Student Election became Sweetless Sweet
Let us reflect on the elections: why was the turnout a meagre 30% in this year’s DUSU elections? Does that mean that these newly elected representatives do not have the right to represent our issues because they have been elected by a minority?
Issues like fee-hike, campus safety, extra-curricular activities, new vocational courses and cultural development have been raised every year and yet the student unions have not fared well in terms of addressing the said issues. Issues like money and muscle power cannot be neglected. Every year, student leaders are accompanied by many non-university students to campaign for them. This malaise is pervasive in all groups. This is done to display their political clout in terms of numbers.
Contesting elections at the student level is a costly affair. The students of the university are a motley crowd, cutting across castes, regions, tribes, religions, and languages. The colleges are spread all over the city of Delhi – north, east, south and west. Thus, to manage the plethora of voices and demands, money power becomes crucial. It acts as a lubricant that energises the campaign. It has also become a yardstick to select student leaders representing the various par-ties. This necessitates a dilution of the democratic criteria that is supposed to govern the choice of contestants. Candidates for these elections are often chosen along partisan lines, which jolts the democratic process. Surely, it does not augur well for the healthy development of leadership ethos amongst students.
The coverage of these elections by the media tends to depict contestants as stereotypes of ‘Netagiri-rajniiti’ (leaders and politics). This also takes the duel away from the important issues.
Issues of transparency in selection, accountability, audit of funds, as pointed out by the former Election Commissioner J.M.Lyngdoh, are not dealt with in the right spirit. The involvement of political parties in student elections (like the National students Union of India’s affiliation with Congress (I)), distances these elections from student concerns. The ordinary student, disillusioned with such developments, prefers to stay away from these elections. Student leaders are found to be negligent and lackadaisical in their approach towards the welfare of the students, in real terms.
Thus the trumpets and the drums used in the campaigns fall short of making any real impact on the student’s mind. Perhaps, this shows why students did not turn up to vote at the elections, preferring to treat the all-important voting day as a “holiday”.
However this pessimism needs to be done away with. We cannot have a functioning democracy if we ignore the significance behind participation in electoral affairs. The perils of ignorance are colossal. We need to stand up to resist the apathy and lack of political will on the part of the leaders. We cannot let these elections serve as a playground for clash of political ambitions. The real issues confronting the students – ranging from special buses catering to the needs of the students of the university, curbing eve-teasing, organising welfare camps, opening research centres, improving library facilities, amongst others, need to be immediately addressed. It is high time we realised the value of our participation and deliberations to cure the problems confronting the student community. This will surely have positive ramifications for the student community at the national level.
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