A few weeks ago, our inboxes were spilling over with emails about the Board of Management’s unsatisfactory decision in rejecting a Universal Grading Policy. In the mayhem of accusations, consolations and justifications, I saw the term ‘excellent’ being used to fill larger gaps than it could handle. It was like a flimsy band-aid. In a personal statement defending the decision of the BOM, Professor Raja Rosenhagen wrote, “Anything else (any other response to the situation in terms of grading) would not have been Ashoka — always striving for excellency”. He further went on to say “But we cannot, also not in the face of a global pandemic, refuse to teach, work, or study. Not at Ashoka — that is not who we are and that is not who our students are, either. If this were not Ashoka, the University could simply have shut its doors and done nothing.” This begs so many questions, “Then who are we? What is Ashoka? And what is this excellency we talk about?”.

Reading this mail transported me back to high school, where long speeches about great virtues of the institution (like ‘discipline’ and ‘etiquette’, we’ve all heard it) were made imposingly and with no context. It’s always a safe bet to shroud hierarchical decisions in allusions of superiority. We are least likely to question our own superiority complexes.

This isn’t a new narrative; I’ve been hearing phrases like ‘Harvard of the East’ and ‘world class’ since I began interacting with the Outreach Team for the admissions process. I’ve heard it around campus regularly from students, faculty and administration alike. In fact, our very website fundamentally defines Ashoka as “Liberal education at par with the world”, saying we receive, “a world class interdisciplinary education”. Except for ‘liberal education’ and ‘interdisciplinary education’, I don’t know what the rest of the terms mean.

Ashoka seems to face problems of comparative legitimacy. Since my first interactions with the admissions team, they’ve tried to convince me that traditional Indian education will leave me with no academic learning. That the students in public university’s mug up answers and write exams, that Ashoka is inherently different. The issue is, we’ve harped upon this to the point of demonizing Indian colleges and becoming completely convinced in our superiority. Surely the Indian education system has many fallacies, but we will never know them for ourselves. Ashoka derives legitimacy from a failing education system.

During the discussions on grading policy, there were several articles referenced from the Harvard Crimson in email threads, both in favour and against the P/NR system. Students questioned why Ashoka refused to adopt the P/NR policy, following in the footsteps of institutions it tries to emulate. Prof Rosenhagen retaliated with, you guessed it , another Crimson article. The main counterargument, aside from lack in student motivation, seemed to be — An Ashokan transcript doesn’t hold the same esteem as one from Harvard or Duke. Students in SG meetings relayed this point, saying they won’t be able to explain themselves to graduate schools and employers. We strive to model ourselves like an Ivy League institution, but the social context and history of an institution cannot be imitated. This leaves us in precarious positions. Ashoka faces unique problems as a young and novel University in the Indian landscape, problems we must decipher for ourselves.

Ashoka’s superiority complex is paradoxical. It feels largely superlative in the Indian education scene, but inferior in comparison to globally reputed institutions. This constant act of drawing parallels leaves us with a distorted identity. We are constantly trying to dissociate from one identity and aspire towards another.. I almost laughed out loud, when the first main principle of the contentious examination policy being justified as intrinsically Ashokan, was titled — “conservatism”. Ashoka is clearly struggling to find its essence. We’re trying to be the ‘Harvard of the East’, but in this post-colonial landscape, why are we drawing legitimacy from Western institutions? Why must we constantly juggle our Indian and Global standing? Instead of constantly existing in this middling space, trying to one up Indian Universities and attempting to imitate Ivy League schools, it would serve us better to imagine ourselves independently, having a distinctive personality of our own. Ashoka has enough reason to pat itself on the back, but patting incessantly and fervently will just weaken our spines.

As we are frustratingly caught in the midst of the lockdown, the grand grading policy fiasco and hectic online classes, an impending issue has been relegated to the back burners — The North East Delhi crisis. The pogrom, which once incited many of us to take to the streets, has somewhat been locked in the past. The same cannot be said for the families affected by the sky-high fumes of the riots.

The families caught in this crisis have had to face two consequent blows to their mental, physical and monetary stability. The pogrom and violence that rendered many homeless, then the lockdown, which forced the families out of the citizen-run relief camps into the houses of neighbours, relatives and even mosques.

