Explained : Why Karnataka announcing revival of student union elections has reopened talks on campus democracy and Its Impact

Student unions were not simply administrative bodies. They were arenas where political identities were forged.

The political significance of campuses became particularly visible in the early 1970s. A movement led by politician and activist Jayaprakash Narayan against the Indira Gandhi government drew much of its early momentum from students. What began as campus protests in Bihar and Gujarat soon spread across the country, with student organisations organising rallies, marches and strikes that eventually fed into a nationwide political movement.

Even during the Emergency declared by the said Indira Gandhi government, between 1975 and 1977, universities remained spaces of resistance. In 1977, the late CPI(M) leader Sitaram Yechury – then president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union (JNUSU) in Delhi – led hundreds of students to then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s residence and read out a memorandum demanding her resignation as the university’s chancellor. Gandhi stepped down from the post a few days later, and the photograph of Yechury reading the memorandum while she listened has since become iconic.

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Student movements in India have historically served as a training ground for many of the country’s most prominent political leaders.

“If you look at the list of who’s who of Indian politics and how many of them came from student politics, you will be amazed. I come from Banaras Hindu University [BHU], where half a dozen student leaders went on to become national leaders in the Congress, the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] and the socialist parties. So, it cuts across ideologies; everybody is a gainer. Every ideological group has benefited from the input of student politics,” says Anand Kumar, a retired professor and former president of both JNUSU and BHU Students’ Union (BHUSU).

Former prime ministers VP Singh and Chandra Shekhar were shaped by student politics at Allahabad University, while leaders across ideological lines, from late BJP leader Arun Jaitley, who led the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU) during the Emergency years, to CPI(M) leaders Sitaram Yechury and Prakash Karat, who were active in student movements at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), emerged from campus activism. Regional stalwarts such as Lalu Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar also rose through student mobilisations linked to the JP movement.

For many observers, this long pipeline from campus politics to national leadership illustrates why student unions were once described as the “nursery of democracy”, and why universities historically played an important role in shaping India’s democratic culture.

Yet the political culture of many campuses today differs markedly from that of the earlier era.

While student wings of major political parties, such as National Students’ Union of India (NSUI) – the Congress’s student wing – the Left-wing All India Students’ Association (AISA) and the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) – the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, continue to exist on campuses, student union elections have been suspended for years across several major universities in India, though the timelines vary widely.

At BHU, the last student union election was held in 1996, and attempts to revive representative bodies through student councils have been short-lived. Lucknow University has not held student union elections since 2006, following legal disputes and concerns over campus violence. At Jamia Millia Islamia, too, elections have been stalled since 2006 after the administration suspended the union, citing campus disturbances.

In other universities, the gap is more recent but still significant.

The AMU Students’ Union last held elections in the 2018-19 academic year before being suspended following campus tensions. Allahabad University also last conducted student union elections in 2018, after which the administration cited law-and-order concerns to halt the process. At the University of Rajasthan, the most recent Rajasthan University Students’ Union elections took place in 2022, but subsequent polls have been postponed with the administration citing the implementation of the National Education Policy.

When the Karnataka government recently announced that it would revive student union elections in universities across the state, the move reopened a long-running debate about the shrinking space for campus democracy in India.

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“Campus democracy is a very important indicator of the general health of democracy in any country or society. There was a witch hunt on American campuses during the McCarthy era [US senator Joseph McCarthy. McCarthyism or the McCarthy era refers to the period in the US of the 1950s, when people were aggressively investigated or accused of communist sympathies, often purportedly without solid evidence], and there was a witch hunt during the Emergency in India, where anybody who was critical of the system – whether Left or Right – was arrested and put behind bars. And there is a witch hunt going on now in the name of cleaning the campuses of the Left, radicals and ‘urban Naxals’. It is an indication of the weakness of the people in power and of misgovernance,” alleges Kumar. A former Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) member, he later formed Swaraj India, a registered unrecognised party, with activist-politicians Yogendra Yadav and activist-lawyer-politician Prashant Bhushan.

