 Salams, this is People's Dispatch and you're watching Dispatches from India where we talk about some of the most important political, economic and social stories from the country. First up, the news this week. We begin with news from the state of Punjab, a state that goes into elections later this month. The state was constantly in the news as a large number of farmers who participated in the recently concluded 15 month long farmers agitation came from the state. As the state goes into elections, several issues have come to light relating to development, employment and education. One major issue is low funds to the state from the central government, which they allege is a major reason for the lack of development in the state, especially in the educational sector. Our reporters visited Punjabi University in the city of Patiala to understand this and other concerns that students have. What is the impact of this crisis? The free hikes or the additional charges are being imposed and due to this, many students are excluded from their education. When a university or an institution does not get financial support, then the education sector starts seeing very bad results. If you come to Punjabi University, since the financial crisis, then the research, teaching and administrative crisis we have seen. The problem is that the nature of the debt has to be paid to the state. But the question is whether the state or the people have said that they should keep our property low and take the debt. People are not saying anything about this. The government itself is going to privatise and privatise the things under the control of the liberalisation policies. The first mistake is that the political parties, the ministers, how expensive are your bungalows? How expensive are your cars? If we talk about our culture, then how much is the debt? The debt has to be paid to those who are trying to privatise the government. Public education is not on their agenda. Public health and employment is not on their agenda. Because they are not representative of our class. They are not representative of the people. Continuing with election updates and staying on the issue of education, we bring you news from the state of Uttarakhand, where polling is scheduled for Feb 14th. Being a mountainous region, issues here are slightly more complex than other parts of the country. Locals allege that though the state grapples with problems of infrastructure, connectivity and employment, election time has become all about attempts to gather votes on the issues of religion or caste. Our reporters travelled to one of the biggest central universities in the state to talk with students on what they believe should be on the agenda for political parties. The issues of youth are now completely gone. Let me see the issues of elections today. They are stuck in Hindu-Muslims. If I talk about the youth, there are still a lot of unemployed people in Uttarakhand. But as soon as elections come, the issues of unemployment, whether it is the issue of money or all other issues disappear. We can see that in the last COVID pandemic era, the campus was closed for almost two years. If the campus is closed for two years, the education will go online. But we can only go to the students who had a bad experience. The professors here think that after studying online, we are giving students a lot of money. But they have no idea that for online education, we need a basic infrastructure, we need devices, we need good network access. Especially in the Uttarakhand area, we can't say that online education can run successfully here. In our village, when I was not born, I was told that there will be a road. I have been living in our village for so many years. We are not trying to go to the road in our village. Last year, there was a flood in every house. In our village, nothing happened. We still have to go far to get water. We have to go at least 1-2 km to get water. There is no water supply. In the village, there is a hospital, a gas station, and at least 30 km ahead of the gas station, there is a hospital. We have to go there. There is only a name hospital, but there are doctors there. They are not able to do anything. Many of our women die there. They tell us to wait for a while, and when it's too late, they tell us to go out. We go out, Srinagar comes, they die. We have seen many cases like this. We move on now to our in-focus section for the week. Our next ground report is from the state of Tamil Nadu and its capital Chennai, where urban housing continues to be a major crisis. Tens of thousands of residents of Bethel Nagar were promised documents for houses during last year's state elections. However, now the government claims that due to a court order, they must be evicted. The residents are understandably disappointed and feel abandoned in what is a personal crisis. Here's what they had to say. We have to work hard to earn money. We are not rich. If we are forced to go out, we have to go somewhere. We are not allowed to go out. But we have to find a place to stay. We won't go out. We have to go out. We are not allowed to go out because of the corona. We have to stay for a day or three. If we leave our homes, we have to live our lives. We don't know what we are going to do. We are working hard to earn money. We are working as a landlord. We have to get a place to buy the house. We have three family members. The three brothers and sisters. If we are forced to go out, we are not allowed to work as a peasant. We have to go out and work as a peasant. We have to learn how to feed the animals. We have no living conditions. The mayor of Bethel Nagar In that egg market meeting, thousands of people opened it and waited for 48 hours. In the waiting room, they asked women to open it. They said that they won't buy the farm 6. They said that they