Election season

Institute has election season during April-May and everyday you are bombarded with manifesto of one or another candidate. Basically manifesto's of each candidate seems similar only difference being that it has different construction of the sentence. Some even copy one another’s manifesto and that’s really gross. For the first time I was seeing an election upfront. I had decided that I was not going to side any candidate. Our departmental election was one heck of a political plot. It had all the mix of being a Hindi Movie, regionalism along with show of strength and bitterness among the candidates. It was really interesting to see how people even at student level play political games and do whatever they can to swing the votes in their favor. I was shocked with one thing that even at place like IIT where the most educated lot of our society lives, the votes are decided by loyalties and not merit. Regionalism, like any other place was a deciding factor so this system of “Democracy” although seems good has it flaws and they cannot be rectified as it takes people’s power to think as a basic assumption which is not at all true. Every election in institute is fought with loyalties, for department, for hostels, for regions and for academic programs. Although I fear to say, but this is a sorry state of affairs in student politics, in every university and college across India, and if these are the leaders of tomorrow then we better have Dictatorship. One good thing that we have in place is the Impeachment clause that if someone elected to a post does not fulfill the promises that he has been making, then that person can be removed from the post. Although this seem trivial but plays an important in keeping the elected candidates on track. Also one more thing they have implemented is the negative vote. You can say that you do not want a candidate or you can select whom do you want.