I fear for India and its future.

These days I carry a lot of guilt. The reason is that I go to work everyday find that there are no classes, I sit around doing some other work that is there to be done in the department and I come back home. The rate at which things are going, the time when I will forget teaching is not too far away. I carry guilt because of the salary I take. What I get as salary is comparable to what some people get in the corporate sphere. The difference is in the amount of work that we put in. While I put in none, the people who earn the equivalent of what I earn have their noses rubbed into the ground with work. Every week numbers are crunched and performance evaluated for them. For us in the university system, there is no such thing. We are the freest people in the true sense of the term. We get our salary on time and we have no accountability. We don't have to teach, we don't even have to turn up for work everyday (some of us do that once in a week if we have a bit of conscience left and some turn up once in a month or so), we don't have to answer anyone for anything and yet at the end of the month we get our salaries. No wonder then most of us have other things to do by the side. Some of us own marriage halls, farms, hotels and restaurants and other kind of businesses. When we don't have anything like this then we turn revolutionaries, ready to bite the hand that feeds us.

And we are good at forming Joint Action Committees with students and non-teaching staff. In a truly revolutionary way we march hand in glove with our comrades from the student community and the non-teaching staff community and ensure that there is no work for anyone to do. The joint action committees are the bane of the university system. When students are drawn into the politics of teachers and vice-versa, where is the sanctity of the student-teacher relationship? By walking together shoulder to shoulder we have destroyed the possibility of ever setting an example to students. Do not get me wrong here. There is nothing wrong with being friendly with students and being supportive when they need you in matters of academics. What I am against is using the students to settle scores with fellow faculty members or using their revolutionary potential for the satisfaction of one's own greedy needs. In matters of learning and education a teacher and student should be together, but not for things that I have specified above. These days the transactions between students and teachers are about things which are anything but academic.

Universities were supposed to be free spaces, where people could do free thinking without the fear of anything and without any limitations being imposed upon them. Today they are free spaces where anyone can do anything except that which they are supposed to do. Unaccountability is the word to describe what happens and I am ashamed to say that this is reaching criminal proportions. Consider the fact that we are paid by the tax payers money and you will see why I have used the term criminal. Expenditures on universities is in thousands of crores and if they are nowhere near what is expected of them and in many instances are against what is expected of them, then is it not criminal?

Many of the teachers in my own university are aware of this. But since most of them want to be another power centre they do not wish to change anything. But they are also very clever people. Many of them have ensured that their off spring do not study the subjects that they teach and also have sent them to still functional universities and colleges in other parts of the country so that they their children can study peacefully and uninterruptedly while they the teachers with their assured salaries and unaccountability wreak havoc on the university, education system and politics of the state. The other day I was chatting with some colleagues about appointment of Vice-Chancellors. I said that the appointments were too political and that people from within the university should not become Vice-Chancellor of that university since it is difficult to function. Someone said that nobody would allow a person from outside of the university to be appointed as Vice-Chancellor and even if such a person is appointed he would not be allowed to function. I was aghast. Have we reached the level where we dictate things such as the appointment of VCs? I was told that there is nothing wrong with this thinking since we are living in a democratic system. I then suggested that we should simply have nominations for Vice-Chancellorships and have a VC elected by the teachers, other staff and students of the university. They thought I was trivialising a serious issue. But I am sure you now know why I fear for India and its future.

P.S. My usual disclaimer. Not proof read and hence mistakes of grammar and spelling will abound. Please read around them. Thank you.

What is the future for India with the education system completely collapsed?

I have to say that these days I am worried. Going to the campus and not having much to do is not only demoralizing but also very bad on my conscience. Everyday I ask myself, what is it for that I am being paid? Today as university teachers we draw salaries that are somewhat comparable to the ones drawn in the corporate world. I know the amount of pressure that the corporate world puts its people through on a person whose pay is comparable to mine. Here we seem to not accountable to anyone. I have been saying that most of the teachers in the university system and definitely in my university have no business being there. I find it difficult to digest the fact that they form Joint Action Committees with students and together they subvert and sabotage the system.

