India Observe University Strike and join JNUSU's Protest Demo, 21st August for the doubling of MCM to 3000/-

Observe University Strike and join JNUSU's Protest Demo, 21st August for the doubling of MCM to 3000/-

Without adequate MCM many students in this university will not be able to continue their education. The university is run for and by the students, if they are not getting their rightful demands; let us stop the running of the university itself! The fight for double MCM is not merely a struggle for a certain sum of rupees but is integrally linked to our continued fight against the forces privatization, commercialization and fund cuts. It is integrally linked to our vision of education where each and every student, irrespective of their financial background can continue their education. JNU is a relatively inexpensive place to pursue higher education. We pay minimal fees and hostel rent, students from remotest parts and deprived backgrounds get priority during admissions, through mechanisms such as the deprivation points; the powers that be have been forced to implement reservations and there is relatively greater freedom and safety for women students. NONE of these are gifts of the administration. Students have won these rights through bitter struggles with the administration which has time and again tried to sabotage the democratic character of the university. They have tried to introduce self-financed courses, implement various agenda of privatization and commercialization, introduced retrogressive courses like astrology and Yogic science, but students have fought and defeated all these reactionary plans of the administration several times.


The anti-student JNU administration is absolutely unperturbed by the ongoing indefinite hunger strike that is entering its 8th day as well as the falling health of students. But we don’t expect anything else from administration which is the direct agent of ruling class in the campus. The ruling class right now has launched an all-out onslaught on the lives and livelihoods of the struggling people of the country. The exorbitant price rise of basic commodities due to the policies of liberalization-privatization-globalization has had a spiralling effect on every aspect of our lives. The universities have not remained immune to this assault and, amongst other things, it reflects in the exorbitant rise in our mess bills. MCM, which is the basic requirement for students coming from economically deprived backgrounds, MUST be equivalent to the rising expenditure of the university.

The Union had already led two unsuccessful hunger strikes in the past one year which, among other issues, had demanded double MCM. But in the past one year it has not been able to clinch this extremely important issue. This year too, the Union admitted in an all-organization meeting that they knew from July that administration is going to, rather charitably, increase the MCM by a meagre 500 rupees. But shamefully, they neither informed nor mobilized the students against the same. In repeated all-organization meetings, DSU has proposed thrice that the JNUSU should intensify the struggle by calling for an indefinite university strike and taking the struggle to a higher level. But the JNUSU has consistently remained on spurious grounds reluctant to do so and intensify the struggle to a higher level. One must remember that these are the same forces who had called an indefinite university strike to bring the anti-student Lyngdoh in the campus last year. But today they squarely refuse to call for an indefinite university strike to fight the crucial demand for doubling MCM. This only shows the lack of resoluteness of the JNUSU leadership to fight this crucial demand.

The students of this university must not let this struggle end in another failure. Let us make it clear to the administration that we are not going to settle with anything less than double MCM. Let us reject the charitable increase by the administration and its continual apathy towards genuine students’ demand. The JNUSU leadership has failed in clinching ALL the major students’ demand, be it reduction of viva weightage, ensuring Muslim deprivation points, preventing de-linking of BA-MA, or removal of CCTVs, ensuring implementation of the GSCASH verdict against a faculty found guilty of sexual harassment, or the fight against Lyngdoh in the past one year. We must not allow them to surrender this extremely important struggle for doubling MCM too.

More than 1000 students have participated in a signature campaign demanding that if the administration continues to reject the genuine demand of doubling MCM, the JNUSU should intensify the struggle by calling an indefinite university strike and taking the struggle to a higher level, with more assertive modes of agitation. We demand that the JNUSU must respect this.