From being welcomed as harbingers of Pune’s transformation into an international education hub, foreign students flocking to the city are now increasingly being viewed as hell-raisers and law breakers. The regularity with which foreign students have been involved in incidents of violence and social disturbance, is creating major law and order problems for the city’s overstretched police force, and causing the citizenry sleepless nights. In the most recent case, on October 7 a traffic police constable was severely thrashed by four Yemeni students when he booked one of them for jumping a traffic light. Following this incident, Manoj Patil, deputy commissioner of police (traffic), has issued an order sanctioning strict action against foreign students found breaking traffic rules.
But the infractions of law by foreign students in Pune (pop. 5 million) are not confined to riding motorcycles at reckless speed, playing loud music during night hours or performing stunts on arterial roads. In October, the anti-narcotics cell of Pune Crime Branch arrested Peman Mahmood Khavanin (31), a student of Iranian origin at Pune University, for possessing 11.3 gms of cocaine valued at Rs.1.10 lakh and other narcotic substances including hashish, marijuana and opium with a street value of Rs.1.38 lakh. In yet another recent case, Chinese students Zang Gung (25) and Mao Yujun (22) were detained for abusing a woman traffic constable.
“We have been receiving about 25-30 complaints per month against foreign students residing in Pune. Most of these relate to abusive behaviour and a majority of such complaints are against Iranian, Bahraini, Yemeni and African students. In a recent crackdown we found many students staying on even after the expiry of their visas. Many of them don’t wish to return to their own countries because of wars and other disturbances. Here, in Pune, they have total freedom, especially women students who don’t have to wear burqas,” says senior police inspector R. Gaikar.
According to Dr. Vasudha Garde, director of the International Students Centre, University of Pune (estb.1948), the university hosts over 40 percent of all foreign students in India. “There are about 14,000 foreign students regis-tered for various courses offered by the university, which has 520 affiliated colleges and 300 recognised institutes spread across Pune, Ahmednagar and Nashik districts. Together, these units have an aggregate enrolment of 6.5 lakh students,” says Garde.
Liberal opinion in Pune attributes the media outrage against student misdemeanours and shenanigans to the difficulty of the city’s residents to come to terms with Pune’s rapid transformation into a metropolitan university town. “The mindset of the great majority of Pune’s citizens and media, is small town. They haven’t been able to accept its growth into India’s largest university town and educational hub. They expect international students to subscribe to small town norms. But they should learn to accept that students from countries such as Tanzania, Sudan, Namibia, Burundi, Malawi and South Africa have their own culture and norms and learn to be tolerant,” says Nikhil Khanna, owner of a popular snack café patronised by foreign students.
But such liberal voices are rare in this city where the law and order authorities are gearing to initiate strong action against ‘misbehaving’ foreign students. “We are about to launch a strict drive against students staying illegally in India. The traffic police will also be more stringent, and complaints from housing societies about rowdy behaviour will be taken more seriously and followed by prompt investigations,” warns Dr. Satyapal Singh, commissioner of Police, Pune division.
Huned Contractor (Pune)