Dealing with senseless street agitations

The unrelenting and disruptive street agitations by the students of the Government Titumir College since the end of January have been causing untold sufferings to public life in the city. However, lately, reports have it that on Monday evening last, the agitating students demanding conversion of their college into a university have announced a week's pause in their movement following some government assurances that their demand(s) would be looked into. Such move on the part of the Titumir College students is appreciated at least for the reason that the reported cessation of their agitation would bring some relief in the lives of the city's exhausted residents. Even so, the question remains as to why their agitation has to be so aggressive causing so much public suffering?  They could well hold their demonstrations and other related activities within the boundary of their college campus thereby sparing the public of the untold agony.

The agitating students virtually held the entire city and its residents a hostage. One wonders if all such anarchic activities were meant to realise a genuine demand or if the resulting chaos was an end itself. Whatever the next phase of the Titumir College students' movement and their demand following consultations, if any, with the government, the public wants an end to such sporadic disruptions of traffic movement and disorder on the city's streets in the name of someone's demands, genuine or otherwise. Now the question is, why is the government not tackling these issues with due promptness but allowing those to continue at the expense of strained city life?     

It is also not for the first time that the city's traffic movement came under attack from no end of aggrieved parties including students to press home their so-called demands. The most prolonged and strident among those were the ones staged by students. In the face of the eruption of such street disturbances, the law-enforcers were often seen to have been playing the role of an onlooker and if any action was taken at all against those student agitators running riot around the city streets, they would be treated with kid gloves. The reasons are not far to seek. But that has definitely sent a wrong message to those students and now it seems they are out of control. The interim government should give up its wishy-washy approach towards handling such senseless acts of infringement. For, one can hardly blame these immature students for their uncontrolled behaviour outside the boundaries of their educational institutions for the simple reason that they were not stopped from doing so in the past few months.

One might recall at this point that the government bowed to their demand for cancelling HSC examinations of the remaining papers, conceding the privilege of auto-pass. The government took such a decision despite criticisms and warnings from experts. Even HSC students who took part in the exams held before the uprising opposed the provision of auto-pass considering its possible long-term negative impact on their future education career. Now, the consequence of the government's capitulation in the face of the students' unjust demand is for all to see. So, it is time the government changed its present stance of wait and see in the face of unruly behaviour on the streets by students or any other quarter. The response has to be prompt and appropriate.