According to Samajwadi Party MP Javed Ali Khan — who served as secretary of the Jamia Students’ Union in 1984-85 — reluctance to conduct elections existed even during earlier governments, but the current phase represents a far more significant contraction of campus democracy. While some universities have put a stop to elections in the past decade, those that were suspended before were not restarted during this period.

“By and large, most major universities still held student elections (during Congress rule). From those elections, the country also got good leadership. Today, the situation is that student unions have almost been finished, especially in the major universities. As a result, a crisis has emerged where political activism in the country has declined,” he alleges.

In more cases than not, the familiar reasons of “anarchy”, “law and order situation” and “violence” are cited as reasons to not resume the elections, but critics argue that these explanations are often overstated.

“Violence cannot be the reason for stopping elections. Ab agar ungli me chot lagti hai toh poora haath thodi kaat diya jayega (If a finger gets injured, you don’t cut off the entire hand). The truth is, administrations want to play it safe because once there are unions and movements, a lot of uncomfortable issues will be raised, and they’re not ready to face that,” says Saurabh Singh, Allahabad University unit president of the NSUI.

Activists on other campuses argue that broader political considerations have also shaped decisions to suspend elections.

“Like every university, BHU also has different lobbies, and the dominant lobby here does not want elections. Especially after the 2007 OBC expansion, when the number of OBC students increased, they have become even more reluctant to share political space and power. So, whenever elections are likely to happen, minor violent incidents are made to take place and the administration cites them as a reason for the elections not taking place,” alleged Roshan Pandey of the AISA, and a PhD student at BHU.

Similarly, at Lucknow University, independent activist Jyoti Kumar Rai claims the official explanation for the ban masked deeper political calculations.

“Like in every place, the official reason cited to disband the elections was anarchy, but the truth is that it did not suit the BSP [Bahujan Samaj Party] government [in power in Uttar Pradesh] at the time because they did not have a student wing and therefore had no presence on campus. The last winners were from the Samajwadi Chhatra Sabha (student wing of the Samajwadi Party), so it did not suit them,” he alleges.

It is not as though violence has not been part of student politics. Jamia has not held student union elections since 2006, after the alleged assault of the then union president led the administration to suspend the body. In 2018, an AU student leader was shot dead by assailants. Yet, experts say, these are rare instances.

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Significantly, the demand to restore elections cuts across ideological lines. Apart from the NSUI and Left and progressive student groups, even the ABVP – aligned with the BJP-led ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) at the Centre – has called for student union polls to be held across universities.

“Student union elections should be conducted in all universities across the country so that new leadership can emerge from educational institutions and contribute to society,” ABVP national general secretary Virendra Singh Solanki had said in December last year, while demanding student union elections in Madhya Pradesh – a state governed by the BJP.

Even in universities where student union elections continue to be held, the relationship between administrations and unions has increasingly been marked by friction. On campuses such as Jawaharlal Nehru University and University of Delhi, student leaders say that while elections are formally conducted, administrative regulations ranging from restrictions on protests and public meetings to disciplinary action and tighter rules around campaign activity often limit the union’s ability to function. “We see the attack on us as part of the larger attack on unions across the country. This government knows that students will raise questions, and they’re scared of us. And JNU has historically always questioned the powers that be, so that’s why we are always being targeted,” says JNUSU president Aditi Sharma. Yet student politics on these campuses remains relatively vibrant compared with universities where elections have been suspended altogether.

For many observers, the decline of student unions raises broader questions about how universities function as democratic spaces, and what kind of leaders they produce.

“People who used to enter politics through activism are no longer coming in, and instead other kinds of forces – money power and muscle power – are finding entry into politics. It raises the possibility that the quality of politics will deteriorate significantly. I can name at least 10-15 leaders in one breath who came out of student politics and later found an important place in national politics. They were dedicated political workers who raised the voice of the people, spoke out against injustice, and were committed to the constitutional goals and ideals of the country,” claims Khan.

According to him, weakening student unions ultimately serves a broader purpose.

“Today, the ruling classes in our country prefer politicians who remain under their control in one way or another, people who remain within their grip and dependent on them. They don’t want people who will speak up and raise the voice of the people,” he alleges.