The national press widely reported the United Nations Public Service Award for Kanyashree Prakalpa. Said to be the brainchild of chief minister Mamata Banerjee, the cash incentive in West Bengal facilitates education for girls and deters child marriage. However, what was underreported is another revolutionary policy announced by her government to improve higher education. Despite her penchant for minority appeasement and hesitation towards industrialisation, Didi must be recognised for inclusive governance.

Just before the UN award, West Bengal announced a measure that may include the long lost spirit of enquiry in higher education. The West Bengal Universities and Colleges (Administration and Regulation) Act 2017 will sever the parental influence of political parties on student unions. It will prevent stray uncles and aunties from spaces which they either had to leave or which they could never manage to enter formally.

Here are some measures designed to curb what Didi has realised is “waste of energy”: insignia affiliated to registered political parties will be prohibited on campus; the student union will be renamed student council; election to the student body will be biennial and no longer annual; only students with an attendance of 60% or more will be eligible to vote.

The operation of student wings of political parties in academic institutions is oxymoronic for two reasons. First, higher education entails a pledge to wander in search of wonders. Research and innovation flourish in an environment where the independence to doubt and seek is cherished. Like tentacles of political parties, the presence of student wings on campus is surrender of that freedom. Political parties are too close to authority and wield the power to extend favours.

That student politics is beyond such enticements is to summon the impractical. It is to suggest an impossibility that Kautilya outlined as follows: To put honey on the tongue and not taste it. For instance, SFI – university brigade of the CPM – has crusaded against the disappearance of Najeeb Ahmed from JNU in 2016. Yet it maintains silence about the equally mysterious disappearance of Manisha Mukherjee from Calcutta University in 1996. The lecturer allegedly fell off the good books of powerful CPM bosses and still remains untraced. SFI cannot act in this case. After all, the leash that powers the bark cannot be stretched much and the hand that feeds can certainly not be bitten.

Second, political groups are now based on myriad interests such as race, caste, art, health, migration and environment. The sheer diversity has made politics a cultural affair subject to constant revision. Entry and exit from political groups change with personal experience and social location. It has ushered what Alberto Melucci has described as nomadic politics.

Political parties – Left or Right – have strict ideologies with their own scriptures and missionaries. Thus, their nurslings on campus are denied the versatility to celebrate difference. It gives rise to a tyrant army because, as Thomas Aquinas put it, ‘the dangerous human is not one who is unread but one who has read a single book’ or who subscribes to a single perspective.

A recent example of independent and nomadic activism was that of a group of students who got together at the Delhi School of Economics. They helped mobilise support, importantly legal, against international publishers who had sued the campus photocopier for copyright violation.

Now the moot question. Can Union human resource development minister Prakash Javadekar take the cue from West Bengal and make way for independent student action? Unlikely, because it will go against the ‘catch them young’ strategy. But Mamata has just shown that leaders can tower above the compulsion of numerical politics which is the much overlooked ‘elephant in the room’ of democracy. Didi is the matriarch of West Bengal. BJP is keen to form every government in India and also has the dangerous chance to do so. Nonetheless, such security allows political parties to discipline populist hara-kiris that paralyse democracy. Incidentally, the West Bengal BJP unit has not hit the streets against her decision.

The 2017 Act is likely to end professional politics on campus and create opportunities for spontaneous collectives. It complements recent decisions that Mamata has taken to improve higher education. Her government has regulated the number of seats across state universities. It has reduced quantity to ensure quality. Her government has also prohibited protests in the higher education hub of Kolkata – College Square – where vocal chords wrestle with remarkable regularity.

The minister in charge of higher education at the Centre, Javadekar, has initiated unpopular but positive measures too. These include fixation of research seats in universities, launch of university rankings, performance-oriented autonomy and strong signals to marks inflation regimes. The message is clear – students must be achievers and not be mollycoddled for votes.

It is obvious that Javadekar must not follow Mamata. In fact, it is expected that the Union minister will mull improved measures. For instance, the appointment of professors as presidents and vice-presidents of student councils is inexplicable in the 2017 Act of West Bengal. It will institute a compliant monitor at the head of a body which must be free to defy and experiment with subversions. Also, departments that have fallen into neglect must be refurbished because they are safe houses for professional politicians on campus.

Such competitive spirit among stateswomen and statesmen to outperform one another could be a great moral engine for the national polity.