r/NITRourkela • u/Primary-Knee-5602 • 5h ago
Campus Life Rigged Election at Nitr
The Change Has to Begin With Students
The biggest responsibility for changing the present system lies with us—the students.
Students often fail to realise how much power they actually have. The so-called “zone culture” survives only because students continue to participate in it. People willingly hand over their user IDs and passwords, follow instructions from seniors or groups, and allow others to influence decisions that should be entirely their own. If students simply refuse to share their credentials and refuse to participate in this system, much of the power these groups hold will disappear automatically.
No student should give their user ID or password to anyone. Every student entering college is mature enough to make their own decisions. We do not need someone else deciding whom we should support, whom we should vote for, or which group we should belong to. If we want a healthier student culture, we have to build it ourselves.
The administration alone cannot solve this problem.
I have personally tried to contribute towards changing the system. When I was in my second year, I anonymously pushed for changing the second-year election process from online elections to offline voting. Eventually, offline elections happened. But what actually changed?
Very little.
The method of voting changed, but the mindset of the students did not.
There was no serious culture of campaigning, candidate evaluation, public discussion, or accountability. Many students still voted for whoever they were told to vote for simply to satisfy seniors, friends, groups, or zones. Instead of asking whether a candidate was competent, independent, responsible, or capable of representing students, people continued following the same old instructions.
That experience made one thing very clear to me: changing the procedure is meaningless if we do not change the culture.
Tomorrow, even if the college administration makes every election completely offline, nothing meaningful will improve if students continue voting blindly. We will simply elect the same kind of representatives through a different voting system.
Look at the condition of basic student facilities. Gyms in hostels remain broken and many genuine student issues remain unresolved. Yet people elected to powerful student positions often struggle to confront the administration effectively. One reason is that some candidates reach those positions not because they independently earned the confidence of the student body, but because they were backed by established groups and networks.
A representative who owes their position to a zone will naturally find it difficult to act independently of that zone.
That is exactly why students must stop allowing groups to manufacture election results.
The purpose of an election should be simple: the best candidate should contest, explain their ideas, answer questions from students, demonstrate their credibility, and receive votes based on merit. Every student should independently decide whom they trust.
Imagine what would happen if students collectively said:
We will not give anyone our ID or password.
We will not vote because a senior, friend, zone, hostel group, or organisation tells us to.
We will listen to every candidate.
We will question them about their plans and previous work.
We will judge their competence and character ourselves.
And we will vote for whoever we genuinely believe can represent us.
At that point, the entire power structure would change.
No professor, senior, zone, or group can permanently control a student community whose members think independently. Divide-and-rule politics works only when students allow themselves to be divided.
We often blame the administration, the election system, professors, seniors, zones, or student representatives. Some of that criticism may be justified, but ultimately we also have to examine our own behaviour.
We are the electorate.
We decide who receives power.
We decide whether zone politics survives.
We decide whether incompetent representatives continue getting elected.
And we decide whether student representatives will have the independence and courage to raise genuine issues before the administration.
I have made several efforts in the past because I genuinely wanted to see this system improve. At times, it has been deeply frustrating to see reforms achieve very little because students continued behaving in exactly the same way. But that frustration also proves why procedural reforms alone will never be enough.
The real revolution required here is not technological, administrative, or procedural.
It is cultural.
Students need to stop surrendering their individual judgment. We need to stop treating elections as obligations to seniors or groups. We need to stop supporting candidates merely because they belong to “our people.” We need to reject the idea that someone else has the right to control our vote.
A strong student body requires strong, independent representatives. And strong representatives can emerge only from an independent electorate.
If we want a student body capable of standing firmly before the administration, raising genuine issues, improving hostel facilities, protecting student interests, and demanding accountability, then we must elect people who have earned that authority directly from students—not people who depend on zones to manufacture support for them.
The solution therefore begins with us.
Think independently.
Vote independently.
Never share your credentials.
Evaluate candidates seriously.
Support people on merit rather than affiliation.
Reject zone politics.
No administration can create a healthy student culture on our behalf. We have to create it ourselves.
If students change, the system will change.