A group of volunteers from Ashoka visited the Eidgah camp in Mustafabad before it was dismantled. Several hundred people placed close to each other in one space. The families in Shiv Vihar and other parts of North East Delhi had not only lost their houses but all of their capital too. Important documents, vehicles, money and small businesses had burned down along with their homes. The violence caused a generational setback for families who were only barely getting by on a day-to-day basis in the first place. Many of them had shops that were burned down. Now, with the onset of the 21-day lockdown, there is no avenue for earning as most earning adults were once daily wagers or shop owners who are now left bereft.

The literal loss of livelihood also sprouted severe mental distress. Children as young as 5–6 years are the youngest victims. Fear, trauma and paranoia run at an unparalleled high. “There was a single mother who told me that she and her child had witnessed several murders”, said a volunteer. Even families whose homes did not burn down do not want to return home out of anxiety.

The volunteers continued to check in with the families over the phone even after physically visiting them was made impossible after the lockdown. Essential supplies have almost run out and families do not have the means to buy them. According to a volunteer, restricted mobility further hampers the ability to get resources or find a permanent living arrangement.

The stories are chilling. A woman needed 12 stitches after fracturing her knee during the riots. A man had suffered second degree burns down his back while trying to rescue his family from the fire. Children as young as 4 months had untreated severe burn wounds, pregnant women needed ob/gyn appointments and patients with heart conditions lost their prescribed medicines. Urgent medical care was required but these families had no access to it. The problems pile onto the existing trauma of having their home charred into a warzone.

Families whose homes burned down in the riots had nowhere to go after the camp was dismantled. Although many moved in with their relatives, this was in no way a sustainable arrangement. There were 5 families (25 people) living in the squalid confines of a house as small as a regular-sized room. People were wary about moving in with overburdened relatives. Masjids began to accommodate people, but many were apprehensive about living in a place of worship.

The first place the volunteers were taken to was a madarsa (that was burnt in the pogrom) to deposit the supplies for the relief camp. A distinct memory of dettol lingers on, hygiene and sanitation was of peak priority in the camps and individual bottles were distributed in addition to food, supplies, and toiletries. Then, the threat of a looming pandemic was the last thing in the minds of the now displaced and traumatized citizens of North East Delhi, but currently news media have conflated the pandemic with communalism and is not erasing the actions of the pogrom, but putting the onus of every problem including a health emergency on a certain group of people, just because of their religion. False videos of muslim vendors and missionaries spitting on produce, and in one case even the police is used to justify blatant islamophobia. Some hashtags that trended on twitter were #CoronaJihad and #TablighiJamatVirus, a communal narrative that believed muslims to be “weaponizing the coronavirus” to target Hindus. The WHO was mindful of the racist connotations, and was quick in coming up with a name for the virus that eliminated (with little success) any possibility of it being called a China Virus. However, that does not seem to be the case in India. After the Nizamuddin incident, the preexisting notions of the disease being the result of a particular group was justified in the minds of news media and sanghis. Leaders of the ruling party have blatantly termed it “Corona Terrorism” and India Today uploading an infographic that targetted the incident, hate speech is masquerading as investigating journalism as journalists conduct sting operations in madarsa’s much the one one in NE Delhi and report them as hotspots of the virus.

The larger context of the islamophobic narrative that the pandemic has justified in India has direr consequences for the victims of the pogrom. Apart from the larger tensions, the outbreak of COVID-19 stripped them of all choice. Once the Eidgah camp was disbanded, entire families were left stranded on the streets. In one case, a heavily pregnant woman and her family were left stranded after their house burned down in the riots and the relief camp was disbanded.

The riots and the pandemic coupled together have had a catastrophic effect on the people. Cash and capital was destroyed. The Delhi government’s awfully inadequate response was passing out one portion of poorly cooked rations per person. Many families do not even own bank accounts and are relying on neighbours and relatives with digital wallets. Ashokan volunteers have tried to alleviate these struggles. So far, 1 lakh has been collected for 25 families to buy essentials like food, non-perishables, basic first-aid kits, sanitary napkins, diapers, etc.

