Democracy Evolves @ KGP

In the recently concluded student body(Gymkhana) elections at IIT Kharagpur, all the top posts, except VP, went uncontested and the lonely fight was won by a margin of around one-third of total votes polled. You must be thinking that this institute is blessed in having such exceptional people as their representatives! You might even be thinking that in a place full of talents, how much exceptional these people must be in order to invite no challenge. Well, they're not. Not exceptional. What's exceptional is- KGP's democracy(?). And, it has evolved further in its singualrity this year.

A key feature of this democratic setup is absence of the right to freedom of expression. You can't speak against the system- its sacred! The gods may bedamn you! In fact, more than the gods, the common people are the source of fear. Fear- mind it! You may murmur but you can't say in public, you can't say it aloud. Who knows you might be subjected to all sort of punishments! You may become outcast of 'A' for aloof block! You might loose your candidature for the innumerous coveted posts! But, don't forget these are the people who are going to carry out the 'Paritrana' of this country. Keep it in your mind that these are the 'Rang De Basanti'-brand leaders of tommorrow. And, their leaders- they're divine creatures! Don't ever dare not to follow their directives. Neither questioning the righteousness of it!

There're many things that IIT's have given to the world and our country. IT revolution is one classic example. There may be controversies on these things being a contribution by IITs alone. But, everyone will agree to its contribution in terms of the great number of enterpreneurs and engineers it has produced over the years. It has made contributions at many other levels too, which are not visible. Rather, they were not made visible. It has been rippling subcultures for a long time. There have been many literary contributions, too. Apart from Chetan Bhagat and Sandipan Deb, there have been a good number of terms which were originally a part of IIT lingo and are now used almost everywhere. My endeavour here, is to bring to light a significant contribution that it has made to politics and governance which has not been noticed till date.

The students here are divided into a number of 'Halls of Residence' which are not only residential units but also administrative and cultural. They're divided, not just distributed. Each hall has its council, at the top of which is the Hall President(HP). The student body, which is known as Technology Students' Gymkhana, consists of the nominees of these HPs. The nominees which are later formally elected by a formal voting procedure, to ratify the control and authority of these handful of people. The arrangement under which all this happens is called- 'Pact'. This word-'pact' is undoubtedly the most impactful term of the KGP lingo. This arrangement is highly efficient and it has very few leaks. The nominees are decided on individual preference and pleasure and are agreed upon by others well in advance, almost two-three months and even more. The system through which these nominees become eligible is compact- it doesn't leave a common man a chance of ever standing in the elections. There're proper channels in which he must have spent a significant time and he must have done enough to please the people who matter.

This time the results were much more obvious than previous years. Six of the seven, which were parties to the affair, joined hands. They had victory written all over their walls the day they joined hands. But, yet they waited for the formal ratification. That evening and i were witness to the celebration party that followed. The spirits involved yelled- 'Conquered!'. There were numerous murmurs- 'Injustice Done!'. I took that as 'Democracy Evolved!'.