The anger that spilled on to the streets on Thursday night resulting in arson and rioting did not dissipate by Friday morning in Mukherjee Nagar where several Civil Services aspirants had gathered.
Allegations about police brutality, their vindictive attitude and motives flew swiftly as some students sat on a stage to explain their issues and began a hunger strike.
“I was studying at home when the police pulled me out at 2-30 a.m.,” alleged Raj, a visibly angry 26-year-old Hindi medium student from Bihar.
The students alleged that many of them were beaten up by the police without any provocation. They also alleged that the police set fire to their own Maruti Gypsy to give them a bad name.
“I saw the cops hitting people with lathis without any provocation. I was running away when I got hit on my head and several blows landed on my back as well,” said Sanjeev Kumar, a 28-year-old Philosophy student whose head was bandaged. He has already made three attempts at cracking the UPSC paper and was close to losing hope, especially if the issues were not resolved.
Several of them said they were having food at the roadside eateries near the area when the cops came and tried to pull them into vans. When they tried to resist, they were beaten up.
“ Why should we sit on the streets protesting when we could have used the time to study? However, given the circumstances even if we spend all our waking moments studying, there is nothing we can do with the discriminatory structure of the exam,” said Vishal Singh, a Hindi-medium B.A. student from Faridabad.
Protests have been going on at the site over the past one month and on Thursday afternoon, as soon as admit cards were issued, the students gathered there. .
“The UPSC issues admit cards 16 days in advance, but this time they issued it a month before the scheduled date of August 24. The UPSC did this thinking that we will automatically give up the cause to begin preparations. That is why many panicked,” said Rohit Yadav, a Hindi-medium student from U.P.
The introduction of the CSAT (Preliminary) Exam in 2011 and the changes in the main exam have been the source of acrimony for many of them. They insisted that the papers have become so technical that a Humanities student finds it next to impossible to clear the exam, and that it is now best suited for students from the Engineering and Science background. To make matters worse, the papers are set in English and translated literally using Google app, which is why they are not easily understandable.
“They want official documents in Hindi but do not want Hindi-medium students to become IAS officers. Out of the 1,122 students who cleared the exam last time, only 26 were Hindi-medium students. And 53 were from all the other Indian languages. It is not as if we cannot speak English, but we cannot speak or understand it like those who have been studying it from primary school and for this reason only we are at a disadvantage,” added Avneesh, another Hind- medium student from Bihar.