In February, many of us took to the streets to protest against the riots. It was an event in history that will remain unforgettable. But the truth stands — the riots have only lasted in our memories and have, in no way, changed our lifestyle. The same cannot be said for the families who lost their lives and livelihoods in the riots. For them, the riots will have lasting impacts, with many helplessly bearing the brunt of it for the entirety of their lives. While protesting is an important and necessary means of resistance, it is just as important to actively help those affected to rebuild their lives, or get through these strife-torn times. The very least we can do at this point is to donate and volunteer remotely to help coordinate getting supplies to families. There are still a handful of people present on-ground where circumstances are extremely dire, who continue to relentlessly attempt to deliver physical rations — the least we could do is help.

You can donate towards relief work to -

Sreya Majumder: Paytm: 8017133948

UPI: sreyamajumder98@okhdfcbank

Rithvik URS: Paytm: 9600189875

Gowri Kolal: BHIM: 8762733018

Abdul Paytm: 90368 58532

UPI to abdulmmjd@oksbi

Shubhang Ojha: Paytm: 9990949608

Salted Wounds: North East Delhi bleeds during the Pandemic was originally published in The Edict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Aayra Angrish, Undergraduate Batch of 2022

While it has been short of two semesters since I joined Ashoka, there was one fact I was made clearly aware of by the first two weeks- the Student Government could be bashed and blamed for any and everything. This was a trend that, although unfamiliar to me, seemed to have caught on with everyone else ages ago. It came across in emails, ironically forwarded by SG members to the rest of the student body, with concerns regarding what the SG was doing about this, and accusing them of that. This made me wonder- is it always authority that is decried by Ashokans when something goes wrong? If so, does accountability lie with the authority being blamed?

There seems to have emerged an ‘otherisation’ of sorts between the rest of the student body and SG members. The student body that elected the SG from within itself now demands action and solutions from SG members due to the fact that they elected them, and rightly so. However, stemming from such demands, is the Ashokan tendency to sideline facilitation concerns that accompany their lofty demands for immediate results. Is it this very tendency that enables Ashokans to blame whoever is higher up in terms of ascendancy- even if it is by a miniscule amount?

An effective way of looking at these questions would be to first seek the plausible motivations behind an Ashokan blaming authority such as the SG. One could gauge from the latest public emails to the SG that a large factor playing behind them was the pure frustration that came with the shift to online platforms for classes. These motivations could be attributed to personal reasons as well, such as emails demanding an improvement in the quality of mess food so that one can simply eat better food.

Motivations need not always be so simple, but a complex amalgamation of the two factors instead. There also seems to be an overarching motivation behind all emails that the SG receives involving concerns, accusations and demands- a motivation to improve Ashoka as an institution and the lives of people part of its community. This, as opposed to the Ashokan apathy that everyone talks about at length, shows that there is this sense of empathy in all emails that demand an improvement or change in Ashoka.

Now that we have a handle on what could be going on inside an Ashokan mind while typing out such emails, we can consider the best possible manner for this mind to voice such concerns or demands. It is important to understand that bashing SG members, as was done in the last email thread regarding their inaction, is not the most efficient way of dealing with such matters. In fact, it could even demotivate SG from taking prompt action. After all, a bad tone only deviates everyone’s attention from the issue at hand. The frustrations concerning online classes were and continue to be important as a number of Ashokans face connectivity issues, unfavourable home environments and more. However, it is imperative for one to use such emotions of frustration and anger to make positive changes.

It is all the more important to aid the SG in such times rather than reviling them. A good way to do so is to identify the key issue and make its implications for the university evident. Additionally, a cost-benefit analysis for the University could be attached. Not only does this make things easier for SG but also helps facilitate student concerns to the administration along with a cost-benefit analysis that might make Admin understand issues better and take them more seriously.

I agree that it is not our job to solve the problems we raise. Nonetheless, aiding the SG in such ways would not only speed up the problem-solving process but also better our chances of receiving solutions closer to what we want. One must remember that the SG is limited to ideation and bringing student concerns to the Admin, who bear the actual authority to take further action.

While typing out public rants, one must understand the limits of the SG’s authority. Assuming that they have superpowers and can resolve any issue magically is too far-fetched. The SG is by all means accountable to the student body. However, expecting immediate results from peers, who are simply processing and forwarding the students’ concerns to the Admin, is a bit fantastical. Questioning them on not doing so is valid, but questioning them on something the Admin is accountable for is not. Understanding the difference between the two and their domains will help us hold the right individual or body accountable.

