By Arushi Jain, Class of 2018
Editorial Comment — The summaries in the illustration are not intended to give you all the information you need to vote tomorrow. The detailed manifestos of each party can be found here, and the first debate can be watched in full here.
Shivank Sarin, Class of 2019
The word Renaissance paints frescoes of political, scientific and cultural revolutions in most of our minds. Some are even reminded of Professor Rudrangshu Mukherjee’s Great Books lectures covering Bertolt Brecht’s play on Galileo. Interestingly, history’s cradle of science and culture (Italy) also gave birth to the art of managing wealth.
The Medici were the sculptors of modern finance. They traded with one another on benches, the Italian word for which was ‘Bank’. Thus was born the institution of banking. As pioneers of banking, the Medici family benefitted enormously. Their fabulous wealth enabled their rise to power. Not only were they rulers of Florence for most of the Renaissance period, but 5 of the Medici’s became Popes! There has been no greater example of wealth creation leading to absolute power in the history of mankind. There’s a lot we can learn by embracing the Medici Mindset. The first step towards developing it is to learn how to invest.
Investing is the art of deferring current consumption in the hope of consuming more in the future. The principal amount may be invested in diverse financial instruments including but not limited to currencies, stocks, bonds, commodities etc. These instruments, technically known as ‘asset classes’, act as storehouses of value that are expected to earn a return over and above the principal amount invested. The basic premise of investing hence lies in achieving returns that beat the rate of inflation, so that one’s personal wealth grows faster than that of the economy. Business magnates like Andrew Carnegie and Jeff Bezos have used the gains from investing to found great institutions like Carnegie Steel and Amazon Inc. respectively.
The great Chinese reformer, President Deng Xiaoping once said — ‘To get Rich is glorious”. He set the tone for reform in China in the early eighties, and made China the fastest growing economy, which is now in a position to beat USA and become global leader.
Examples like Jeff Bezos, Andrew Carnegie, the Medici’s and China show us that in the past 500 years, successful investors (whether families, individuals or countries) have become financially rich and socially influential: such is the power of investing. Closer to home, the Indian stock market has grown at 13% on average over the past 20 years. Investing ₹10,000 in the year 1998 would have left you with ₹1,10,00 today! The same amount, if invested in a bank Fixed Deposit, would have yielded ₹42,500 today (61% lesser), and a meager ₹22,000 (80% lesser) if put in a savings account. We see that investors became richer than savers, even in India. This is due to the phenomenon called compounding. The earlier you start, the longer the forces of compounding act on the investment.
So why must Ashokans Invest? For one, to learn the art of getting rich and hopefully gain financial and social influence with that. This power and influence can then be used towards the betterment of mankind. A case in point would be our founders: Mr. Rakesh Jhunjhunwala and Mr. Ashish Dhawan, to name a couple, who have invested a significant portion of their investment returns towards philanthropic ventures.
Investing can also be a lot of fun, and a great tool to learn about the world. Consider this — before making an investment in any company, most seasoned investors conduct a detailed evaluation of the company, its competitors, the industry, etc. Hence, the quest to becoming a good investor also involves becoming knowledgeable about a variety of other disciplines. At the very least, an investor can certainly expect their knowledge to compound, even if their wealth doesn’t. To quote Benjamin Franklin on this subject, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest”. Investing further imbibes the qualities of patience, critical thinking and self-control. Thus, it has the power to subliminally shape us for the better without demanding a substantial time commitment.
So you see, the returns of investing may be more than just on the capital employed, and the earlier we start, the better it is for ourselves. I conclude by suggesting a few elementary books and videos that have helped shape my views on investing and personal finance. I hope that this acts as the first step towards developing the Medici Mindset for you!
Books-
Learn to Earn- Peter Lynch
Rich Dad, Poor Dad- Robert Kiyosaki
Poor Charlie’s Almanack- Charlie Munger
Fooled by Randomness- Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Videos-
http://bit.ly/1e3JNnz — How The Economic Machine Works by Ray Dalio
http://bit.ly/2nWHQRC — William Ackman- Everything You Needed to Know About Finance and Investing In Under an Hour
Shivank Sarin is the Founder and President of the Ashoka Undergraduate Investments Club.
Gahena Gambani, Class of 2020
Back in 2003, if an entrepreneur, or anyone with an idea, wanted to start something on their own, they had to make the difficult decision of choosing the location for their venture, with so many available options. Every country had its own pros and cons. In a bid to collate and analyse information about the feasibility of starting and running businesses in countries, Bulgarian Economist Simeon Djankov, along with Harvard Professors Oliver Hart (Nobel Laureate 2016) and Andrei Shleifer started the Doing Business report at the World Bank. The report was also intended to serve as impetus for countries to make reforms in their economy that would encourage the advent of businesses and increase investment from foreign sources.