I cannot simply understand the logic of joint action committees. I can only say that they are a part of the pragmatic politics that are the norm of the day. Everyone is willing to form a joint action committee with anyone else if they can meet the goals that they want. Ethics and social responsibility are words that are totally alien to most people. It is as if the dictum of ends justify means is somehow self justifying. And this in the land of Gandhi who said that there was no way in which ends and means could be separated. A legitimate end is one that follows only morally sustainable means. With joint action committees involving the teachers and the students already the moral basis is dissolved, since morally and ethically students and teachers can come together on one platform only for issues that further education and learning. I know of so many instances teachers who have incited students against others have faced the wrath of the same set of students. Yet no one seems to be willing to learn lessons and so the tradition continues aided and abetted by the pragmatism of the politics of today.

It is sad to see that universities, especially mine seemed to have forgotten that they have been set up to impart education and knowledge. A university is only as good as its staff and students. In our case it is obvious that both teachers and staff are unwilling to treat education even as an incidental thing in the satisfaction of their self interests. To say that in all this education is a casualty is understating of an understatement. Teachers see the income they get in the form of salaries as a karmic due and therefore do not feel the necessity to work in order to justify them. They therefore move on to other things such as real estate, restaurants, farms, retail stores to supplement their income. And since these demand their presence on a regular basis they are to found here rather than in universities. With full salary fully assured and with no accountability of any variety they are happy to turn revolutionaries fighting for fissiparous causes.

P.S: I had written this post a while ago and as I was writing my internet connection was lost. I forgot about and only remembered it now. As it is with all self aggrandizing people I did not have the heart to just delete this post. So here it is, out of sync with the other posts. But bear with me please.

Politics of pragmatism and the death of integrity

I must say that looking at the last few days, politics have now reached a stage where they have become repulsive. In the land of Gandhi, where fasting was linked with Satyagraha which in itself was the anger that came out of moral integrity for the upholding of truth, today fasting is linked to farce. Last year Mr. K. Chandrashekar Rao of the TRS went on a fast. He is apparently diabetic, hypertensive apart from some more chronic ailments. Yet the man was able to 'fast'for 12 days or more. Chandrababu Naidu 'fasted'for a week a few days ago. Mr. Jagan Mohan Reddy, son of former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, Dr. Rajashekar Reddy 'fasted'along with one lakh people. Now the Congress Party legislators from Telangana are 'fasting' for a cause. The cause is the Telangana separation. In the Osmania University, at the drop of a hat, students go on an indefinite 'fast'. Somehow I cannot understand why there is a shortage of onions and vegetables with so many people fasting all the time. The situation should have been that of a glut in the vegetable markets.

I could understand the various fasts taken up by members of opposition parties. What beats me and boggles my completely is the protest fasts undertaken by the members of the ruling Congress Party. This must be the height of democracy, where the ruling party is protesting against itself. Or is this the height of irony, or idiocy or the complete lack of integrity? As the 31st of December, 2010 draws ever closer and the Sri Krishna Committee report on the verge of being presented political parties are waiting in the wings to see which way the wind blows and to fly in that direction. So all parties other than the TRS have two factions. Telangana men and Andhra men. If the verdict seems like a separate Telangana then the K. Keshav Rao faction in the Congress Party and the Nagam Janardana Reddy group in the the Telugu Desam Party will swing into action for it while, Lagadapati Rajgopal from the Congress and Yerran Naidu from the Telugu Desam party will fight it. The situation will get reversed if the committee is for the maintenance of a United Andhra Pradesh.

Meanwhile students are still bearing the brunt of all this. For some days now there has been a problem with students of MBA and MCA standing divided over the question of writing exams. On the campus of the Osmania University there have been two groups one for writing exams and the other for boycotting them and these have indulged in a shouting match. Finally, the politicians who matter decided to end this kiddish wrangling and brought in a mature decision. They threatened students and colleges with dire consequences if exams were conducted. So finally the issue has been put to rest. In this near chaotic situation everybody and anybody can call for a bandh and cripple the system. On the Osmania University campus groups of students of up to ten go around shouting slogans and getting the classes suspended.

What ails the State of Andhra Pradesh and the country is this politics of pragmatism. No body stands for anything. No ideology, no morality and no integrity. All that people want is power, so that they can make truck loads of money. With politics becoming a bottomless pit, I wonder what is in store for the people of this state and country?

P.S. Not proof read and hence mistakes of grammar and spelling may be excused.

Thoughts on what will be.