Consider the current situation. It has been over a month of University shutdown. The SG has appealed to the admin regarding the student’s discontent over the grading system, conducted surveys, and held virtual town halls. Additionally, students signed petitions and conducted surveys themselves. The issue was then verbalized during Dr Pramath Sinha’s talk and. Thus, we see that the SG perseveres even if the yield is unsuccessful- sometimes emerging victorious as of today with the unexpected grading policy change.

I believe we can stop otherising the Student Government and blaming them for every action- only if they are not responsible for it- and work for the betterment of all Ashokans. After all, it is empathy and not apathy that made us get so far, and empathy that will take us much further along.

By Akanksha Mishra, Undergraduate Batch of 2022

This year has not been one of the best ones, especially for the Ashokan administration. Since the day I first set foot on campus about eight months ago, there have been constant complaints by the students about the fallacies and shortcomings of the administration. A look back at the numerous issues that plagued the campus through the lens of the student body this year tells the tale of an apparently insensitive, and unaccountable Ashokan administration.

What has happened over the past year, however, parallel to the administration’s shortcomings in responding to student needs, has been a form of scapegoating by the student body in blaming almost all disagreeable decisions and policies on the administration. This two-way street had led to a sense of deep mistrust and debates being reduced to ‘Us vs Them’ narratives. This is visible most starkly by looking through the descriptive and informative annals of Ashokan students — the posts on Facebook groups.

1. The administration started its ‘power trip’, as dubbed by countless frustrated Ashokans, by arbitrarily revoking the weekend cross access timings as well as the mess policy without consulting the student body.

Another highly contested issue was the decision to house the ASP women in the barely constructed SH5, in the company of dust, health hazards, unattended pieces of metal and rods and the occasional monkey sighting.

1. A change in the Clubs and Societies policy stated that hereafter the events that Ashokans could hold should align with ‘Ashokan ethos’, a move that was seen by Ashokans as a sanctimonious hijacking of the definition of said ‘ethos’ by a group of administrators, which resulted in the term ‘Ashokan ethos’ becoming a constant gag among the student community.

While meme groups on Facebook are not the most trustworthy of records, they mirror what the students are feeling. Most jokes and posts are primarily to serve the function of eliciting laughter and do not mean to show disrespect, but the underlying emotion behind these memes was the feeling that the administration did not play an adequate role in solving problems and being directly answerable to the students.

These events and student frustration culminated in the famous Townhall organized by the then Student Government at Takshila, the overwhelming response to which was testimony to the fact that the student body was ready to demand accountability from the administration.

However, demands for accountability are one thing and constant vilification for every little problem on campus is another thing altogether. As the year progressed, posts like the ones seen above started circulating, portraying the administration as ‘totalitarian’, and ‘undemocratic’ and completely against student interests. This cultivated a level of deep mistrust for actions taken by any office of the administration in the student body, so much so that once any mishap occurs, the students rush to blame the admin — from locker thefts to a shortage of counselors at ACWB. The reliability of these claims is not in question here.

The trends of student conversations also show that there is no longer a distinction between different offices such as Res Life or Student Affairs, as the blame collectively falls on the ‘admin’. This probably comes from a conception of all offices of administration and organization being part of a larger single corporate entity which is why we find it easy to unceremoniously jumble them as one. But there are various other factors involved in decision-making processes like the BoM, VC’s office, founders and other stakeholders who all have different, well-defined roles. The idea then is to question and communicate.

When one delves a couple of years deeper into the archives of the Ashokan student body’s opinions (read: Facebook posts), we find much fewer complaints against the administration, and the ones that are there are the subject of rigorous debate with many students supporting the administration. Was this the case because the admin was just doing a much better job back then? One can hope. But student-admin controversies have always been a part of the fabric of university relations.

A more reasonable explanation for the current level of loathing and mistrust for the admin is the image that has been created recently wherein the admin has displayed callousness with regard to explaining itself and ensuring accountability. Students are left to their own devices to come up with possible ‘logical’ explanations for the administration’s actions. This, coupled with collective student frustration at the decisions has led us to overlook the admin as actual human beings with real responsibilities and complications and just made them out to be this arbitrary other, the root of our problems and the butt of our jokes. The admin is seen as the solution to all our problems. At the same time, they have been labeled as evil and seen to be acting against student interests. While this is neither rational nor true, it does provide the student body with an easy out by blaming them for their actions, considering we don’t have their side of the story.