What is the Doing Business report and why does it matter?
The Doing Business report, first published in 2003 by the World Bank Group, ranks all the economies in the world based on enforcement of business regulations to domestic medium and small-sized companies. It was started to enable the consideration of variables such as the duration of court procedures and degrees of social protection, to shed light on matters that were generally overlooked when judging how business-friendly an economy truly was.
What does the Doing Business report include?
Back in 2003, the report covered only 5 indicators and 133 countries. This year’s report, published on 31st October, 2017, includes a list of 11 factors important to consider when starting an entrepreneurial venture:
· Ease of doing business, which measures the informal nature of an economy. It tells us the extent to which unregulated markets, such as the one for vocational labour, were able to enter the regulated economy, and thus actively contribute to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country.
· Labour market regulations, which measures the general working conditions in an economy, including ease of hiring, working hours, redundancy of labour (the extent to which new hires are surplus) and job satisfaction.
· Dealing with construction permits, which deals with the number of construction permits required and the ease with which they can be acquired, the strength of quality control for the materials used, and the general level of bureaucracy.
· Getting electricity, which evaluates the procedures, time and cost of securing a permanent electricity connection, along with the transparency of supply and tariffs.
· Registering property, which looks at the procedure, time and cost involved in registering property free of title dispute, and the quality of land administration in the country, which involves looking at the transparency and reliability of information.
· Getting credit, which measures the strength of credit reporting systems (to facilitate access to information about efficient credit lending) and effectiveness of bankruptcy laws.
· Protecting minority investors, which measures strength of protection put in place for smaller shareholders against the misuse of corporate assets by directors for personal gain.
· Paying taxes, which measures the rigidity and level of taxation in the economy, as well as the administrative burden in paying taxes.
· Trading across borders, which evaluates the logistical process of exporting and importing goods, including documentary and border compliance and domestic transport.
· Enforcing contracts, which measures the time and cost of resolving commercial dispute through a local, first-instance court and the quality of judicial processes.
· Resolving insolvency, which measures the time, cost and outcome of insolvency proceedings.
In this year’s report, there were some countries, regarded as developing economies, which made big jumps in their rankings. Below, we look at the changes made in the past year that could have led to the improvement.
· India (130 to 100): Changes were made in all spheres except getting electricity and registering property. With the Union Budget introduced this month and the long-awaited cut in corporate taxation not following through, the paying taxes indicator might have lower scores next year. Nevertheless, a jump from 130 to 100 is a strong indicator of international approval of the way the Indian economy is functioning.
· Kosovo (60 to 40): Kosovo made changes that affected only three rankings but was able to jump 20 points up in the rankings, from 60 to 40. While the GDP growth has only been 4.4% in the last quarter, it made the process of registering employees simpler, strengthened access to credit through new laws and made dealing with insolvency easier through liquidation procedures.
· Uzbekistan (87 to 74): The Uzbekistan Government made improvements in five factors, including the ease of starting a business, getting approvals for land plots and securing an electrical connection, helping it jump 13 ranks. This, along with the electronic systems introduced to file all taxes in one place reduced bureaucracy paints a favourable picture of the Uzbek economy. However, an recent upset for the country has been the drop in the position in Index of Economic Freedom and speculators will want to look into it before making any predictions about the economy.
Helpful and insightful as they are, these rankings have their limitations: the kind of factors they choose to include and omit. Different entrepreneurial minds might be looking for varied factors when deciding the country that will suit their venture best. Given the credibility of the World Bank and the weight its opinion holds, however, this report still influences the rapidly growing entrepreneurial culture in developing countries like India.
While India has performed well this year, with General Elections due next year and the Union Budget being released recently, it will be interesting to see whether India will continue this upward curve. Kosovo, on similar lines, seems to be bracing itself for an economic slump; a recent press release by the executive board of the IMF outlined the dangers of low labour force participation, saying that high unemployment and high informality could severely affect the country’s position in next year’s report, given that these are measures specifically explored by the report. Finally, for Uzbekistan, even upsetting drop in the Index of Economic freedom, all hope is not lost. The country’s recent reforms towards liberalizing the economy, such as removal of trade barriers and permitting the export of agricultural products have garnered praise from various sources including Kristalina Georgieva, CEO of the World Bank, which could work in favour of the country’s rank next year.
Thus, with reforms being made everyday, keeping in mind the several variables that affect economic decision-making, a definitive stance about the benefit of a jump in rankings and possibility of maintaining positive progress remains to be seen.
