JNU: Too Many Students, Too Few Rooms

Tents at Freedom Square began as a movement against the student-housing crisis in JNU

WrittenBy:Manisha Chachra
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Jawaharlal Nehru University’s administration block, Freedom Square is now home to students living in tents. Omprakash Mahato and Karthik Raja have been living in a makeshift tent as a mode of protest against the widespread hostel crisis in the university since September 14. They were joined by several other students from the 16th onwards.

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“I and my friend Karthik K Raja, were staying together at the terrace of Mahi Mandavi hostel, due to not getting any hostel even after two months of our admission to the MPhil in Political studies. Obviously, staying in an open space like terrace we had to face all sorts of climatic conditions, be it rains or scorching heat of the sun. Later, we moved to the Sutlej hostel, and the warden ousted us,”said Mahato. Their demands were simple, to be provided a hostel room or alternate accomodation.

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This is not the first time that JNU has seen a hostel crisis. “It remains the case every time the new session begins, but this time the method of  allocation of hostel seats is itself quite vague,”Mahato said.He and Raja approached the Dean of student welfare with their situation. They were told due to a shortage of seats to find accomodations in Munirka or register themselves as “TR-third roommate,” which are apparently single room seaters. Unable to afford the rents in Munirka, they were left with little choice. “The agenda of the administration to not provide any alternative accommodation to the students speaks tales about the exclusion on account of something as basic as right to life and right to live with dignity” Mahato told me.

They expressed their concerns to the new student union formed after the recent student elections. It was organisationally agreed across the student parties that camping outside the admin block would be a collective mode of protest against the administration.

Although there is no option for alternative accommodation, many students stay in dormitories for the time being. “Even the dorms in which we stay ‘illegally’ to speak in administrative tone, look like refugee camps, and undoubtedly, it is becoming sickening with the exceeding numbers filling the dorms,” said Radhika Sharma, another MPhil research scholar at the university. “The current hostel crisis have become intricate because of the unclear procedures and opaque methods deployed to take out the hostel lists”.

The protestors have been called “illegal occupants” by the administration and Mahato and Raja have been given notices by the university Chief Proctor despite the protest being a collective decision by the students.

On September 24, the administration released a whitepaper on the hostel allotment procedure. While this is a partial acceptance of demands, but the information looks flawed. “They have mentioned TR-third roommate also in the whitepaper, but the university is not allotting that in actuality. It is an adhoc arrangement, for which students have to struggle themselves in order to get space in someone else’s room. Also, the third roommate arrangement is so vulnerable as it is dependent on the wishes of the owner of the room,”said Jigyasa Sogarwal, pursuing a MPhil in Political Studies.

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One can ask whether it is legal or illegal to occupy spaces within the university  considering various supreme court judgements on the same, however, “by denying free space to students, the administration high handling of the entire matter speaks tales about how the university is trying to get itself at par with other day scholar institutions, and fragmenting the spaces to separate the teacher-student community and thereby, stymie the politics of protest,”claims Sogarwal. Shewent on to say “Looking at my own class, it has been more than a month, not a single girl from our class have got the hostel accomodation”.

As to the future of movement Mahato said, “We are planning different movie screenings like Court, and discussion sessions. Furthermore, we are planning for community kitchen so that we all can come together and cook food.”

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