The reason we need to think about this issue is the current situation. After the recent clarification by the Board of Management that the universal grading policy will not be changed and will depend on individual professors, the Ashoka cohort once again exploded with dissatisfaction and outrage at the BoM’s supposedly insensitive decision. The onus of the backlash by the students however, once again, fell disproportionately on the administration. The admin, once again, did not respond adequately to student demands. The cycle continues. This chasm between the students and the admin needs to be resolved by efforts from the admin if we wish to stop this endless otherization and come to agreeable conclusions. The goal is to understand the importance of effective communication regarding decisions made by the offices that affect all stakeholders, primarily students; and to understand why the tropes used in Facebook groups creep in mails soliciting accountability.

Why the Admin needs to Solve its PR crisis with the student body was originally published in The Edict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

By Aayra Angrish, Undergraduate Batch of 2022

Instruction Manual For Online Classes at Ashoka was originally published in The Edict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

-Deep Vakil, Undergraduate Batch of UG 2020

If parties keep functioning as nothing more than blocs of individuals, independents will keep getting blocked from the House.

I will remember the Ashoka University Student Government election of 2020 as an election of many firsts.

The first time that elections took place over a 2-day period, and reached a five-year high voter turnout, despite the student body being the biggest it has ever been.

Ashoka’s first woman Chief Election Officer, Amola Mehta, at the helm of the Election Commission. Our first woman President, Priavi Joshi.

And the focus of this piece, the first election conducted under modified Swiss PR.

An AUEC-sponsored referendum in November led to this change. Unlike in the previous system of one person-one vote, voters could cast upto 15 votes, and cast them across party lines.

While this gave voters more flexibility in their ballots, it also opened up the possibility of a voter not casting all 15 of their votes, and instead discarding some of them. As unimportant as it may seem, this discard of votes can also lead to strange outcomes. Case in point: this was also, based on the available records, the first election where independents contested but did not win any of the first 15 seats to be allotted. And this was alarming for many voters because not only had some of these independents amassed a sizable portion of the votes, but this system was supposed to be “better for independents” in the first place.

This shocking absence of independents, contrary to popular belief, is not a failure of Swiss PR. Provided that voters wanted the option to vote for different individuals across party lines, a system that allocates seats in proportion to one’s vote share is favorable to a system like FPTP, i.e. First-Past-The-Post, the other system proposed in the November referendum. If you take the figures from this election itself, FPTP would have given us a House with 12 Prakrit members, with 2 independents and one lone seat for Dhamma (this is assuming that LIBER AND U would collectively resign the 4 seats it would be allotted by FPTP). Unlike FPTP, which would reduce elections to a sheer popularity contest, Proportional Representation evidently helps keep majoritarian outcomes in check and provides safeguards for electoral minorities.

This Proportional Representation gets enacted using a dual-EQ model. An EQ, or electoral quotient, is the number of votes that translate into one seat. (A party crossing the EQ n number of times will translate into n number of seats for the party.) Instead of having the same EQ for parties and independents, the system uses two separate EQs:

It is clear from the formula itself that the difference between the two EQs is determined by the size of the list votes

The more the list votes, the lower the independent EQ gets, compared to the party EQ. A closer look at the election results will explain this role played by list votes.

If you see the breakdown of all the votes cast in this election, 38% of all votes cast i.e. NOTA and discarded votes end up not having any effect on the election at all. Of the remaining 62%, little over a fourth are list votes. (Fig. 1) The average voter cast votes to some 7 individuals, then gave almost 3 votes to a list, and proceeded to discard the remaining 5 of the votes on their ballot. (Fig. 2)

Fig. 1: Total Votes Cast (Distribution of NOTA, Individual, List, and Discarded Votes)

Fig. 2: Ballot of Average Voter (NOTA voters cast all 15 votes to NOTA)

Given that list votes constitute only 17% of all votes cast, it is not surprising that the EQ for independents was not much lower than the one for parties. Amongst parties, the split between individual and list votes is 70/30. If you further break down individual and list votes by parties, and vice versa, we make another interesting discovery: not all parties contributed to this pool of list votes proportionally. LIBER AND U actually has the greatest proportion of list votes — around 37% — in the total votes received by the party. Prakrit, Moksh, and Dhamma follow, with 31%, 23%, and 18% respectively. (Fig. 3)

