Fighting JNU elections through perky posters

NEW DELHI: Just like debating and discussion, huge hand-drawn posters plastered in hostels and canteens have become a part and parcel of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union elections.
These important vehicles for disseminating campaign messages can be as long as 10 feet, stretching all the way from the roof to the floor. With the November 8 poll date drawing near, student groups are busy measuring the poster space allocated to them and holding poster workshops.
"Posters are ideal for putting across a point.And as most of them have the names of the candidates on them, they facilitate easy recall," a student said.
In fact, students said the tradition of making posters is as old as the practice of holding student union elections.
There is fixed space for displaying posters — walls of the 13 hostels, the school and library canteens and the K C market, election committee chairperson Sowesh Pattanaik said.
The posters are starkly different from the glamourous and expensive posters of candidates that are plastered all over the city during Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) elections.
In JNU, the posters are portray the campaign issues. Take for instance, the Leftist combine of the Students Federation of India and All India Students'' Federation (SFI-AISF), which is raising issues like saffronisation of education, the highhanded attitude of the United States and the impending attack on Iraq. The group has already prepared a poster highlighting the Godhra incident.
"In-campus employment" for students coming from deprived backgrounds may become an important issue in this election. The theme of the Right-wing Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad''s (ABVP) posters will be terrorism, employment and the alleged inability of the ruling group to fulfil the mandate.
The extreme Left-wing All India Students Association (AISA) plans to highlight the Gujarat genocide, the controversy over the X plan proposal and employment for students in its posters.
Not surprisingly, the artistic students are busy dabbling in colour and putting down ideas on paper. "We hold night-long poster workshops, where everybody is encouraged to give ideas and draw," SFI member Albeena Shakil said.
While the elections end, the memories of some posters lingers on. "There was a poster which showed BJP leaders Murli Manohar Joshi and Advani putting students in a machine that produced party cadre at the other end. It was striking and conveyed the message," said another supporter.
However, oldtimers feel that symbolism is fading out of posters. "Nowadays, student groups confine themselves to depicting the obvious or writing names of candidates," Tanvir Akhtar, JNUSU president in 1991 from the National Students Union of India (NSUI) said.
When he was campaigning, the Babri mosque was demolished in Ayodhya. And there is one poster that has stuck to his memory - of a chopped hand dripping blood, accompanied with a slogan that said violence would destroy everything.