Students’ strikes are quite common in modern times. They have become a part and parcel of their education at the college. They offer different reasons for the strikes on different occasions. They boycott classes, indulge in vandalism and cause damage to the college property. They often go out in a procession along the public road, shouting slogans and damaging public property, as well as private persons’ property, such as shops, show-cases and neon- tubes. They resort to stone throwing and burning buses, private cars and trains. They set fire to office files at the college or at the office to which they go with their real or imaginary grievances. At the end of a day’ destructive activities, they return home unrepentant and remorseless.
They are occasionally several genuine causes for their strikes. Their legitimate demands for a playground or a dining hall or ceiling fans or water facility or lavatory, or a reduction in fees, or some of them or all of them are ignored by the principal and the other authorities. They also conduct a strike protesting against the unjust punishment of one or more students, or against the intolerable abusive language of a particular teacher. Group clashes among them may lead to a strike. These are local reasons.
There are also some external reasons which make them go on a strike. Some students get into a skirmish with with a bus conductor and exchange blows with him. They start a strike to condemn the bus conductors rudeness. They cut class-lectures, go to the road stop the buses or throw stones at the buses or set fire to a bus to show their anger. Sometimes they get into some misunderstanding with the students of another college and conduct a strike. Some political affair- state or national or international - is atones seized as a pretext for a strike. The politicians often instigate student - strikes, not to help the students, but to achieve their own ends. Students are a strong weapon for the selfish politicians.
During the out door strikes the students face the policemen who are called upon to control them and save public and private property. There is a clash. The striking students throw stones at the police, hoping that the policemen will run away . But the police resort to tear gassing , lathi-charging and even shooting. One or two students die and many students are wounded.
Some strikes arise all on a sudden. Some other strikes are pre-planned. During the summer vacation itself the sophomores sometimes chalk out a plan of the strikes they should conduct during the next academic year with the help the ignorant freshers. They plan to have at least one strike in each term. Sometimes they want to have a strike every month. More over, they discuss the various kinds they could conduct: one strike against a professor, one strike against the principal or the management , one strike against the bus-conductors, one intercollegiate strike, one political strike and one strike to condemn something in the international field.
Modern students seem to think that conducting strikes is the most important thing in their college life and that it is one way of enjoying college life. Most of them ignore their studies. Most of the strikes want a holiday in the name of a strike and a chance to damage public or private property. They want to burn a car or a bus. They want to smash the glass-cares of shops and offices. They feel a thrill and an ecstasy if they succeed in participating in a strike and in causing some big or small destruction.
As a result of ignoring their studies, on account of their constant expectation of a new strike, they don’t pass in the university examination. Getting experience in strikes make them irresponsible during their college career and for the rest of their life. When they try to earn, they will try to follow destructive and violent means. It will subject them to social condemnation.They forget that they have joined the college to study and become graduate by passing the examinations.
They forget that they are behaving their parents’ trust in them and that they are wasting the hard-earned money of their parents by ignoring their studies. The fees paid by all the students of the college for a whole year will not be sufficient to meet the expenses of the college even for one month. The college has to get grants from the government which, in turn, gets the money by taxing the citizens. The citizens are taxed to help the students with their money to waste.In future life these very students will be citizens who will be paying taxes to the government and seeing their money wasted by their children through their indifference to studies and through their strikes.
Thank you,
R.Rajkumar