Oh

Fig. 3: Party-Wise Distribution of Individual and List Votes (Independents get 1 individual vote per ballot)

What’s more, is that this shows list votes are not bound by how many people you field — LIBER AND U, which fielded 5 people, still raked in 25% of all list votes, while Moksh and Dhamma, who each fielded 7 candidates, have 16% combined. (Fig. 4)

Fig. 4: Parties’ Share of Individual, List, and Total Votes (Excluding NOTA and Discarded Votes)

So what does this tell us about independents in Swiss PR?

First, the dual-EQ system is designed in such a way that with an increasing number of list votes, it offers a proportionally decreasing quotient for independents. The EQ for independents is lowered if parties as a whole are doing better. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, the more list votes are cast, the easier it becomes for independents to win a seat.

Second, voters chose (or atleast, it seems like they chose) to discard almost twice as many votes as were cast towards lists. There is an unrealised potential of 5 more votes per ballot at the current rate of discard, which indicates a failure of parties to sufficiently gear their campaigning towards turning these into list votes. In part, this is also due to an apparent lack of ambition to form a ruling majority that strikes a voter who sees a list that does not even have 8 names on it.

Third, our election discourse is still very individual-based. Just a glimpse of the Instagram pages of the three parties — Prakrit, Dhamma, and Moksh — during the bygone campaigning period reveals that for every post that was about the party itself, there were nearly 1.5, 1.7, and 2 posts about individual party members, respectively. Such a campaign strategy is unsustainable in the short as well as long-term. Who knows, in a larger, more diverse electorate, when Ashoka is no longer as small and tight-knit a community as it is today, whether the average voter will even know the names of upto 7 different individuals on the ballot.

This is a pivotal moment in student body elections at Ashoka. Our overhauled electoral system has given us its first ever House, with a first ever clear majority that exceeds 8 seats. But no system is devoid of its players, and in this case, some players are still catching up with this paradigm shift. It is imperative that political parties expand their political imagination, and grapple with the larger question of ideology. In the current political climate, the convenient politics of vending machines and hot water seems too dated for this campus. Parties must refurbish themselves as effective vehicles to mobilise the various streams of political thought in our student body, lest they end up getting reduced to mere conglomerations of atomised individuals, reminiscent of another short-lived, 5-person bloc that contested elections in my first year at Ashoka.

Deep Vakil is a third year Politics and Society major. He was the President of the 5th HoR, and the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs in the 4th HoR. He is not actively involved in Prakrit anymore. His OpEd column talks about public affairs at Ashoka, with particular focus on student politics.

*Kindly note the article should not be treated as a rigorous scientific experiment — simply because it was never meant to be, and hence not designed as such. I did this only for the sake of my personal curiosity. However, with the return of smog and the conversations around it, I thought it would be helpful to share the results with everyone on campus.

“Are air purifiers any good?” is something I have often overheard at Ashoka and wondered the same myself. My roommate and I recently got an air purifier and I was curious to know how effective it really is. I decided to compare the quality of air at various locations to test whether there is any significant difference (thanks to Sachin Bhatia (UG 20) for lending me his real-time PM 2.5 level monitor that enabled me to do so).

As per the PM 2.5 level monitor I was using, here are what different levels (in μg/m3) mean:

0–30: Good

30–50: Moderate

50–100: Poor

100–150: Unhealthy

Above 150: Very Unhealthy

I am not sure whether there was any category above the ‘very unhealthy’ as the maximum level of PM 2.5 I encountered that day was 205 μg/m3.