Access the report here.
Here is a note sent to The Edict by The Election Commission appointed to conduct elections for Ashoka’s fourth House of Representatives.
The Ashoka University Undergraduate student body election will happen in just under 2 weeks. With campaign in full swing, parties and candidates will lock heads to win seats in the House of Representatives. As the Election Commission, we are looking forward to bring to you a fun and participative election. The AUEC was established to conduct free and fair election to the student House of Representatives. It is our job to organise the election debates, oversee the voting procedure, count the votes and declare the results of the election. However, before we delve into the details of the election, allow us to share some crucial changes that were made by the EC and approved by the HoR.
A new amendment has defined that under the present election system at Ashoka, candidates who contest as part of a party’s list are extensions of the party and not individual members with independent mandates of their own (this, of course excludes individual candidates).Therefore, in case of a voluntary resignation of a representative from a party, the representative will lose their membership of the House. The resulting vacancy is then filled by the party member with the next highest number of votes garnered in the previous election.
Secondly, the electoral code now specifies the penalties the AUEC can accord to any violation of the electoral code, shown below:
Now, to the fun stuff. Continuing with the tradition of election debates at Ashoka, we urge you to mark your calendars on the 8th and 12th of February for two promising events — The Manifesto Presentation and the Presidential Debate:
The two debates and the (month) long campaign period will culminate on Election Day, the 15th of February. While in essence the voting process remains the same, we have a new voting machine in place. Designed by freshman and potential CS major Kshitij Kapoor, the new system will email a unique QR code to each voter on campus. On the voting day, voters will have to bring their QR Codes to the polling booth. The system will scan the QR Code directly from smartphones or from a printed copy, and authenticate the voter if the QR Code is valid, thus enabling a fair voting process.
In Kshitij’s words, what makes this software better than its predecessors is that:
Unlike the previous system, the new one keeps record of people who have voted using the unique QR codes. This removes the element of human error and greatly reduces the amount of human labor. Moreover, the QR Code based identification system makes the election process secure and tamper-proof, it also eases the process of proxy voting. This system also supports multiple polling booths.
Needless to say, we urge you to attend the two debates and cast your vote on voting day. It is your engagement with the process that makes Ashoka’s internal politics meaningful. So show your support, express your concerns, question the system, or reject a contender, but in the end, do make your voice heard!
Note: Previously, this article mentioned that the HoR had made the recent changes to the electoral code. This has since been modified because while the approval of at least 2/3rds of the HoR is required to pass an amendment to the code, it is only the EC which can suggest changes be made at all.
Aarushi Aggarwal, Batch of 2018
After last night’s less than impressive and rather disappointing Candidates’ Debate, one thing has become quite clear: Ashoka’s politics looks a lot like Indian politics. Apart from the shoe hurling, all else was accomplished: shouting, screeching, unparliamentary language, crying, storming off and an awkward walk/dance/jumping jacks — I can’t figure which — across the stage. Needless to say, it was no elegant affair; the element of solemnity that marks the event of elections was grossly amiss — and missed — replaced by a mockery of the election system and very obviously of the candidates themselves.
I had previously thought of writing a critique of all candidates’ manifestos except the events of last night don’t deem that effort worthwhile anymore. After the show put on last night, who can say that manifestos, or even these elections are a serious affair. The rationale, or lack thereof, that has gone into the candidates’ campaign has me baffled. While some resort to trolling, the others quite literally started as a joke and imagine that somehow by co-opting a present serving member of the House as their Presidential candidate, they will magically be everyone’s primary choice for the House. Even this Representative, if I may, was less than respectful to the process. In last year’s debates, the candidates were not known to hold their tongue. Apparently the success of the methods last year warranted a greater show this year, much to the chagrin of a lot of audience members. The said representative trolled their own party, claiming that before they were brought in, it lacked organisation and seriousness. Perhaps, a book or two on campaigning strategies will not be placed for the worse in their party meetings.
I will not limit my criticism to the appalling behaviour of the candidates. A greater lack was perhaps that of intellect. The debates were devoid, completely bereft of, any organised thought whatsoever (save a couple of candidates) to the extent that a group of individuals who have organised themselves into a party, with a party list, in an election designed on a party list system, claim that they are merely independent candidates who are giving the electorate the chance to elect six individuals — not a party — by actually voting for their party. Their reason for this odd political setup is based on the false claim that the House votes along party lines. If they had shown up for even one House meeting, they would have seen otherwise.
