— Written by Lokesh Parihar
First, the Co-Curricular Secretary was disqualified, then both the Cultural Secretaries were dismissed for a month, and now we receive an email regarding the disqualification of the Academic Affairs Secretary. It came to my notice that the AAS was dismissed in January, but the email arrived only just now. Moreover, the SECC chief commissioner has resigned from the position. Not to mention the disqualification of both the Sports Secretary candidates and one of the IAR Secretary candidates during the elections, and the entire IAR sphere has been scrapped.
There is something precarious about this situation, and it is strategic that we are never given reasons in the announcement emails. I can understand that the institute doesn’t want to publicly humiliate a person, but when you get to know the reasons from insider sources, the reasons are often so ugly that they are better left unmentioned. What do you mean the elected secretary listed lakhs of expenditures twice in the accounts, or that the secretary was smuggling bicycles outside?
But here’s the catch: despite the ugliness of the above two examples, one can actually find a charitable interpretation. Maybe the person wasn’t experienced enough to conduct large-scale events, or the person might have taken a cycle for emergency personal use and forgotten to return it. What you cannot find a charitable interpretation for is just how much hatred is alive among the EC members, driving them to do everything they can to get each other disqualified. Nothing explains this except childish urges of revenge and sheer malevolence. And this hatred would’ve been obvious to anyone who attended the soapboxes. There was a clear pattern one could see, where one sphere was trying to humiliate the other.
One may say that the purpose of soapboxes is to ask the tough questions. Well, you can ask challenging questions in a way that doesn’t come across as hateful and maintain calm in the room. The general audience is there to ask trap questions to dunk on the candidates. Something better is expected from someone so high on the political throne.
I joined the institute in 2022, and one of the most politically salient moments after our joining was the brawl during the Mevit and Lakshya AAS soapbox. I can understand that behaviour in the context of political impulse and physical proximity. But planning and digging deep into the institute life of somebody to find anything that can remotely help in the disqualification of a candidate is evil, and I don’t want such people to be our leaders. The complaint against the CoCAS was from an incident that was two years prior. Of course, you can find such things about anyone. There is hardly anyone who hasn’t done something “wrong” in three to four years of insti life — maybe they copied an assignment, used AI tools to write a project, or said something in a private message to a friend. You can find these things with sufficient connections and ruin someone’s reputation. But is that what our leaders should do?
From a distance, it seems all of them are just playing a game to get each other out, willing to do anything to achieve this. And it is this collapse of morality that I am talking about in the title of this article. They ideally should have so many genuine things to do in their one-year leadership, but they focus on such things instead. And even if one sphere has started such a fall of dominoes, the best act is not to retaliate in revenge but to stand with force and moral courage to stop such precedents from going too far.
I think most of our leaders lack the moral and intellectual courage to understand this, and we are facing the consequences: the curbing of free expression on email, an oppressive P-grade policy, parental access to grades and attendance records, and an exploitative fees submission structure. All of the above policy changes are a disaster for students, but we have seen no resistance from the EC against any of them. All of these changes should have sparked institute-wide protests, but they were passed as though nothing happened. This was possible because we have elected an EC that is morally and intellectually corrupt and has no connection whatsoever to the demands and concerns of the general student body.
Apart from their moral bankruptcy, they are filled with sheer arrogance. I recall being told about an incident during an SLC meeting. When my Hostel Legislator asked one of the EC members about seemingly high prices for a stationery item, he was met with the response: “If you had gone to school, you would have known better.” Now, this is coming from someone in the topmost leadership position in the institute. We sincerely expect better. And I was expecting the SLC Speaker to take action against the said member, but I don’t think that happened. Speaking of the SLC Speaker, there is an institute-wide understanding that the annual parliament trip is a sheer waste of students’ money, but no one has done anything about it. If the trip turns out to be genuinely helpful in instilling leadership qualities among the visitors, I would be less annoyed, but I need evidence of that.
Now, one may object in numerous ways to the above, and I will try to anticipate some objections and reply to them here.
1. Aren’t you supposed to do whatever you can to achieve power?
I think this is a mistaken belief, often framed in terms of Kautilya’s infamous “Saam, Daam, Dand, Bhed” maxim. This equates to what is called naive utilitarianism in modern ethical frameworks, where you care only about outcomes (in this case, achieving power) without any concern for the means used. I think this is a deeply flawed view, and I know of no serious thinker who advocates for it.
2. Isn’t this just how it works?
No. One of the key principles democracies rely on is the restraint of power exercised by top leaders. Laws are made by politicians and not by philosophers, and thus there is significant scope for misuse and abuse; but great leaders use laws judiciously and are clearly aware of the potential for misuse and the wrong precedents it sets. Having all the power in the world and still using it with care and restraint is what makes great leaders great.
3. What does it matter if the said people are morally corrupt, if they are doing their jobs well?
I doubt they are doing their jobs well, as mentioned in the first part of the article. But even if they were, I would still be concerned about the implications of their moral character. One of the key arguments made by early labellers of Trump Derangement Syndrome was that the moral character of a president doesn’t matter to their candidacy or their job; and we have seen how badly that has aged.
4. Morality is for losers. Didn’t Nietzsche say so?
It’s much more complicated than that. Firstly, Nietzsche didn’t say morality is for losers. He did argue that the weak use morality as a disguise for their lack of courage, but that is very different from the original statement. I think morality is for everybody, and it likely makes you stronger, more trustworthy, and more likeable. Combined with power and competence, morality can bring genuine good, as we have seen with some great people in the past.
5. What about the EC members who deserve to be removed?
I never claimed that EC members shouldn’t be punished for their bad acts. My claim is more limited: it is more evil to strategically plan and execute the ousting of an EC member, motivated by revenge and hatred, than to do something wrong out of impulse, inexperience, or mistake. Leaders should be removed if they do something that warrants serious action, but I doubt a two-year-old mistake, or a naive moral failing, counts as such.
6. What about the political system that produces such leadership?
The political system is quite corrupt as well, and I doubt we can do much about it except advise our younger students to be mindful when voting. I am unsure how effective this is, but I have little more to say about this arena. I am more concerned about the people who have been elected and then chose to act in bizarre ways.
I will now conclude (even though I would be happy to address any other potential criticisms) the article by stating that I have written this with care for the institute’s political culture, which I deeply want to see thrive and perhaps serve as a model for the nation to follow. I have been disappointed in this prospect so far, and I would want to be proven wrong. I hope that in this election we find and choose candidates who bring us pride and not shame.
—Edited by Samhita | Design by Neenu Elza
Link to the author’s Substack: https://notesfromundrgrnd.substack.com/
Article 19 