New Delhi: The distance between Ramjas College in Delhi University's North Campus and the Faculty of Law is just 250 meters but there is scarcely an inch of Chhatra Marg that isn't covered with fliers, left behind by candidates and student outfits on the campaign trail.
Delhi University is heading to polls on September 12 and it's currently campaign season on campus. There are posters as far as the eye can see, urging students to either “join ABVP” or “vote for NSUI”.
While Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been calling for a Swachh Bharat (Clean India) since he got elected, student outfits in DU, including the RSS-linked Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), rarely walk the talk. In a University spread all over the metropolis of Delhi, littering is seen as “necessary evil” by student unions.
Over the past few years many, including the Left-leaning All India Students’ Association (AISA), have been calling for a “paperless” DUSU campaign. But for “mainstream” parties like the ABVP and National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), the student wing of Congress, a paperless student election campaign would be “impractical”.
Saket Bahuguna, national media convener of the ABVP, said, "We want a cleaner campus. If it were possible, we would not print paper at all. But it is not practical. We need to realise that the scale of the university is so big that it would be impossible to physically campaign in all colleges. There are 51 colleges that vote for DUSU elections. There are over 2 lakh students in the varsity. Even if we put in all the effort, we would be able to cover just around 30 colleges. In such a situation, posters become necessary.”
But beyond posters, which are plastered on the walls, is the problem of litter. To save time, student candidates drive past colleges and litter the road with fliers.
One ABVP activist said littering is the “best form” of campaigning. He said, “Printing small fliers is much cheaper than getting a large poster or a billboard. Another issue with posters is that pasting them on the walls is time consuming. With fliers, you can just strew them across the street. You don’t even need to hand them out. Besides, there are restrictions with regard to where you can put posters but we can litter anywhere.”
An NSUI activist said "when a student walks from Kamala Nagar to college, he or she may not look anywhere else but he or she will certainly watch the road. The fliers are impossible to miss when you are literally walking on them."
Comments
0 comment