Dance of Democracy

These days when I pick up newspaper for reading the happenings of the day, I always end up reading one or more of the stories covering elections, which I think, occupy 60% of the newspaper, these days. By the time I reach the sections that I had actually picked the paper for, I had lost my patience to continue further. After reading so much about elections I thought it would be highly unjustified if I don't type down something over it. I thought this was the best time to do that because IIT too had just concluded its annual elections, and this time I had no stakes involved in any sense probably for the first time.
I was trying to figure out a correlation between general elections and these internal elections (internal of IIT and which includes EXTERNALS of hostel as well as hostel elections). I think the essence is the same, off course the third front is missing in the internal elections as there are only two pre-pole alliances, constituents of which keep on switching sides. There is one major difference, while in general elections, the leaders negotiating within these alliances are the prominent political icons of their own parties who themselves are in the fray (and have the highest stakes amongst all of his party members), here the negotiators are the power players/power brokers of the parties (which can be a hostel or fraction within a hostel), who themselves are about to move out of the constituencies (as they would be passing out) but want to establish the will of their near and dear ones who have more year/years to live in it. This phenomena comes close to dynasty rule or maybe to nepotism with few caveats.
Coming to methods of campaign. I was recently handed over a pamphlet of a candidate of one of the political parties. In whole pamphlet, the person had mentioned about his caste, the glory of that caste, the absence of politicians belonging to it in the region and the pride that would be gained if voters send him to lok sabha. Apart from this, there was nothing else reasoned out by him for voting for him. We all would agree that the contestant should have mentioned about the development plans, the governance vision, policies and the agenda that he would pursue once elected. But if we come to our hostel elections, then the same thing is not seeked, the agenda etc are only to be spoken in Statement of purpose speeches that too has statements which had been repeating since years if not decades. There are only few things on the basis of which candidates seek vote, either friendship of the voter with the candidate or with someone who has already been persuaded to support the candidate, or the enmity with the other candidate or the people associated with him. This might not be true in every elections but for majority it is. The bait offered to the supporting parties in general elections is the cabinet berth in post victory scenario, here it is different posts or benefits in some other clubs which is on offering. Then there are lame voters who cast their votes for direct benefit as small as money (remember mulayam singh yadav's recent note distribution act). Though lame is derogatory word but the act makes them to qualify for it. Most of them belong to lower strata of society who think that they are too small to be affected by the coming and going of government and so it is best to grab the benefit that is right in front of them. Here in hostels, this category of voters consists of those people from final year who do not belong to the earlier class of power players or are not very closely associated with them. Belonging to this category, my vote too was for sale, but knowing how lame the action is, was too ashamed to quote my price in front of any candidate.
The aftermath of hostel elections is the winning party getting some very minor advantages over things as small as room distribution. The other party always is not able to digest its defeat and do resurfaces in some form or other in the next elections, with sole motive of hampering the prospects of last years victors. So most things remaining the same, there is one big difference, while here the elections are more of clash of egos, while in general elections it is the clash of power. It is debatable whether one leads to other. What do you say.....................