Prakrit put up one of the more stable presentations last night. Although the speakers are novices themselves, they have the benefit of the aegis of some older members of not just the House, but also the Undergraduate community. Moreover, the two speakers from the party — the only two candidates that I can account for — have actually attended House meetings and therefore understand what it entails. Unlike Prakrit the other new party around the block, in many ways, mirrors the other party that had come up just before the elections last year, which is now defunct and whose members lost interest in being representatives less than half way through their term exemplified by their abysmal attendance records and lack of attention (being lavished on course readings instead) during meetings. While I cannot make predictions for Moksh, I certainly hope that their service in the House will be of a higher quality than their memes.
The independent candidates, on the other hand, completely misunderstood the purpose of elections. I suppose nobody gave them the memorandum of what House of Representative elections, campaigning and speeches are. While only two candidates had clear agendas, everybody’s speeches were mired by inaccuracy and passionate rants with less than credible solutions. Somehow, there is a misplaced view that entry to the House is a means for candidates to push forth their personal agenda, and not what they believe to be the requirement of the undergraduate community. However, elections are not about choosing a person with the best vision or ideals, it is about choosing a person with realistic goals and a work ethic that can achieve them. This is perhaps my greatest worry from yesterday’s debate: apart from the general lack of quality, the very conception of democracy has been muddled with some weird form of humor and aimless political drama.
Following the example of the American elections from 2016, all we have can do is choose from among the lesser of the many evils. Responsibility is on us, as the electorate, to find the 15 candidates who can somehow constitute a House that maintains some semblance of responsibility, seriousness, intellect and hard work.
Aarushi Aggarwal is in her third year in the Undergraduate Program at Ashoka University. She was a part of the 3rd House of Representatives and stood as an independent candidate.
Ishaan Banerji, Batch of 2019
Ashoka University will be hosting India’s first ever National College Ultimate Championships this weekend(10th and 11th February). Five college teams from across India, along with two Ashokan teams, will congregate to compete for the title of the country’s best college Ultimate team.
The teams that are participating are IISc (Bangalore), Christ University (Bangalore), Delhi University (Delhi), Jain University (Bangalore), ISB (Hyderabad) and two teams from Ashoka(Ashoka Hammerheads and Hawks). Christ University, IISc and the Hammerheads are the most established of the teams present, and will have to battle it out against each other for the top seed. The profiles of the teams can be found on the National College Ultimate Championship page on Facebook.
As the first national college tournament, NCUC’18 marks what may be a great new period for India’s Ultimate arena. The participation of colleges and schools is integral to the overall growth of any sport, and beginning with this tournament, one may expect to see greater involvement by colleges in the Ultimate tour, which as of now is mainly populated by clubs. In USA, for example, many of the best college players go on to make their marks at the pro-league level in AUDL(American Ultimate Disc League) and even at the international level. With this new arena for Ultimate tournaments set up, it can be expected that the number and quality of players involved in Ultimate will increase.
A number of star mentors will be present at NCUC, including some who have played for India. Vivekanand Srivastava has represented the Indian team on multiple occasions, and Abhishek Srinivas, affectionately called Cisa, played for the Indian Open Team at WUGC 2016, and currently is part of one of the elite Indian teams, called Learning2Fly. Jaidip Patel, the coach of Ashoka Hammerheads and a former President of the UPAI, will also be present. Jaidip was one of the people involved in the growth of Indian Ultimate, has also played multiple times for India, and was the founder of 91 Ultimate, India’s only Ultimate gear store.
With some great teams coming in from across the country, NCUC looks set to be a great tournament, with bragging rights and a beautiful trophy up for grabs. Make sure you come out onto the football field to support the Ashokan teams, and see some great Ultimate!
Varisha Tariq, Class of 2019
Advice I would have given to my mother on her wedding day
one
you are allowed to say no
— Rupi Kaur
I sit in the auditorium, waiting for her to arrive. The show is officially running late, so I switch on my phone to distract myself. I am in Delhi’s Kamani auditorium, a six hundred-seater hall. The place quickly fills up by 5 PM, but it is only around 5.30 PM that the stage is set up. Everybody moves to the edge of their seat, anticipating her arrival.
There have been times when Rupi Kaur’s poetry has been very hard hitting for me; some of her bite-size Instagram poetry posts are saved in a quotes folder on my phone. But they have never hit me hard enough to go online and buy her books. Still, I wasn’t one to turn down a poetry night. So I bought my tickets and went. As far as I was concerned, it was either going to be good or going into my “experience list”.
