There is more than one opinion about the formation of students ‘ unions in the colleges and universities of this country. The apologists of these unions consider their existence extremely essential for the intellectual development of the students . Their detractors, however, hold the view that they are sheer wastage of the students’ precious time. Both views present extreme positions which cannot be defended for a variety of reasons. A meeting point between these two divergent views need to be found out.
It goes without saying that there is certainly a need for healthy extra curricular activities in the educational institutions so that an outlet could be provided to pent up energy of the youth . The students can be allowed to form their unions but with some caveats. For instance, they can be told in unambiguous terms that they would not work as a proxy of any political party. The job of these unions would be to mobilise their members for participation in activities like debates in the college premises on important social, economic and national issues. These unions can encourage their members to write prose and poetry in the monthly magazine of their educational institution. They can send their teams for contesting in tournaments of various games organised by colleges and universities .
Experience of hindsight tells us that law and order situation is disturbed in only those educational institutions where there is an outside interference of the political parties in students’s affairs . Isn’t it a fact that almost all the students’s unions that have been operating in this country for decades now, are being bankrolled by the political parties?Can any body deny that hostels of many educational institutions have become dens of arms and ammunition?