Editorial, January, 2011 issue

Dear friends it was 9^th August, 1990 that AISA was established in Allahabad. Since then twenty years have passed, situations have changed at national and international level, discourses have moved ahead , but one thing that has persisted throughout this long stretch of time is the nature of ruling classes to exploit the masses.  AISA from the very day of its formation has always stood for the Marginals. We have always tried to be the voice of those voiceless millions who are silenced every time they open their mouth to voice their dissent. Be it the issues of students like fee hikes, hostel facilities or struggle for minimum wages of labors, or peasant suicides, AISA has always stood in the front rows to raise all these issue. Gender and caste discrimination have been issues which are vehemently taken up by AISA leadership time and again. Though the conditions in late 1980’s and early 1990’s when AISA was formed were marked by the alarming communal polarization, AISA challenged the right wing forces head on instead of shying away from the situation.  The situation was further made worse by the agenda of neo-liberal pundits sitting in World Bank, IMF and Washington DC through their ‘agents’ like Manmohan Singh, Montek Singh Alluwalia when the whole economy was opened  and the privatization was pushed forward as a state policy. AISA has always tried to link these issues (national and international) with our local campus based issues. This was the reason that Com Chandrasekhar Prasad former JNUSU president and one of the founders of AISA went back to his hometown Siwan (Bihar) where a struggle against caste oppression and criminalization of politics was going on. Chandu like many of our comrades was killed while he was addressing a street gathering against the criminalization of politics. That was in 1997 and its 2010, but what we see is the repetition of the same fascist agenda of silencing every voice of dissent. Life imprisonment of Binayak Sen in a recent case with the charges of sedition is the cruel joke of a nation which calls itself to be the largest democracy of the world. Chandu’s words are still relevant as the struggle is still between two visions of nation building ‘one which believes in a autocratic and fascist India and other which believes in a socialist, democratic and egalitarian India’.  AISA stands with the later; AISA stands for struggle of Binayak Sen’s, Irom Sharmila’s, Dalits, Backwards, Women and all other marginal sections who are fighting for ‘social justice’ and for their Jal, Jungle, Zameen. But the challenges in front of the student community right now and in future are going to be much more tough as the neo-liberal agenda after devastating Indian agriculture, health sector, and other sectors of economy has now finally entered the Education system and the whole agenda is to sell off the ‘education’ to big corporate houses and MNC’s. ‘Right to Education bill’, Foreign University Bill’ and all other education bills which are in pipeline all point in the same direction. AISA has always opposed any such moves by the Indian state which are meant for only few and in the future also we have to continue our struggles against this corporate loot. On the eve of the 20^th year of AISA formation we have started our monthly bulletin ‘Students Voice’ to convey our message to all of you so that all of us can be the part of the struggle in the future.

With Revolutionary greetings..

 Students Voice editorial team