Kaur’s poetry has always been simple. She writes about subjects that are ‘common’ in the spoken word circles; her choice of these common subjects has garnered her a lot of negative reactions. Yet, when she performs, I cannot keep my eyes off her. She is hilarious and confident, with a voice made to recite poetry. Words and verses that seemed simple on my Instagram feed suddenly have a deeper meaning. I am so mesmerised by her performance that when she recites my favourite poem, “Legacy”, I forget that I can record it. Kaur’s honesty on paper strangely becomes something more intimate — more personal — even as she performs in a room full of strangers. It is like we are sitting across each other and talking about the struggles of being a brown girl, of being body shamed, of being slut shamed, of having a broken heart, or a broken soul. Her performance is absolutely riveting. Later, I keep looping the videos I remembered to record.
I also end up ordering both her books as audiobooks.
To all those who think that her work isn’t good enough to receive the overwhelming positive response it has: you should see her perform. Her voice holds an incredible amount of power; it flows like a song that hits right where it hurts.
My advice? Buy those damn tickets the next time.
Aashay Verma, Class of 2019
(Author’s note: I understand how this can be problematic, a man writing on women’s representation, but having crunched all the Ashoka-related data I’m going to use in this article myself, I felt only I could best articulate what I wanted to convey with it)
The issue of women’s representation in world politics has been around for centuries now. Starting from the simple right to vote to other seemingly complicated legal rights, women have always had to fight their way through.
According to World Bank data, the proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments worldwide has jumped from 11.7% in 1990 to 23.65% in 2017, more than a 100% increase. Leading the world in women representation is Rwanda, with an impressive 61% of the seats in parliament held by women. India still has a long way to go, standing at rank 145, with 12% of the parliament seats held by women. The figure for 2017 shows that even though there has been a push in countries around the world to give women more positions of power, a lot of work is still to be done.
The situation is much better when it comes to Ashokan politics. To be fair, though, we are an undergraduate body of roughly 1000 people and the world has over 7.6 billion people, so the statistics are not comparable. We can, however, compare this year’s Ashoka data with last year’s, which is exactly what I intend on doing.
Using the information made available to entire student body by the Ashoka University Election Commission (AUEC), I compiled data to analyze women representation in our university’s student politics. The analysis will be party-wise.
Dhamma
Rising to power with 188 votes in 2017–18, Dhamma’s women representation in its candidate list was almost half:
For parties, the ranking of a candidate on the candidate list can have a bearing on whether they get elected or not. This was specially true of Dhamma in last year’s elections. From a 15-candidate list, 7 made it to the house, 6 of whom were the first 6 ranks of the list. The average rank of a woman on Dhamma’s list was 10.28, while for men it was 6, a little more than half of the former. It is therefore not surprising that only 2 of the 7 Dhamma members who made it to the House were women.
This year, Dhamma has decided to not contest in elections.
Prakrit
One of Ashoka’s longest-running parties, Prakrit had a proportion of women in its candidate list similar to that of Dhamma’s:
The startling fact about Prakrit’s representatives in last year’s House of Representatives (HoR) was that even though there were more women in the candidate list, all 4 Prakrit members in the HoR were men. This was in spite of the fact that the average ranking for Women in its list (8.875) was relatively closer to that of Men (7), if we compare with Dhamma. The list had 15 people.
This year, Prakrit is back with a new 14-member list, but the proportion of women in the list has fallen:
The average ranking for women, however, has improved to 8.33, with that of men improving to 6.87, but this could be because they have one less candidate running this year. Topping the list is also a woman, Esha Datanwala. The list this year has a lot of fresh faces with the current third and fourth-year undergraduates bidding farewell to their university lives.
Samiti
In an e-mail to the entire student body on 30th January, 2017, Saptarshi Basak (Pixie), the founder of Samiti, wrote on behalf of the party:
“ We somehow feel that the exclusive nature that the political parties on campus are so quick to deny, can only further be explained by their impotency, lip-service and mailed clarifications that move no one…..We are attempting to form a new party, a party called Samiti which won’t be run by toothless dogma, but by a persistent pursuit of veritable change.”
Samiti gained instant popularity across campus and managed to bag 97 votes, giving them 3 seats in the HoR. The gender-composition of its list looked like:
With 2/3rd’s of the list being populated by men, it was not surprising that all 3 members of Samiti in the HoR were also men. The average ranking of women in Samiti’s candidate list was 9.6, more than that of men, whose average ranking was much higher at 6.9. A few months after the new government was formed, Zoheb Bedi, Samiti’s top-performing candidate, resigned from the house. To make up for the empty spot, Dhamma brought in Samyak Shami.
After their first election cycle, Samiti disbanded.
Independent Candidates
Last year, Ashoka’s elections had only 2 independent candidates, both women: Aarushi Aggarwal and Srishti Bansal. Both of them got elected to the house.