The Sri Krishna Committee is going to submit its report at anytime now. The thing is that I have started writing this blog because of the events surrounding the separate Telangana agitation. People think that the Committee's report will now decide the issue this way or that. Before I write further, I will make it my position on the issue clear. I have said then and I am saying now that I do not stand for the division of the State of Andhra Pradesh. I have commented at length as to why I feel this way. I am from Telangana and this region is very, very dear to me. But I do not think that the kind of politics that are prevalent now will result in the realization of the aspirations of common people of Telangana. It is very clear that the issue has taken on many other dimensions and most of those are those which do not portend to the well being of either the people of this region or of India. India stands to lose with the kind of politics that this articulation of the problem will unleash on the people.

I believe I am objective and therefore let me make another thing very clear. Have the people of Telangana lost something because of being dominated by the Andhra region's people. YES. Is the solution proposed to it the answer. NO. This is a complex question that brooks no easy answers. Knee jerk reactions and jingoism will not get anyone anywhere. In fact, the mess now is the result of such practices in the past. Let me draw an analogy here. If somebody is being sucked down by quicksand the instinctive thing to do would be to thrash around. But that hastens the process of being sucked in and drowned. This situation too is similar. This is the time to sit with a level head and deliberate on the way forward. True liberal democracy is premised in the notion of deliberation and overcoming of obstacles by the use of the faculties of reason and logic. Today in all the shouting that is going on from both sides of the line dividing the people any voice of rationality and logicality is lost. Sanity is lost in the noise of posturing emanating from both sides. The whole thing is now rooted in collective egos of both the sides. Even a small step back is being considered as a defeat and therefore the issue is stalemated. A third person arbitrating in a fight between two will only be able to encourage the two sides to take another look at their positions. But the resolution will only be possible only when the two locked in the dispute want to find it. I have no hope of anything like that happening here. Even if the position is that the State of Andhra Pradesh will remain as it is (a position that is on the face of it consistent with what I want) the people of both regions have already lost a lot and none of that will be retrieved in the future. It will only accelerate the process of deteriorating relations between the two peoples who stand divided. The only solution to this is therefore opening a dialogue between the two sides. Deliberation and acceptance of wrong positions and wrong doing will only be the way forward. Any other way is a way downward and therefore not desirable.

In all this my sympathies with the students of Telangana. I do not think that the students of Andhra has lost as much as those here and therefore I am not extending my sympathies there. People have died here for the cause, lost academic opportunities and opportunities in life and all this in my opinion for nothing. They to me symbolise the character of Boxer the horse in the novel Animal Farm by George Orwell. Needless to say everyone knows who the pigs are. To sum up my feelings for the students I quote two different sets of lyrics written by Roger Waters, my favourite poet and musician. The first set of lines are from "Us and Them" a song from the Dark Side of the Moon.

Forward he cried from the rear, and the front ranks died.

The Generals sat, while the lines on the map moved from side to side (Roger Waters)

The other lyric is a bit longer but equally important

You know that I care what happens to you,

And I know that you care for me too,

So I don't feel alone, on the way to the stone,

Now that I've found somewhere safe to bury my bone,

Any fool knows a dog needs a home, a shelter from pigs on the wing. (Roger Waters)

This lyric is from "Animals" almost a continuation of the Animal Farm by Orwell. I live in hope, otherwise why live at all? I hope that all of us do what is appropriate for us to do. Deliberate and not fall prey to pigs on the wing.

P.S. Not proof read. Mistakes may be excused.

Whither Values?

Robert Browning the poet had an axe to grind. He was extremely unhappy with William Wordsworth. His grievance was the Wordsworth who once stood by the French Revolution had gone back and become a part of the establishment. I too have an axe to grind, but for reasons that are the exact obverse of Robert Browning's. I see that teachers (read University Lecturers and Professors) who have become a part of the establishment firmly have turned revolutionaries. I have no problem with revolutions when they are required. But when revolutions are sought to be created for the furtherance of very personally derived agendas then I have a problem. Let me get to the point without too much ado. I went to my University as I would every day. I found that there was a "Chalo Warangal" programme of the TRS party for the Telangana Garjana which was being organized there. There were more vehicles at the university than there were students. I now conflate this with what I read in the Hindu newspaper of today. It quotes students who on the condition of anonymity complained that they were not willing to boycott end semester examinations and that they wanted their academic schedule to go ahead. They wanted to put politics and agitations on hand and academics on the other, with the former not interfering with the latter. They believed that they needed to get on with the studies, finish them and look for employment. They also said that mainly Ph.D scholars who had nothing to lose since they do not have a semester bound programme were trying to disrupt the academic schedule. I have no reasons to doubt them. In fact in the past I have been told that they were encouraged by some teachers also to boycott exams and continue with the agitation rather than with studies. That brings me to the point of revolutions and revolutionaries.

