DUSU Elections: The Annual Farce
RAHUL VERMA
It is election season in Delhi University (DU) once again, with its Students' Union (DUSU) election scheduled for September 2. Not quite a reflection of film-maker Mani Ratnam's idea of student activism and his portrayal of the power of youth in politics in his film Yuva, but still important in throwing up many a future leader in the country.
But things do not seem to be changing much. Despite the decision of the DU management to come down sternly on those messing up public places with posters, it seems to be the same story like every year. Fortunately, at the time of going into press, there had been no significant incidents of violence this year.
As usual, such politics has no room for the ordinary student in DU, like in most university elections in the country. He has simply been swamped and put aside. There are no meaningful objectives in such politics.
The gangs that intimidate, and the crowds of students that go on the rampage are bound by the most narrow sense of primordial loyalty to a person or group of persons.
The latter are often also musclemen who claim to be close to the centres of power. There seems to be no defining line between persuasion and intimidation and student camaraderie often tends to express itself in ways that have a disturbing similarity with frenzied communal mobs.
Elections like those to DUSU in the past have shown that student politics in India is not very different from mainstream politics, with political parties actively involved and state machinery used freely. The University's code of conduct for elections allows a candidate to spend not more than Rs. 10,000 and two vehicles for campaigning and the use of posters, stickers, pamphlets etc is prohibited. But to everyone's dismay, these norms exist on paper only. Conservative estimates put the expense by major parties at Rs 50-60 lakhs this year. "These norms are unrealistic given the size of the university and number of voters. Rs 10,000 is not enough even to fuel our cars," says Ragini Nayak who was elected DUSU secretary in 2004.
There are reportedly cases of students signing up for a BA once again even after graduation just to be able to contest elections. Not that most of these students really care about an education.
It is election season in Delhi University (DU) once again, with its Students' Union (DUSU) election scheduled for September 2. Not quite a reflection of film-maker Mani Ratnam's idea of student activism and his portrayal of the power of youth in politics in his film Yuva, but still important in throwing up many a future leader in the country.But things do not seem to be changing much. Despite the decision of the DU management to come down sternly on those messing up public places with posters, it seems to be the same story like every year. Fortunately, at the time of going into press, there had been no significant incidents of violence this year.
As usual, such politics has no room for the ordinary student in DU, like in most university elections in the country. He has simply been swamped and put aside. There are no meaningful objectives in such politics.
The gangs that intimidate, and the crowds of students that go on the rampage are bound by the most narrow sense of primordial loyalty to a person or group of persons.
The latter are often also musclemen who claim to be close to the centres of power. There seems to be no defining line between persuasion and intimidation and student camaraderie often tends to express itself in ways that have a disturbing similarity with frenzied communal mobs.
Elections like those to DUSU in the past have shown that student politics in India is not very different from mainstream politics, with political parties actively involved and state machinery used freely. The University's code of conduct for elections allows a candidate to spend not more than Rs. 10,000 and two vehicles for campaigning and the use of posters, stickers, pamphlets etc is prohibited. But to everyone's dismay, these norms exist on paper only. Conservative estimates put the expense by major parties at Rs 50-60 lakhs this year. "These norms are unrealistic given the size of the university and number of voters. Rs 10,000 is not enough even to fuel our cars," says Ragini Nayak who was elected DUSU secretary in 2004.
There are reportedly cases of students signing up for a BA once again even after graduation just to be able to contest elections. Not that most of these students really care about an education.
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