In my opinion, the college elections should have been stopped all together long back. It hardly helps, rather hurts the image of these colleges – with a lot of precious time getting wasted
Sambeet Dash
College elections in Odisha which was stopped from 2018 is going to start next year. Not sure why it was banned in the first place, and not sure why it is brought back.
I studied in BJB College in Bhubaneswar for a couple of years from 1984 to 1986, where elections were highly farcical with a lot of political undertones. My father who taught Physics there was the Advisor to the College Union.
I never participated in any Election – Vilection, nor there was much violence those days to remember and write home about. The aspirants for different positions of the student’s Union would push their candidature through cards into the hands of the prospective voters – aptly called “Pushing cards”.
The girls standing in clusters around the Sanatan Chat stall would get the scented versions of the pushing cards exclusively reserved for them, scent coming out of some cheap perfumes strewn over the card. The less fortunate ones, the boys had to be content with plain, rugged pushing cards.
The day of reckoning comes to a climax on the “Why I stand” meeting when the contestants are supposed to go at length explaining their candidature at large on the stage. This meet is invariably more histrionics and of less substance. Whatever little substance it has gets lost in the cacophony. Post election the promises made by the candidates were rarely kept, yet this annual farce continued year after year as precious days of Academics were ruined.
The icing on the cake in that meeting used to be the much-awaited arrival of the candidates for the position of Dramatic Secretary on the stage. They tried their best to outsmart each other by singing loudly, jumping to the tunes of the latest Bollywood hits and telling bawdy, semi vulgar jokes.
The more the giggling of the girls in the audience the more enthusiastic those are on the stage, their presence enticing the hopeful Dramatic Secretaries to swing their hips in a more dramatic way. Once a candidate tore off his pants on stage while dancing to a Jeetendra – Sridevi number exposing his DORA, a popular underwear of that time.
He continued to dance until the muffled laughter from girls in the audience with their face covered in palm gave away to cat calls from the boys. It made him realize that something was wrong. After discovering his plight he took out his handkerchief (a must carry for youth of that time), covered his exposed area and ran towards backstage.
Rowdiness or goondaism was frugal, limited to only verbal threats. Bullets or bombs were strictly fantasy. If someone threatens you then taking the name of so and so from Badagada, a village in the outskirts of Bhubaneswar was enough to assure your safety. (Though brawny, the residents of the village were known to be naive, slow witted and their heads were rumored to be stuffed with cowdung).
Apparently, things started to get worse and no wonder an incident of bombing was reported not long ago in BJB College. In my opinion, these needless elections should have been stopped all together long back. It hardly helps, rather hurts the image of these colleges – with a lot of precious time getting wasted.
In Regional Engineering College REC (now National Institute of Technology – NIT) Rourkela where I did my Engineering, there was no such Students Union or Elections associated with it. There was only a cultural Secretary from the 3rd year who used to organize cultural and fun fests. There were some elections for rudimentary positions in the hostels but not elections supported by political parties of any kind. In that context not sure what the present government of Odisha is smoking to bring back these totally avoidable College Union Elections.
(Author is an Odia technocrat living in the USA. Views are personal)