Herbert Marcuse while examining the causes for the Marxist revolutions not happening, claimed that only students and the lumpen proletariat had a revolutionary potential since they had nothing to lose. The lumpen proletariat bit maybe right but not the students bit. He should have said University Teachers had the potential to be revolutionaries. Having been assured of salaries, pension and a total lack of accountability to anyone or anything, university teachers are the true revolutionaries. They can go and look beyond where any student dares to go. Today's Hindu while talking about the discussions in the Andhra Pradesh State Legislature on the subject of the new bill for the appointment of Vice-Chancellors (which empowers the Governor of the State and the University Grants Commission of India in the appointment process) quotes Chukka Ramaiah (a renowned educationist, apparently for overseeing the coaching of generations of students for the IIT-JEE exam) claims that the appointment of Vice-Chancellors of Universities in the Andhra Pradesh should be the sole prerogative of the State Government since a democratically elected government was accountable to people so would a Vice-Chancellor appointed by the government!!!! I still cannot believe he said that. The Universities in the State of Andhra Pradesh without exception have gone to seed, because of Vice-Chancellors who have been political appointees. Governments have fallen but never have Vice-Chancellors faced the wrath of the people. In fact, a few names of Vice-Chancellors who have curried favour with all political parties and different governments come to mind, but I shall refrain from actually naming them here. Mudslinging is not the purpose of why I write. But the Vice-Chancellors of the above mentioned category have sometimes had tenures of a decade or two (no exaggeration here) when the humble politicians who have appointed them fell out of power in a period of five years.

What stumps me totally is that even a few private college managements who are sympathetic to the Telangana agitation have closed colleges and postponed exams scheduled for today. Strikingly the students wanted to get on with it since some of them are from out of Hyderabad and had reserved tickets to leave on a particular day but the postponement now affects their travel plans. Fortunately the teachers or the management have no such problems. I think it is time that scholars of Marxism and revolutions re-examined the traditional ideas and come back with new theories. In the meanwhile I am impressed with this whole thing of taking salary from the government only to fight it. I think the Idea mobile ads can use this and say "What an idea Sirji".

P.S: Not proof read. Apologies for the many errors of spelling and grammar that you will find.

Compounded confusions and confounded realities

I have delayed this post because I had some trepidations of how reactions would be to something that involves questions about caste and that too about the scheduled castes. I wish I was not so political about my life but it seems that I am. As a preface to what I have to say I will quote Steven Spielberg. This is not a verbatim quote but more a paraphrased recollection of what he once very famously said. After the success of "Saving Private Ryan" (a movie that has moved me to streaming tears every time I have seen it) Spielberg was asked about his motivation behind the making of such a film. To that he said that he wanted the present generation of people to remember that their present is secure because it is built on the sacrifices of this generation's forefathers and especially during the two World Wars. A very profound thing to say and this is true even in the Indian context since the Independence of this country has been a result of a selfless sacrifice of an entire generation (maybe many) of Indian people. But today we seem to have no sense of proportion of the nature and magnitude of sacrifice made by our preceding generations and that is why we shamelessly quarrel over territory and other identities.

Let me get to the point that I am trying to make. I am bemused by the senseless and thoughtless actions of my brothers in this part of the world. The issue of Telangana has now been vitiated by considerations of caste more than anything else. I have posted about that in the past. The talk of "dorala Telangana" (Telangana of the feudal landlords) versus "prajala Telangana" (Telangana of the people) has been on for sometime now. The naivette (or is that maliciousness) of leaders seems to have no end. I have asked before and I have asked again as to how an agitation for a separate Telangana can be seen as a freedom movement and how you can treat people of your country and region as enemies. Are there no people belonging to the scheduled castes and tribes and other backward classes in Andhra and Rayalseema? Why should not people fight casteism instead of asking for a separate region and then try to neuter the power of the upper castes? I still have no answer to this question. Equally important is the fact that there are contradictory tendencies in the articulation of region and caste questions. The brother belonging to the Madiga caste want a division of the State of Andhra Pradesh and in the list of Scheduled castes. My Mala brethren do not wish to have the latter division but are game for the former kind of division. It is not as if there are no intellectuals in these groupings. They have a rich tradition of them. I am utterly confused by the intellectuals also towing the line of the political opportunists. Where is the question of building a society based in equality and a nation based in integrity in the discourse of a separate Telangana and a social justice Telangana? Is there no deliverance from social evils and only the furtherance of particular political gains? Have we become incapable of seeing ourselves as Indians rationally and are we just caught up in the jingoism of a politics based in the pursuit of meaningless identities?

