The Hindu : SFI special meet in Guwahati

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jan 08, 2004

Kerala

Kerala

SFI special meet in Guwahati

KOZHIKODE JAN. 7. The Students' Federation of India (SFI) will hold its Special National Conference at Guwahati in Assam from February 7 to 10.

The conference will take a final decision on the draft of the updated programme and constitution and the policy statement on education. The 11th all-India conference of the SFI, held in Kozhikode from February 14 to 18 in 2003, had resolved to adopt the draft of the updated programme for further discussion at all levels of the organisation.

It was then announced that a special conference would be called to finalise the updated programme and the policy statement on education after the delegates had opposed them in their present version and sought amendments.

Discussions on these had already been held at the branch, local, area, district and State units of the organisation during the past one year, the SFI national president, K.K. Ragesh, told presspersons here today.

After the concluding session of the last conference, the newly-elected SFI general secretary, Kallol Roy, had said in Kozhikode that the conference had reasserted the validity of the basic ideological principles of the organisation and was updating its programme in keeping with the needs of the changes that had occurred since the adoption of the existing programme, both in education as well as in the larger socio-political context.

Mr. Ragesh said that about 5,000 amendments had been proposed from all levels of the organisation. A majority of them had been rejected. Only 207 amendments had been proposed by the Central Committee. It had also approved 11 amendments at its meeting in New Delhi last month, he added.

He said the SFI was not against privatisation of education. But it was against the commercialisation of education. The State Governments should enact a law to restrict the private institutions' commercial motives.

The draft policy statement on education had stated that private institutions generally served as sources of profit and promotion of vested interests of particular sections of society.

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