I remember my third semester in college, because that was the first time after my school life that I witnessed a spectacle that was the D.U.S.U. election. The fifth of September in that year was a day to remember, not for Teachers’ Day (how many of us even remembered?) but because it was the day that the votes were to be cast. The week preceding the scheduled day had N.S.U.I. and A.B.V.P., the two primary contenders battling it out to attract largely uninterested D.C.E.ites, to get maximum votes for their candidates.
Money flowed seamlessly and so did paper, as the rivaling parties unapologetically flouted all the election guidelines of the Lyngdoh Committee. Pamphlets were pasted on every square inch of space that the campaigners could find; including, but evidently not limited to canteen furniture, doors, window panes, car windshields and number plates of bikes, with overlapping posters often confusing everyone with unlikely names besides the myriad of faces. Echoes of ‘Ayi ayi ayi….N-S-U-I !!’ and ‘Jai Hind !!’ sounded till late at night in the campus and pamphlets were seen flying out from windows of a certain red car that we saw moving around regularly in the campus, in which sat enthusiastic individuals otherwise also zealously checking out the variety our college had to offer in terms of the fairer sex. These enthusiastic individuals, were also seen huddling at the gates of the girls’ hostel every evening uninterrupted -- a territory, which is absolutely forbidden for the boys of the college and merely being spotted there will fetch unsavoury remarks from the hostel attendants. A day before the elections, a grand party was thrown for all the students in the canteen, replete with everything one would obviously expect, not to forget the special invitations that were given out to all the inhabitants of the girls’ hostel. The writer also fondly remembers an encounter with an over excited candidate enumerating the various whimsical points on her agenda (more hangout zones…huh?) and her frenzied group of supporters eagerly distributing calendars, note-pads and soap strips!
But all this was in vain when us D.C.E.ites took advantage of the extended weekend and went off home. That should explain the mere 40% voter turnout in the elections for the entire university. Inadequate participation in democracy, is it? Probably not. Only if our future politicos could go beyond absurd gimmicks and disappointing agendas (more hangout zone, remember?) and concentrate on better things to attend to, since we don’t even know what the ones who were elected previously did, that is, if they did anything at all.
http://tinyurl.com/yd777s2
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