When India became independent, the British said that the nation wouldn't last for more than five years. We have lasted sixty three years. Good so far. But the pursuit of fissiparous tendencies and vision less politics could mean that the British prediction may come true even though it will not be true in the timelines proposed. Are we going to throw away the freedom given to us by the sacrifice of our preceding generations? Are we going to divide ourselves so that someone else can yet again come and rule us? I don't feel too confident about the future. Do we do something about this or do we say que sera sera?

P.S. Not proof read. Mistakes may please be excused.

Whither Social Sciences? Part Trois

For a change I am not taking too much of a break between my posts. What has prompted me to do this is a few conversations that I have been having with a few of my colleagues, "academicians" if you like. I know that the tone of my posts has changed considerably. I can see my early posts were more in the nature of academic presentations which were neutral to emotions. Now they have turned polemical and I think what has happened is justified because the change in the tone has happened involuntarily and probably because I feel indignant about what has been happening ever since the separate Telangana agitation has happened. I don't really want to temper my feeling of indignation since it seems to me that it is not misplaced at all. The question then what has this go to do with the whithering of social sciences? My indignation is not because of the posturing of politicians or because of the antics of goons or because of the inability of students to weed out the chaff from the grain. It is because of the attitude of teachers. I somehow think that the term cannot be applied to these individuals who are no better than petty politicians trying pass of intellectuals. Most of them cannot talk about any aspect of social sciences for more than thirty or forty seconds meaningfully.

The "intellectuals" of the universities in the Telangana region can make uneducated politicians seem like towering visionaries. For those of you who read my earlier posts what I am saying now will be familiar. I have claimed in the past the most of the teaching faculty have come into the profession have done so because they have been brought in by someone who was distributing favours. Most of these people are petty in their thinking and have as much intelligence as sheep and are quite happy to follow the leader. Since they have aspirations of becoming something that they are incapable of and since they want to be facilitators between politicians and those who need the politicians, they are quite happy to tow the line of the politicians. They in fact, brazenly try to ingratiate themselves to the politicians by providing them platforms to speak in academic institutions such as the universities and colleges and shout slogans along with the followers of the politicians. They have no understanding of any issues of any kind and that is the case with Telangana too.

The world today emphasizes the necessity for a vibrant social science community that has the wherewithal to understand complex social issues and present them in a cogent manner to the students and society in general. This is mostly the case if developed countries such as the USA, UK and other European countries. The social scientists there are conscientious and work with the idea to understand their society and politics better. Even those who have agitated against the State have done so after they have understood the functioning of the State. In my university and other universities in the state, this is a bit too much to expect. Social scientists have not studied even the social science texts of the 5th grade in school properly. Some of them have written text books themselves and these are works of pure fiction. In their ignorance therefore it is easy to overlook questions pertaining to nativity. The Telangana agitation is based in the issue of "sons of the soil" (I use this expression wisely, since daughters have no part in anything). Academicians are competing with each other to show that they are sons of the soil and anybody else is a "settler". The coining of this term astounds me in this context. Nowhere in the world do people call their own countrymen settlers if they move from one region to the other in the same country. But here in Telangana it is done. People from any other part of the world are welcome but not if they are from the Coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh or the Rayalseema region. Some one who lives a few kilometres away from the Telangana region moves about 2o or 30 kms and is immediately a settler. Anywhere else in the world, this would be a matter of shame but not here. Neighbours shame but owners pride. With social science in this wonderful condition and with legions of uneducated students pouring out into the world, I wonder what the future is.

