NEFIS submits memorandum to Prime Minister

IMPHAL, May 18: The North-East Forum for International Solidarity (NEFIS) has said in a press release that it has launched a campaign to protest against the imposition of Hindi on the students from the North East region of the country. “After a series of protests culminating in a massive demonstration outside the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD), the University administration seemed to buckle to pressure and gave us in writing that Hindi would not be made compulsory for those students from the north-east who are not comfortable with it,” the release said. “However, to our shock, the syllabus that was passed and finalized by the University last week has no mention of the exemption for the north-east students!”, it claimed.

The statement continued that the new course structure has a provision for multiple exit points meaning that students can exit out of the 4 year long bachelor’s course at multiple stages.

The statement said, “The system of multiple exit points would sabotage the reservations granted to ST and OBC students in the higher education. Because the students belonging to the above categories belong to the weaker, vulnerable and marginalized sections they are most likely to be forced to drop-out/flunk mid-way through the Honours course”.

It said that though admissions would be granted through reservation at the beginning of the Honours course, at the end of three years far fewer students from the reserved category would still remain in the course.

It continued that the system might seem like a flexible step to some, in favour of those students who are forced to drop out due to financial or other constraints.

“For very long, through protests and memorandums the NEFIS has been demanding the government of India to take adequate steps to ensure that students from the north-east are not forced to drop out for want of financial support but no steps whatsoever were taken to address our concerns”.

“We oppose the four year course for bachelor’s degree because it adds an additional year to the degree that could be attained earlier in three years without adding anything substantial in the curriculum. This means an extra year of financial burden which would hit the students from the north-east the most. We already suffer due to shooting room rents, inflating food costs, addition of one extra year for the honours course would force many of us to drop out mid-way”, it said.

The NEFIS also submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister’s Office urging upon his office to scrap the present set of reforms and take adequate steps to initiate new reforms from the perspective of the marginalized sections like the students from the north-east, failing which we would be forced to adopt the course of democratic agitation, informed the statement.