposal has already been submitted by former Chief Election Commissioner, JM Lyngdoh, to cleanse students elections. He specifically has asked for careful screening of those who contest these elections.
"The whole format of student union elections needs to be changed. We need more debate and discourse," says a Congress leader, Manish Tiwari. So, are students' political groups a poor reflection of the current quality of political leadership in the country? When mainstream politics becomes the domain of the disorderly and the violent, the answer will be a loud 'yes'.
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