This year there has been a meteoric 400% rise in the number of independent candidates to 10 individuals. The gender distribution, however, shows a large divide:
Moving to Election season 2018–19, we have seen the founding of 3 new parties: Bringing Justice to the People (BJP), Moksh, and Independents’ Bloc.
Bringing Justice to the People (BJP)
In an email to the entire student body on 1st February, 2018, Anindya Longvah, BJP candidate, wrote wrote on behalf of the party:
“ The BJP started out as a joke. However, as we progressed and gained members, we realized how acute the need for a new party is….We discovered new friends. We found a new family…. However, WE WANT TO GIVE POWER TO YOU. Therefore, all Ashokans are hereby given the opportunity to add issues/points to our manifesto; THE ASHOKAN MANIFESTO.”
The party has roped in Srishti Bansal, who ran independently last year, as its presidential candidate. The gender distribution of its candidate list looks like:
BJP is the only party with a 15-candidate list this year. The average ranking of women in the party list is 8.16, as against 7.88 for men. Considering that 60% of the candidates are men, the average rankings suggest an even distribution in the list.
Moksh
Arnav Mohan Gupta, in his email to the entire student body on 4th February 2018, introduced the party as:
“ Ashokan Politics is in its phase of revolution. Unprecedented volume of voters, emergence of new parties, turbulence within old ones. It is certainly the age of renewal. With this thought in mind, we proudly present Moksh.”
The party has submitted a list of 14 candidates to the AUEC, whose gender composition looks like:
With a 50–50 distribution between Men and Women, Moksh seems like the party with the best representation of women. That is till we look at the average ranking of women in its list: 8.57, compared to 6.42 for men. Since both Prakrit and Moksh have a list of 14 representatives this time, we can compare the averages directly. This comparison tells us that even though Moksh has more women in its list than Prakrit does, the latter has ranked women in its list higher than the former, albeit only marginally.
Independents’ Bloc
Finally, we come to Independents’ Bloc. Having a short party list of 6 people, this party was the last of the new parties to have formal communication with the Student Body:
“ We are a group of individual candidates who feel that the party-system has let us down this cycle. We are united by one common vision.”
The 6 people comprise of 3 men and 3 women, giving the gender composition chart this look:
However, this can be misleading, because looking at the average ranking of men and women in the party’s list paints a different picture. On an average, women are ranked at 4.33, compared to 2.66 for men. We must keep in mind, however, that the list only has 6 names. An even placement of alternating between men and women along the ranks, i.e. ranks 1,3,5 for women and 2,4,6 for men (or vice versa), would have yielded averages of 3 and 4 respectively.
Having analyzed the candidate lists of all parties that will contest this year and those that contested last year, I made this observation:
The average ranking for women in the candidate lists leading up to elections 2017–18 was 9.55, compared to 6.65 for men. This is based on data from 3 parties with 15 candidates each.
This year, the average ranking of women has risen to 9.05, and that of men has fallen to 7.33. This is based on data from 4 parties, having 15, 14, 14, and 6 candidates. For those parties with less than 15 candidates, I normalized the rankings for uniformity.
If there were to be an equal ranking of men and women in party lists, i.e. 1,3,5,7..15 for women and 2,4,6,8..14 for men (or vice versa), the average ranking for both men and women would have been 8. Any figure higher than 8 means lesser representation, and a figure lower than 8 means better representation.
We can hence conclude that the overall representation of women in our university’s student politics has improved year-on-year, which is an encouraging fact. Moreover, 2 parties this year have women topping their candidate lists, something no party did last year.
That being said, women continue to be ranked below men in candidate lists. But with the difference narrowing down to 1.72 this season, I am confident that we will achieve complete equality soon.
I leave you with the gender composition of the HoR, 2017–18:
It will be interesting to see whether this changes this year, and by what magnitude!
Manasi Rao, Batch of 2018
This article is not meant to further engage in the controversy of April 2017, nor to malign the current and former Ashoka University Election Commission (AUEC), The Edict, or any other individual. It is meant solely to provide an accurate, complete, and respectful narrative of the series of events that have transpired. Evidence is used as far as possible to substantiate any claims made, and citations and references are available to the reader if he or she wishes to know more. This pieces makes several corrections to the narrative presented in ‘Resignation of a Representative’ by Sparsh Agarwal (dated Jan 29th) and comments on what appear to be the Edict’s falling journalistic standards.