First, I took the readings in outdoor areas and compared it with some common indoor areas. The results suggested that there is a considerable difference in the PM 2.5 levels indoors and outdoors. Then, I compared two rooms in the same dorm on the same floor, adjacent to each other so that they are almost similar and, therefore, comparable. The air quality was relatively better inside both the rooms as compared to the corridor. However, it was still ‘poor’ inside the room without air purifier. The room with air purifier had a significantly better air quality. The results make a good case for the administration to invest in air purifiers, possibly by integrating HEPA filters with the existing air-conditioning system. Here are a few snapshots for your reference:

Outdoor areas

The readings were taken on 8th November 2019 between 7:00 and 7:15 PM

SH3 Common room: 144 μg/m3

SH3 courtyard: 158 μg/m3

Outside new academic block: 172 μg/m3

Outside Library: 172 μg/m3

Common indoor areas

The readings were taken on 8th November 2019 between 7:15 and 7:25 PM

AC-02–005: 111 μg/m3

AC-02–001: 77 μg/m3

Inside Library: 42 μg/m3
The air quality inside the library was surprisingly good (relatively). The readings were taken on 8th November, when there were no air purifiers in the library.

Inside room (without air purifier): 95 μg/m3

As expected, the above results show that there is a considerable difference in PM 2.5 levels indoors and outdoors. The next step was to test the effect of air purifier in the room.

Comparing rooms with and without Air Purifier

In order to test the effect of air purifiers, I needed two spaces that are almost the same except that one has an air purifier and the other does not. For this, I chose my room (925) and my friend’s room which is adjacent to my room (924). My room had an air purifier whereas the adjacent room did not. Hence, my room was effectively the ‘treatment’ and the other room was the ‘control’.

Control: Without air purifier (924 SH3)

Treatment: With air purifier (925 SH3)

PM 2.5 level in the corridor, right outside the room: 207 μg/m3 | Time: 8:20 PM

PM 2.5 level in room 924 (without air purifier) with AC turned off: 95 μg/m3

PM 2.5 level in room 925 (with air purifier) with AC turned off: 25 μg/m3

PM 2.5 level in 924 (without air purifier) with AC turned on: 72 μg/m3

PM 2.5 level in 925 (with air purifier) with AC turned on: 15 μg/m3

As it is clear from the PM 2.5 readings above, there was a significant difference in the PM 2.5 levels in the rooms with and without air purifier — the former having a significantly better air quality. It holds true both with and without the AC running. At an overall level, the PM 2.5 levels are much lower indoor areas as compared to outdoors. However, the levels are still poor/unhealthy even inside the rooms (without air purifiers). The room with an air purifier was the only area that had a safe PM 2.5 level. Note that the readings were taken on 8th November, when the air quality was supposedly ‘better’ or ‘normal’. However, as the readings show, it was only ‘less worse’ — it was still extremely unhealthy at an absolute level, as it is almost throughout the year. I am not sure about the efficacy of the air purifier in extreme conditions like smog days.

I believe that the extremely dangerous level of air pollution throughout the year makes a good case for the university to invest in measures for mitigating the effects of air pollution. As per Rithupar Pathy, the Deputy Campus Life Minister, the administration is planning to tackle the issue by having another water cannon and more indoor plants. However, in my opinion, that is far from enough given the level of pollution we have on ‘regular’ days throughout the year, let alone the smog days! The only effective solution I can think of is to have a centralised air purification system, possibly by integrating the existing air conditioning system with HEPA filters.

Do Air Purifiers Work?- An Experiment was originally published in The Edict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Rithupar: Why did you want to become the election commissioner?

Amola: Elections on this campus until now haven’t been the most accommodating. They have preferred a certain type of politician. It prefers a person who can debate, be witty, snarky and out there. I do not think that is very democratic and there needs to be a change in the electoral process to make it more inclusive. Thus, I wanted to become the election commissioner.

Rithupar: Given your views, how do you plan on changing the structure of the debate?

Amola: The debate takes the flavour of the moderator of the debate. I would like to have moderators who aren’t doing it for the sake of the entertainment and drama but to help disseminate information through the debate and help the candidate bring out who they really are. Doing this would make sure that the debate serves its initial purposes and does not exist to merely entertain an audience.

Rithupar: So, what are your thoughts on the Swiss-PR system?

Amola: I like the Swiss-PR system. I was personally for it during the process of the referendum. I did not like the STV-PR, as one could not vote across party lines. On a campus like this which is only five years old, parties do not have rigid ideologies. What they have is a sense of community and what they have developed over a few years. Apart from that, there is not much setting apart parties in a student body that is very homogenous. Given that, the Swiss-PR makes it much easier to identify with parties which you have confidence in, in terms of what they do with their resources and community. It also allows you to identify people across party lines who do perform well, who are hard-working, deserve a place and are representative of the student body. You can’t have one party dominating.

