Ashoka University, Jindal University, Sonepat

Rural Sonepat had barely recovered from the recent Jat agitations when finance minister Arun Jaitley presented his second annual budget. Students at two top private universities here had enough to deal with—a restive Jat-dominated neighbourhood, Rohith Vemula’s suicide and the crackdown on ‘seditious’ JNU students.

Can the just-announced budget pour cold water over an increasingly overheated society, torn between rural and urban, middle-class and rich, ‘desh drohis’ and ‘desh bhakts’? Ashoka University’s Gautham Narayana, originally from Kasaragod, thinks not. “The BJP knows that the middle class has no alternative, so it has tackled the ‘suit-boot ki sarkar’ accusation in this budget,” says the postgrad, who works with the India Foundation. “From JNU and FTII we learned that today it is them, tom­orrow it can be us—the solution isn’t really in the budget,” he says.

But campus life is mimicking social media, where trolls rule. Scholars are, however, finding their own way. “Initially I wondered why dominant Jats want reservations. Then I realised that we live in five-star campus hostels in their area, while locals get jobs serving us—not enough good jobs are being created,” says Karthik Shankar, who came to Ashoka from Chennai as a Young India Fellow. He believes a sweeper, cleaner or construction worker’s job doesn’t match rural India’s aspirations. Everybody wants secure jobs and education—just like his.

At OP Jindal Global University fifteen minutes away, Shayni, 20, from Calcutta, and her classmates say they didn’t watch Jaitley’s budget speech. However, all of them had read Rohith Vemula’s suicide note the day—the very hour—it got out. “The budget is important, especially because the cut in allocations for public education is worrisome,” says she. However, it’s Vemula who has trickled down their consciousness.

Serupally Rajesh, 23, from Hyderabad, is outspoken on how the issue impacts students: “Everybody knows that the ABVP is strong in HCU and that Vemula’s was an ­institutional murder. We say we are one people but we’re deeply divided.” Last year, Rajesh volunteered for two government-run employment and nutrition projects. He ­discovered untouchability and caste segregation, even in public funded projects. “I ­immediately realised that tragedies are bound to happen,” he says.

Raja Raman, 26, from Bhubaneshwar beli­eves, like many fellow students, that the budget is a political exercise, but one that can obscure many other challenges before society. “Can a farmer really comprehend the budget’s provisions?” he asks. Himan­shu, a law student, agrees that the budget is incomprehensible. “We don’t want it so simple that it becomes absurd. However, it should at least be rigorously interpreted.”

The message is clear. The budget is ­important, but the suspicion is it’s more ­political gimmick than social uplift.