P.S. Many of the "sons of the soil" have members of their family who have moved on to the USA, but don't see themselves as "settlers". In fact, one of them even told me that there they feel like they own the piece of land on which they are. How is that for hypocrisy?

Post not proof read. Bear with me, as usual.

Whither Social Sciences? Part deux

I suppose there is no point in apologising for the long delays and gaps between posts but then I honestly tell you that I have been busy, perhaps for the first time in the twenty years of my working life. I would like to share with you stories of what happened and what kept me so busy but then that would be akin to giving away the official secrets of my employer. However, I cannot stop myself from saying that when we were speaking to a team from the UGC some of my colleagues from the sciences spectacularly made fools of themselves. That brings me back to the point that I have been making for a long time now, inbreeding weakens the gene. By cleverly coining the Osmania for Osmanians slogan and sticking to it steadfastly for a few decades, we have managed to successfully convert ourselves into very small frogs in very, very small wells. Ironically however, we have also built up massive egos thinking that our hole is the world. Today we are paying for that. Even though I am repeating myself, this is the reason why there is a separate Telangana agitation and that too in the university alone. We all have seen our highly qualified students making themselves completely ineligible for any kind of employment. It sickens me to see that there are Ph.D holders who do not even know what is there in their theses. These theses are products of the ever growing "service industry" and the concept of "outsourcing". The wonderful liaisons between serving academicians means that theses are passed without anybody actually reading them. On the lines of various mafias, we also have an academic mafia that will survive only when the system is subverted successfully and hence these mafiosi are always on the look out for opportunities of subversion. The unholy link with the political parties and joint action committees with students are all products of this great enterprise of the academic mafia. While qualified people are rotting somewhere or have left the shores of the country, the mafia controls the education system. Amen to that.

But that is only a part of what I want to say in this post. The take over of the system by the mafia has meant that the ranks of teachers have swelled with people pursuing their own agendas. Now that caste has become a political variable what better than to use it to leverage things for personal benefit? Most social scientists (if you can call them that) in the southern part of the country have turned out to be casteists. All their "work" is centred around their own caste. The special thing about this is the fact that everybody is now in the race to prove how their caste is the most backward. In this process a new and sharp schism is beginning to take root between the Scheduled Castes and the Other Backward Classes. It is pertinent to note here that OBC stands for Other Backward Classes but for all practical purposes people have converted the expansion of the the abbreviation to Other Backward Castes. We all know that the implication of class is completely different from that of caste. So here is a case of misappropriation of terminology which has deep social implications. The contradictions between the SC and the OBC are sharpening because of the perception among the SCs that there are many OBCs who are traditionally rich and powerful and that more are emerging as powerful because of the patronage that they enjoy from upper caste political parties and the political system itself. The OBCs have been quietly retaliating by saying that the general stock of many Scheduled Castes is better than that of many Other Backward Castes (in fact, they have dropped the O and now are just Backward Castes or BCs). There is now an attempt to build the case of MBCs or Most Backward Castes who are worse off than the Scheduled Castes. They also claim that Scheduled Castes are smaller in number and have enjoyed reservations constitutionally for a much longer period. Needless to say the Scheduled Castes do not agree with this version. In all this social science "research" is non existent but is made to look as if it is active by simply quoting ones own caste history (mostly unwritten) or by talking to members of the caste. Since it is politically wrong and physically unsafe to contradict any of this, upper caste social scientists have migrated to working on stuff that is pertinent to them. Since Phule and Ambedkar are now the exclusive preserve of the BCs and SCs respectively, Gandhi is being rediscovered along with Nehru, Rajagopalachari etc. The upper caste social scientists too are a divided lot with those having right wing affinities having usurped the right to speak about Vallabhai Patel and Bhagat Singh and the Bengali intellectuals comfortably nestled in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya's and Aurobindo and Subhash Chandra Bose. This to me is an indication that there is no focussed research on anything contemporary in society and that social scientists are clinging to straws from the past which will neither add to or subtract from what is happening in contemporary society.

P.S: The Social Scientists of my University and State ensure that their progeny rarely study social sciences and certainly not in our university. Most of them send their sons and daughters to other states to pursue more "meaningful" education with greater possibilities of employment. Meanwhile here they are contented to form Joint Action Committees with students and playing with their futures and ultimately destroying their lives.

As usual I have not proof read this. Mistakes may therefore by excused.