You’ll (never) walk alone

Disclaimer: This editorial solely expresses the opinion of the editor who authored it. This editorial has been written keeping in mind the post of Vice President, Technology Students’ Gymkhana (TSG), IIT KGP and has been inspired by the author’s own attempts to be an independent candidate. However, most of the article applies very well to the posts of General Secretaries, TSG, IIT KGP as well.

The Vice President, TSG, IIT KGP is the leader the student community in all matters concerning student welfare. It is our responsibility and in our best interest to ensure that the most capable candidate is voted into power. This article aims to empower any eligible candidate to have a shot at contesting for the highest student office on campus and to lay bare the challenges associated with undertaking such a journey without your hall’s shining seal of approval.

Okay, for starters, what is the meaning of an “Independent” contestant?

Although, constitutionally, there can be numerous contestants for the post of Vice President, over the years it has been observed that we end up choosing between only 2 candidates. This consistent duality of candidature is, as you might have guessed, explained by the existence of two ‘pacts’.

What, then, is this ‘pact’ system? Just before the onset of the election season, the elected representatives of the halls get together to segregate themselves into two (or three) groups called pacts. Note that these pacts have no common student agenda or ideology, no uniting principle or proposal embraced by all its constituents.

Any person who is contesting the elections without the consent and/or support of their pact can be called an independent contestant.

Should you contest as an independent candidate?

Before reading further, you need to understand how the candidates are selected inside a particular pact. It’s a process with zero transparency, where charisma, popularity and achievements are considered, but equal importance is given to the aspirant’s rapport with ‘influential’ seniors. I am not saying that every candidate is bad, in fact they might actually be the best candidate possible for the post, but since the selections are neither made solely on the basis of merit and capability nor following any democratic procedure we know of, there exists a fair chance that the best candidates do not ultimately get selected.

Also, according to the constitution of TSG, IIT KGP, if there is a requirement to conduct any elections for Gymkhana post, it should be contested on a non-sectarian and apolitical basis. My reading of this is that the constitution encourages independent candidates, as opposed to the prevalent Pact system, which brings in a sense of politics in the election.

Are you eligible to contest?

The constitution of the Technology Students’ Gymkhana, says that any individual having a minimum experience of three academic years in IIT Kharagpur, unless specially disqualified, is eligible to contest for the post of Vice President.

So, if you are a student of the third, fourth or fifth year, enrolled in the Institute’s Undergraduate, Post graduate or Ph.D programme, and you are going to spend at least one more year in the institute, then you are eligible to contest for the post of Vice President.

How to file a nomination?

You have to formally file a nomination for candidature, at the Technology Students’ Gymkhana, IIT Kharagpur, by issuing a form against your ID card and submitting the same, duly filled.

All details about when, where and how of this process are circulated by the Gymkhana days before the elections on the Gymkhana notice board and all the standard notice boards of the Institute. The Scholars’ Avenue will also be sharing the notice issued by the Gymkhana on its Facebook page for better circulation amongst the students. So keep watching out the page for any upcoming news regarding the same.

What do you need to know?

You’ll have to be well versed with the processes and the history of the Gymkhana, and the realities of our Institute. You can expect to be grilled on these topics in the SOP, and moreover it is essential to frame sound proposals which can be executed within an academic year.

A good place to start with is the constitution of the TSG, IIT KGP (tinyurl.com/IITKgpGymkhanaConstitution). As you might expect, this document describes the job description of all the office bearers, the formal rules binding Gymkhana events and conditions to be met to make amendments to the constitution.

Since, as the Vice President, TSG, IIT KGP you would be an integral part of the placements process, it is advisable that you have a talk with Professor S.K. Barai, the Chairman of Career Development Centre, IIT KGP. It is also advisable that you talk with Professor Manish Bhattacharya, the ex-President, TSG, IIT KGP. Please take note here that the current President of Technology Students Gymkhana, IIT KGP might not help you if he comes to know that you are a contestant in the election — something that is a customary practice for TSG.

It is also advisable that you seek help from the current Vice President and ex-Vice Presidents of TSG. It might be prudent to talk to Mr. Ankit Singh, an IIT KGP alumnus who happened to be an independent contestant in the Gymkhana elections of 2010–11.

If you are interested to contact us and we will help you finding the contacts of the relevant people.

Now that you are at a stage where you can bounce around proposal ideas, you might want to visit thescholarsavenue.github.io/VPTimeline to find a comparison of the previous proposals and their implementation status. Detailed listings and critiques of proposals of the last 5 years can be found on our website.

In the end, after all the preparation, you need to have an exact idea about how you are going to present your SOP and proposals. For this it is highly advisable for you to have mock-SOP conducted by your peers on the lines of previous SOPS (which can be viewed on our Youtube channel).

All that you might face.

While there is a lot you must imbibe to be a viable candidate, it gets especially challenging to an independent candidate as you will have zero support from your hall, which will unfailingly be a part of one of the pacts.

To begin with, as soon as you share your wish of contesting for the elections, you would have friends who would believe in you and then, there will be people who would ask you to justify your decision — a process which might be cumbersome, but in actuality helps you reach a clarity of thought.

When the news of you contesting as an independent candidate reaches a decent number of people, you will likely be summoned by your Hall President, who, along with the Hall Council Members, will try to advise, convince or even threaten you to back down from your decision. They will try to reason out, hours at stretch, about the usefulness of the pact system. You would have to hear your unworthiness as a candidate and how there is no chance of you winning.

There might be attempts from the pact your hall belongs to dissuade you and the intensity of the attempts might be of objectionable.

It might be exacting to extract the right information needed for your proposals from existing Gymkhana office bearers, it might not be either. My suggestion would be, in case you face any difficulty in this front, contact ex-office bearers, especially if they have already graduated from the institute.

Your personal life might be brought up to reduce your credibility as a candidate. So better keep it safe. If you wish to contest, put a two-step verification for your gmail account and make sure you have the highest level of security for all other online accounts, including Facebook.

In SOPs we have seen so far, half of the panelists support one candidate while the other half supports the other candidate. You would have a harder time than the candidates from the pacts, because, in your case the entire panel will be against you.

Can you win?

Absolutely. I am not saying that it will be easy, but the students of IIT KGP, if not anything else, are smart and I believe that in an open democratic competition only the best will win.

The contestants from each of the two pacts have access to a plethora of information collected over generations and because of this fallback, we can see a certain number of proposals being rechurned every year by the candidates. There seems to be a lack of independent thinking and innovation when it comes to framing proposals, something you can exploit to your advantage. Also, the fact that you would have to do your own ground work will increase your firsthand experience of the system — something that would make you a better suited candidate. A word of caution here, being new to all this, the proposals you frame might not be very feasible given that you would have only a year and limited resources to implement your ideas and so it is very important for you to run your ideas through as many trusted peers as possible.

At this point, you have ticked all the boxes on paper to being a viable candidate. You would have to fight the huge publicity that the other candidates have. You should take help from your friends to spread the word about you contesting and your credential in their circle and let it spread like wildfire, which it will because it is not every year that you get an independent and apolitical VP candidate. Your proposals, your charisma and the way you handle situations of stress (read, SOP) would be the final nail in the coffin.

Is it worth it?

It depends on what you want out of your student life here in KGP. Whether you win or lose the elections, the process that you would go through before the elections, all the talking and presenting, the network you build and the friends you pulled closer will have a big impact in your professional life. Also, considering that you will be going against a hard set system that refuses to change, it might just give you a taste of real politics that you would find outside our institute.

May the students of IIT KGP have the best leader that their strength has to offer!