need to buy the farm 6. They were very worried about the price of the farm 6. They said that they wanted to buy the farm 6. They said that they can't do anything about it. They asked them to buy the farm 6. They were very worried about the price of the farm 6. This has become a big issue among the people. In the situation where we can't live in the farm, we are going to wait for the government to be careful. You are coming in 2005. Why did you give us electricity, electricity and electricity? Where will we go if we are in this address? Where will we go if we are in this address? Where will we be if we are in this address? What is the proof for us? Where will we go if we are in this address? If we have a government, everything will be successful. So, we have to show our support to the government. If we get a new Suryan, we will get a new Suryan. If we get a new Suryan, we will not miss a single vote. My children don't have a father. I am the only one who has a family. I can't live in a house without my children. We have to live with our children. Where will we go if we are in this address? We have to give the government to support us. They will support us. We have the government for the people. We have the government to help the people. But they haven't taken any decision to support us. That is a question for everyone. For our final story, we take you to Karnataka and an issue over school uniforms that has taken a violent and ugly turn. Six female Muslim students were denied entry to their pre-university college in Udupi district as they were wearing head scarves also called hijab in December last year. The insistence of the girls on wearing hijab to class was utilized by local extremist right-wing groups to get some Hindu students to wear saffron scarves, a symbol not of the Hindu religion but the political right-wing. In Feb this year, the state government education department issued an order prescribing uniforms in all public colleges and schools. As the issue escalated into a law and order problem with spontaneous protests erupting from both sides across the nation, the Karnataka government ordered closure of high schools and colleges in the state earlier this week for a few days. Five Muslim students approached the Karnataka High Court which ordered that no student should display religious identity through uniforms till its final order is received. The court is set to hear the matter again on Monday. We spoke earlier to Subhash Niali, Politburo member of the Communist Party of India Marxist to discuss the real agenda behind this sudden ban on hijab in schools. Here's what she had to say. Today is a sad and shocking day for us when state governments, administration and the courts all refuse to come to the rescue of Muslim girls, young Muslim women who want to pursue and access their right to education. And in fact, not only stand as bystanders, the police were standing there when that girl was being heckled by that rowdy crowd. So not only do they stand as a kind of neutral observers when a very dangerous situation which could escalate into violence occurs in front of their eyes, but in fact they encourage this kind of polarization and this kind of behavior in a situation where anyway, Muslim students are much, much less than those belonging to the majority community and of them 49% are women. That means a little less than half. In such a situation to come out with these sort of statements and these kind of orders and these kind of judgment means that the door to education is being slammed in the face of young Muslim women. This issue of the hijab controversy of Karnataka has very, very wide ramifications. It has very serious repercussions it can have, not only as far as the future of Muslim women's education is concerned, but on the future of India as a secular state on what is going to happen in the fight very, very important elections to assemblies that are taking place at this time. And I would like to say here that some people, BJP supporters and maybe some people who are well-meaning secularists, they are also trying to pose the question that this wearing of hijab goes against secular principles. Now I would like to remind everyone who's watching this show are listening that what are the credentials of the BJP and its governments as far as the protection of secularism is concerned. The new education policy of the BJP government wants to destroy secular education. It wants to replace it with very, very regressive ideas. It wants to replace history with myths. It wants to glorify what the BJP thinks is a glorious Hindu past of its own making and its own manufacturing. Everything it is doing in the field of education is destructive of secular thought, scientific thinking, and even historical truth. So for such a government or supporters of such a government or even well-meaning secularists to claim that what is happening in Karnataka is a defence by the BJP government of secular values in educational institutions is just the worst kind of propaganda that could be indulged in and we have to recognise it as that. This government is helping on destroying everything of a secular nature in our educational process and in our educational institutions. They are not only closing the doors of education in the face of desperate young Muslim women but they are actually destroying secular education at the same time. So to even think that this controversy in Karnataka has anything to do with secularism and defence of secularism is a complete fallacy and people must abandon it. That's all we have on Dispatches from India for this week. You've been watching People's Dispatch for more on all of these stories. Visit our website, People's Dispatch.org and do give us a follow on YouTube and other social media platforms. We'll be back again next week with more stories from India.