Where was the district administration?

THE SHOCKING murder of a professor by students in Ujjain has rightly been condemned by all right thinking people. In the columns of HT four articles have appeared on the subject. All commentators have bemoaned the decline of values among youth and the entry of lumpen elements on campuses across the country.

THE SHOCKING murder of a professor by students in Ujjain has rightly been condemned by all right thinking people. In the columns of HT four articles have appeared on the subject. All commentators have bemoaned the decline of values among youth and the entry of lumpen elements on campuses across the country.

The death of professor at the hands of his own students has taken student politics to a new level of violence, which is not a happy augury for the shape of things to come. I share the widespread sense of shock and anguish which this incident has created. 

I also salute the media for having played a constructive role in this matter. Had it not been for the media pressure, I do not think the Government would have taken stern action or indeed any action beyond mere window dressing.

But one thing that has been almost completely ignored is the role of the administration. I have no first hand knowledge of the incident, but going by  media reports this appears to be a clear case of administrative failure.

A failure that proved to be calamitous in the end.  I am not talking about the inaction of the police, which remained a mute spectator throughout the incident, and whose inaction was witnessed by thousands on television. Under the present circumstances that is only to be expected. No, I am talking about the failure of the district administration.

I am talking about the Collector and the SP, and their complete absence from the scene. We have seen a DIG holding a press conference, we have seen an IG taking over the investigation and we have heard the DGP and the Chief Minister himself, giving their take on the incident. But all these senior officers only have a role, which is peripheral, as it were. 

Persons directly concerned are the SP and the Collector, and these worthies are conspicuous by their absence from the scene. It is perhaps another case of presence of mind—and absence of body. In administrative parlance a smart officer avoids being embroiled in incidents of this kind—he absents himself from the scene on some pretext or the other. 

The Ujjain administration ought to have known that in the present era student politics is fraught with violence. They ought to have known that it is perilous to postpone an election. If they knew all this, where were they all the while things were sliding into such a crisis that a professor had to be lynched, and if they did not know this, they are babes in the wood who have no business to be running a district. To make the matter clear let me recount an incident from my own career.The incident dates from 1985 when I was Collector of Sehore district. Vijay Shukul, was the SP.

Vijay, who is now Addl. DGP, was as politically savvy as they come—he was also a shrewd police officer with a feel for a situation. It was Vijay who persuaded me to go to the local college with him to be present during the student union elections. He had already taken care to post a strong police picket at the college.

As soon as the election process began a delegation of student leaders petitioned me to postpone the election. They gave various arguments in support of their contention but the long and short of the matter was they were apprehensive of losing the polls and wanted it postponed somehow.

I saw through this and rejected their demand. The polls were held and results declared. At the end of the day, after the dust had settled and the last hurras had been shouted, the very same student leaders congratulated me for my firmness.

I understand that the rules governing elections to students bodies have changed since then and the district administration does not have a direct role to play in conduct of elections. But since the chances of the situation going out of control were strong after the college administration decided to postpone the polls, the Ujjain administration should have been present on the spot. Why did it not do so? It owes an answer to the public at large.