Editorial: Continuing students protest
It was another day of protests and clashes in Pulwama as students once again came out of their classrooms and started protesting on the streets. The students came out to protest with no reason for them getting so agitated. The protest ended with students hurling stones on the police station and in retaliation the police personnel fired tear smoke shells disrupting the entire township for the day.
The students protests it seems is an off shoot of a spate of unrest in the Valley that actually began in summer 2016. The protests have been resurfacing intermittently and these protests carry with them the disappointing aspect of student involvement in law and order disruption phenomenon.
The State is deeply concerned about the academic and psychological loss that student involvement in the acts of lawlessness inflicts on them. The student of today is the builder of the future of the State. But he can build the future of the State only when he first builds his own career.
Involvement in violent public demonstrations means that the students at various levels from schools to university have to miss their lessons because disruption of law and order forces authorities to shut down the schools for security reasons.
We have been witnessing disruption in class work at the Higher Secondary, College level and even at the high school level during the past seven weeks. The government at times was left with no other option than to close down educational Institutions for days together piling up the loss of precious time, both for the students as well as the teaching faculty.
Losing one or two semesters means losing an academic year, something which ordinary citizens cannot afford. Time matters in the process of academic pursuits. Not only the Government at large, the sensible civil society in the valley are greatly concerned on a phenomenon in the valley that prompts the students to come out on the streets, participate in anti-Government demonstrations, pelt stones at security forces and cause damage to public property.
The phenomenon seems to have stopped to some extent but the usual outbursts are seemingly hitting the curriculum at one point or the other. Therefore, the solution lies in interacting with the students, listening to their grievances and finding a remedy if these grievances are genuine. No government, we believe wants the security forces to be harsh in dealing with defiant students.
The basics of this discourse should be that the educational career of student should be protected and not allowed to go waste. There are some anti-social elements who would not want the students to remain glued to their studies and become the future builders of Kashmir. This needs to be taken care of.
KV Correspondent
