India: Majoring in Mayhem

• Share

The mood of India's 1,700,000 university-level students is black. For the past two months they have been on the rampage in more than 150 Indian cities and towns: fighting police, roughing up faculty members, overturning vehicles, burning cinemas, and stoning the offices and homes of government officials. Last week in the northern city of Jammu, a mob of 1,000 students tossed bricks at police for hours until retaliatory gunfire killed three students. In some areas, student rioting has already exceeded in damage and ferocity the anti-British demonstrations that preceded independence.

While there could be no excuse for such wanton rampaging, hardly anyone denies that the students have much to be angry about. Facilities are limited and crowded. Underpaid professors are frequently careless and incompetent. Academic standards are often pitifully low. Worst of all, because of India's struggling economy, students despair of getting decent jobs once they graduate. It is the more urgent problem of trying to build the economy that prevents the government of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from building new educational facilities. Mrs. Gandhi has taken a conciliatory attitude toward the students—which many Indians feel will only breed new outbreaks of violence.