Democracy Out of Office?: Ashoka Without a Student Government

With a third re-election waiting in the wings, a university that rarely runs out of political opinions has failed, twice, to elect its two highest student representatives. Witnessing a campus so politically articulate, I assumed participation would follow expression. I was sorely mistaken.

I do not believe that we are a politically silent student body. On the contrary, we are vocal, articulate, and fiercely committed to making ourselves heard. 

Yet, the democratic structure meant to translate these conversations into policy has repeatedly failed to garner our participation. In two consecutive election cycles, the positions of both President and General Secretary have failed to meet the required voter quorum of 40%. 

Why did our democracy collapse under the weight of its own discourse? I believe three factors have driven us away from the ballot box.

1. Institutional and Procedural Instability

One of the biggest problems was that the key aspects of the electoral process remained uncertain long after the election had begun. Rules were being clarified, corrected, and reinterpreted while voting was already underway. 

Ashoka University Student Government (AUSG) elections started on rocky ground when the delayed formation of the Election Commission squeezed the entire timeline. When candidate nominations opened on 27th April, students still did not know the Ashoka University Election Commission (AUEC)'s full composition. The final members of the AUEC were officially notified of their appointment only on 29th April, after the election process had already begun.

To make matters more confusing, the Election Code had been revised (from a 53-page document to a 31-page document) over the past year, and the AUEC released both the old and new versions on 25th April and 27th April, respectively. 

With less time available to resolve procedural questions beforehand, issues that would ordinarily have been settled behind the scenes instead unfolded publicly while the election was already underway. Rules about the number of votes a student could cast and which cohort they could vote for changed after publication; candidate lists had to be corrected, and the process for candidate affidavits caused massive confusion. The disqualification of the USF only added to the uncertainty of how rules were being enforced, as the basis for its removal became another point of contention. It left students uncertain about how the rules were being interpreted and enforced.

From what I saw on the inside as an Execution Officer within the Election Commission, these mistakes were more frantic reactions to a tight schedule than actions stemming from bad faith. What students noticed was that the Commission was only fixing its mistakes after the public pointed them out, all while trying to run a live election. This instability became impossible to ignore after the first round of polling closed. On the exact day the results were expected, the AUEC changed the quorum calculations to include late graduates and YIF students, and reopened the voting entirely. Changing the rules of validity and quorum after people have already voted damages public confidence, no matter the intentions. Ultimately, failing to meet the required voter quorum twice shows that the election system struggled to retain legitimacy once students began to question the process's stability.

2. Retreating  from Democratic Structures

Procedural instability alone cannot explain why voting collapsed. Even during finals season, both the accountability and presidential debates saw a large turnout, and political discussion surrounding the elections remained active across Instagram, mrmr, and statements by collectives. 

Ashokans remain deeply interested in politics, but past cycles have made it clear that students have simply lost faith in the student government. This disconnect stems from years of built-up frustration with past governments over poor communication and lack of transparency. It is a strange contradiction: students who care intensely about having a voice have completely stopped voting for the people meant to represent them. Many students have concluded that the student government lacks actual power to make a difference because of admin overreach. As a result, fewer students seem willing to invest in the institutions through which their frustrations are formally negotiated.

At the same time, it would be inaccurate to interpret every act of non-participation as apathy or detachment. During the first round of elections, particularly following the USF disqualification, some students explicitly framed non-voting as a political choice rather than an absence of one. For them, refusing to participate became a way to express dissatisfaction with the legitimacy of the process itself.

Political attention was not in short supply. What became increasingly uncertain was whether electoral participation remained the primary way students expressed their political commitments. While my own cohort successfully elected all four of our second-year council representatives and the third-year cohort elected three of its four, the Masters’ Council was elected unopposed. Meanwhile, the rest of the student body seems to have walked away from the system. 

3. Political Hostility and Online Toxicity

This systemic collapse reached its boiling point when democratic disagreement gave way to bad-faith debates about students’ personal lives. Student elections naturally require disagreement and public judgment; however, formal policy agendas and student manifestos were completely buried under a landslide of rapidly circulating informal discourse — a chaotic ecosystem fuelled by screenshots, rumours, and personal attacks.

The social cost of escalation seems to have been stripped away by anonymity, turning what should have been political critique into vicious and targeted hostility. As online discussions increasingly centred on the deep-seated issues of Islamophobia, casteism, misogyny, and class-based hostility, the AUEC responded through the language of institutional neutrality. By issuing broad, sterile condemnations of “hate speech” and “harassment,” the Commission’s procedural language flattened unequal experiences of real harm into abstract categories of “conflict,” exposing the absolute limits of institutional neutrality during a cultural fracture. For candidates actually standing for election, the consequences of this environment are far more personal. They are subjected to an often harrowing level of scrutiny, where their political positions often open them up to personal attacks and public judgment. The prospect of scrutiny may also be one of the reasons students choose not to stand at all.

Ultimately, the wreckage of this election cycle proves that Ashoka is suffering from a fundamental shift in political participation, in which expression has replaced collective action and online visibility has swallowed actual governance. This paradox is the biggest signal towards the erosion of our shared institutional faith. 

When an institution such as the AUSG moves from being the primary representative body to a temporary placeholder, students struggle with the legitimacy required to negotiate with the administration. They are then pushed to organise around individual issues without a body that can aggregate their concerns. This is convenient for the administration. Without a strong and stable representative body on campus, it can deal with demands selectively, meaning outcomes depend on who is making the case and how receptive the administration is. It goes without saying that minority and marginalised communities bear the brunt of this — their ability to be heard becomes dependent on their capacity to mobilise around particular issues. The broader Ashokan problem is this: student politics have become issue-based rather than institutionally represented. Whether a concern is taken seriously then depends less on the severity of the grievance itself, and more on who is raising it and how much leverage they may have.

If we choose to do nothing, our campus will remain as loud, reactive, and hyper-political as ever, but our actual power will completely vanish. Decisions about our lives on campus will continue to be made without us by an administration that thrives on our disunity. The choice is ours: we can let our politics burn out in our online bubbles, or we can do the difficult work of rebuilding a shared centre. 

(Edited by Hiyaneijemmy Das and Avika Mantri)