There are three points I wish to raise with this piece:
Sparsh Agarwal’s account of events is one which flattens out complexity and provides an incomplete picture. There are 15 relevant emails, including a string of 6 emails from a member of the former AUEC asking me to resign repeatedly. The remaining members of the former AUEC were also cc’d on this thread and did not bother to correct their stance until four days later. All emails from the former AUEC commission to me were delayed (by 4 days and 7 days), causing more confusion. Instead of replying to my emails, the former AUEC seemed content speaking to members of Dhamma and other members of the house. Something similar seems to have happened now, when it appears (from a personal conversation) as though Sparsh had informed certain members of Dhamma before putting up this article, but not me.
Sparsh Agarwal also makes a passionate declaration of a fight for the truth and desire to uphold the people’s mandate, but fails to acknowledge that there already existed a mechanism for anyone to recall me from the House of Representative — petitions. If my resigning from Dhamma is public concern and violation of the people’s mandate, anyone could have filed a petition to have me removed from the house. Claiming that the former AUEC’s act of writing a retrospective amendment was their way of protesting my presence in house, is actually just misuse of the power that was handed to them. Also, bringing this matter up a year later undermines the public support I received both outside and inside the house. I received multiple emails from fellow students and the vote against the former EC’s amendment was unanimous.
However, what is more troubling is the fabrication of events and emails. No email of mine claims that I believed the “principle” (that a HoR member should resign if they have resigned from their party) was not on my side.This can be easily verified here. Moreover, I did not seek to exploit anyone or anything, but to use a precedent to fill in a loophole in the Election Code. Similarly, the minutes of the joint meeting held between the AUEC and HoR (April 13th), which had the largest audience the current HoR has seen till date, state that there was disagreement with the ‘principle’ on which the former AUEC suggested its retrospective amendment. Arush Pande and I, among a few others were vocal in opposing an amendment which would require an elected representative to resign based on their party affiliation. The house decided to throw the amendment out for multiple reasons, contrary to Sparsh’s belief.
I am not going to argue about the nitty-gritties of the proportional representation (PR) system, but maintain that in the absence of a law (not “ambiguity”), precedent is used. Moreover, even the application of the PR system to the tee in our current political set-up is questionable, considering that members of the house of representatives do not vote along party lines nor does a member of the house have any obligation to their party after they have been elected into the house. The author descends into a convenient interpretation of the PR system which suits his case.
I cannot help but point out that the court of law does in fact rise above an individual’s personal “court of conscience”. In the unfortunate absence of these fictional courts of conscience, a democratically elected house can categorically reject hastily put-together attempts to ensure my removal. Regarding retrospective rules, the examples you have provided have all been marred with controversy and one of the reasons is that the Indian constitution opposes retrospective laws (Article 20 (1) of the Indian Constitution, “No person shall be convicted of any offence except for violation of the law in force at the time of the commission of the act charged as an offence, nor be subjected to a penalty greater than that which might have been inflicted under the law in force at the time of the commission of the offence.”)
I believe that it is important to also address the lacking journalistic ethics on the part of the author Sparsh Agarwal and the team at the Edict. Sparsh Agarwal’s article went online late on Monday night and in its original form lacked appropriate citations, despite taking direct quotes, some of which were paraphrased. The article initially only mentioned the email only by date and the link to the complete email was added only after 3 days after being published, at my insistence. The absence of citations allows for a one sided story and quotations to be used without adequate context. In fact, there continue to be emails, such as the one received from Dr. Quraishi and my (fictitious) email stating that I agreed with the principle on which the former AUEC was demanding my resignation, which remain uncited.
Furthermore, the article was also linked to my Facebook profile without my consent. Similarly, I was tagged on Facebook by an editor of The Edict, Zainab Firdausi, and prodded to offer my opinion and arguments on the Facebook comments thread. Thankfully the link to my Facebook profile was removed, after I requested the Edict to do so, but it raises the question about the purpose of Sparsh Agarwal’s article and the kind of debate some editors aspire to initiate. Facebook kangaroo courts and comments section debates are hardly the constructive discourse the Edict promised its readers a few weeks ago. The task of ensuring credibility of a newspaper rests in the hands of its editors.
Half true “opinion pieces” pose an additional threat to the student and institution of The Edict when published on the internet. On the internet they become accessible to the general public, who does not have access to university emails nor to the students targeted in the pieces. While people at Ashoka have the opportunity to form opinions that differ from those of Sparsh Agarwal, the general public does not hold that opportunity. This makes the one-sided account the only narrative available. There is a possibility of this slanderous article reaching graduate schools and employers, which can lead to long lasting repercussions. This possibility cannot go unmentioned because Sparsh Agarwal’s article was reposted in its original form (with the tag and without the citation) by ‘epeak News’. This disturbing development was brought to the attention of the Editor-in-Chief by a friend of mine and despite attempts by the Edict to take the piece down from this dubious website, the article remains the on the epeak News website. This article, which has not been fact-checked and nor does it include a disclaimer stating the same, is available on the website of a third party.There is no reason why this should not be a serious cause for concern for every Ashokan. It is time for the Edict to call out journalistic malpractice with greater earnest.
