We had news of the tragic death of Naveen Shekharappa Gyanagoudar, a 21-year-old medical student from Karnataka from shelling in Ukraine's Kharkiv. After this, the clamour to have Indian students evacuated has intensified. Since then there has been news of another Indian student who died, this time from a stroke. We see a lot of the blame game on TV news channels and on social media, much of it directed against the students themselves.
We have had statements such as these issued by union ministers – the implication being that going abroad to study is some sort of sign of failure rather than a choice based on exigencies. On social media as well, we see comments like this about students who go abroad to study. There seems to be a concerted attempt to try and blame the students for their plight, one way or another.
Right now, students are stuck in cities under attack, are waiting in inhospitable conditions at the borders of Ukraine. Some are lucky enough to be able to return home to their waiting families – of course elected representatives and government officials eager to demonstrate their contribution to the process were happy to be photographed along with them. I was relieved and delighted to see family and friends of students gathered this morning near the gate of Hindan Air Force base, where C-17 planes to land along with 800 Indians evacuated out of Ukraine. However, the situation is still grim for others still stuck there.
This narrative is being built up in the media and on social media that students ignored advisories from the embassy and chose to stay on in Ukraine in spite of being advised to leave. The truth is that as late as 15 of February 2022, the Indian embassy in Kyiv was asking Indians to “consider leaving temporarily” if their stay was not “essential”. So the advisory was in the nature of a suggestion that conveyed no urgency. If students felt that it was not “essential” to leave in the middle of the academic term, this is understandable.
In any event, students attempting to leave found that flights were fully booked and informed the embassy about this. on 16 February the Embassy informed the students that the Ministry or Aviation along with the Ministry of External Affairs was in the process of trying to expand flights between India and Ukraine.
Special flights Feb 22, 24 and 26 were announced but were sold out immediately. Students continued to tweet asking for more flights to be arranged. The flights that were available were often too expensive; a one-way ticket costing Rs. 60,000 and up. The situation escalated so quickly that the students had little time to react. By the time the students were asked to leave immediately by the embassy, travel within Ukraine was already dangerous and difficult if not actually impossible.
In spite of this, many media channels and social media handles are claiming that students have no business asking for help from their government. To be clear, the authorities do Indian citizens no favour by extending assistance in such situations – that is literally the job of embassies abroad. And yet there is a great deal of grandstanding about the rescue missions so far: lots of pictures of officials and ministers with students that have returned and videos of people saying thank you. On the other hand, students sending out video messages about unresponsive embassy officials have been framed as being too demanding or actually lying. In the past, thousands of Indians have been brought back home from conflict zones without them being demonised and without the rescue efforts being hailed as somehow extraordinary.
What is also troubling is that in an official statement made on 2nd March, the Foreign Secretary said that no Indian nationals were left in Kyiv and that they would be shutting the Indian embassy there. In fact, there are many Indians stuck there still and the news of the Indian embassy shutting down would have been scary for them; increasing their sense of uncertainty and helplessness.
We have been seeing numerous videos of students saying that they are either unable to get in touch with the embassy or that there has been no adequate response. Communication, coordination and other efforts have been slow and/or uncertain in this instance. It would be better if there was an effort to fix accountability among those with the decision-makers, rather than to make this concerted ongoing attempt to blame the students. These are terrified young people stuck in a war zone far from home some in cities under attack some on borders in the freezing cold - everyone concerned needs to keep this in mind.
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