Questions should also be raised about the obvious conflict of interest since Sparsh Agarwal was closely involved in the events surrounding the aftermath of this controversy. If indeed the objective of the article was to shed light on the new round of amendments proposed by the AUEC, then an impartial person should have been chosen to write the article. In fact, the original article by Sparsh Agarwal even lacked clarification about the complete role of the AUEC in the controversy. As managing editor, Sparsh seems to have decided against fact-checking.
Lastly, it is important to question the point of this article. The last sentence is the only part of the article that links it to current affairs of the house of representatives. The rest of the article reads as a targeted attack, or at the very least old news being rehashed for publicity. If there were no qualms about using choicy bits of my email to the student body because it is “available on public domain” (not really, only to former first, second, and third years) then Sparsh Agarwal would not have needed to write this article, because nearly all of what Sparsh Agarwal mentions in the article is already in the former EC’s “public” email. He brings no new arguments, nor any fresh perspective to the events. It seems that this article has been used only to blame me, the previous Election Commissions, and a democratically elected house of representatives who democratically voted against an amendment. This is not to say that a media house must not criticize a democratic body, in fact, that is one of its primary functions. There is plenty of reason to criticize the house, and I’ll join you in that endeavor. For example, a similar amendment, regarding resignations from parties, in the Electoral Code, took place over email and was not deliberated and voted upon by the house since no meeting was called for it. Clearly, if there was concern regarding this piece of legislation the article would have read very differently.
Sparsh Agarwal’s article is not presenting an objective argument for procedural reform. It is a slanderous piece which uses a fellow student as fodder for gossip. One can only hope that over time more Ashokans will not have to fight for their narrative in the Facebook comments section or have to carry the pain and anxiety from becoming sensationalize unnecessarily. Making a cottage industry out of peddling half-truths and gossip is hardly the best way to build a credible student newspaper.
Manini Menon, Batch of 2019
Last night, in a surprising turn of events, the student body received an email stating Dhamma’s decision to no longer contest in the upcoming elections. The reasons they cite in their email may be summed up hence: (i) “structural and ideological issues” that arose due to (ii) the effect the impending threat of elections had on their “founding principles”, culminating in their decision to (iii) place above all their emphasis on “keeping their promises to the student body”. These reasons, broadly, led them to take some time off, compromising short-term gain for the greater good.
Additionally, some of the new members who had joined Dhamma this year were asked to leave the party.
The Edict spoke with two members of Dhamma who were removed from the party, Arnav Mohan Gupta and Kanishk Gomes. They argue that Dhamma’s explanation for their (Gomes and Gupta) no longer being in the party are untrue: neither were they inducted unfairly, nor did they express any ideological differences with Dhamma. Indeed, Gomes says: “there is no party at Ashoka whose ideology I believe in more than Dhamma’s”. When asked if he still believes in this ideology, he replied: “I believe the ethos of Dhamma, but I refuse to see it in the existing Dhamma”, and Gupta concurred.
When contacted for comment, Dhamma cited “irreconcilable differences”, and argued that Gomes’ words make manifest that they had different conceptions of the party ethos.
Gupta and Gomes have decided, in light of the events of the past 36 hours, to start their own party on campus, and contest this month’s elections.
Where does this leave the upcoming elections? As of now, the lineup includes Prakrit, the independent candidates who will soon be revealed to the student body, and perhaps the newly formed BJP, and the party that Gomes and Gupta intend to form. The latter two players are yet uncertain, since neither of them has formally declared an intention to contest elections or released any form of promotional material/manifesto. This translates to an effectively a one-party system, with a few individuals thrown into the mix.
While the events of the past day are sure to be narrated differently by each individual involved, there are some questions that are important for us to ask, as students and as voters. What will it mean when Dhamma makes its promised comeback next year? Did their two-year stint in power make them comfortable? Is it time to rethink the way in which elections at Ashoka are conducted? Is it time to reconsider the ways in which the party system at Ashoka operates, and ask tougher questions about the real ideological differences that come to light during the election cycle? Perhaps we must hold our elected representatives and the parties to which they belong to much higher standards of transparency and due process. What is clearly evident is that the coming elections will involve several new players, and hopefully, mark the way for a new game.
edict backup 