Rithupar: Don’t you now think that there is an unfair advantage given to independents, considering they are guaranteed a spot in the debates? Each party can only give 1 or 2 individuals out of 15 such a platform during the electoral cycle.

Amola: I don’t think so. There are other resources which a party extends to individual candidates which independent candidates do not have access to. They are inherently worse off and thus the platform provided by the debate helps the make-up. Not bringing them in would have worse implications than having them there.

Rithupar: Are there any electoral reforms that you have in your mind?

Amola: Yes, we need to diversify the way in which elections happen. I don’t think that it should exclusively be about debates and the way in which people conduct themselves under pressure. It is important to some extent and doing away with debates in not fruitful. However, there are far more accommodating and less pressurising situations to put candidates in. After a certain point, debates don’t achieve much apart from gaining the attention of the general public. What is a must though is that candidates have the platforms to separate themselves from one another, given that parties don’t mean much in the larger sense other than the fact that they are communities. Given that, events like group discussions and interviews which bring the candidates closer to the people that will vote them in and be less formal are necessary. There must be information about them as people and how they are distinguished from other candidates in their own parties. There also need to be polls and response forms where people can raise issues they want to be talked about in debates and informal discussion sessions.

Rithupar: How do you plan on increasing voter turnout?

Amola: Voter turnout is a factor and result of many things. One of them is how engaging the electoral process is. Until now, the electoral process has been exclusive in terms of the people pushed through it. People who are popular and are able to speak well have been pushed to the top. Only those who like this sort of information and content have been engaged by the electoral process. When you diversify the electoral process, more interests will be catered to. This in itself will boost voter turnout. Also, the visuality of campaigns needs to be increased. Voters must be able to identify candidates and know the issues that they stand for and information about the candidates must also be pushed out through online platforms. This will provide more legitimate choices far more representative of the student body and people will engage with the electoral process more.

Interview with Chief Election Officer was originally published in The Edict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

1. “I took a couple of my friends home in the outskirts of Dehradun and took them around Dehradun and Mussoorie.” — Vidipt Dhasmana, UG ‘22.

2. “I went on a solo trip to Bir, Himachal Pradesh, where I went paragliding, explored monasteries, and went mountain biking with other solo travellers who I met at the hostel I was staying at.” — Isabel, UG ‘21.

3. “I spent most of the week on campus. The environmental cost of traveling within such conditions is significant. Also escaping is a privilege. Can millions of inhabitants of Delhi afford to escape? What about the environmental cost of tourism to the hills? Thankfully the air was clear during the day and I captured the warmth in a photograph. I was convinced that getting an air purifier was the most sustainable and ethical response — and that’s what I did.” — Sachin Bhatia, UG ’20.

4. [On campus for the duration of the break, facing the harsh realities of the situation.] — Anjana, YIF ‘20.

5. “I visited Shimla with some friends, and we did a lot of climbing and walking around, because even though the weather was cold, everything was so beautiful. [A friend and I went on an exploratory walk and after climbing up a steep slope, found a stairwell to sit down and catch our breath. The view from our apartment was stunning too.]” — Sahana Anand, UG ‘22.

6. Visited Shimla. — Khushi Shetty, UG ‘22.

7. “Roaming in the mountains, under the stars, listening to the whispers of the cold wind is how I would describe my stay at Dharamshala. This place isfilled with people and their amazing stories. Spending early mornings meditating followed by wandering into the mountains listening to pahadi music and exploring parts of the cities in the afternoons; evenings spent watching a movie or two at the Film Festival.” — Pranathi Jammula, UG ‘22.

8. “We organised an impromptu trip to Manali as soon as the song break was announced, immediately followed by a trip to Dharamshala during the weekend. Thirty students each went for both these trips.” — Club Atlas

By Deep Vakil, Undergraduate Class of 2020

If you ask me how my foray into student politics began, you might be amused to know that I actually wanted to join the Election Commission. I only considered political parties as the vehicle of my participation in campus politics after my application to join the Election Commission was declined in my second semester. Nonetheless, my interest in electoral systems lives on, both in my private life, as well as academically. An electoral reform referendum at Ashoka, then, is the perfect opportunity to share my learning. After a brief overview of each system and an exhaustive list of differences, I have tried to look at the reform from various standpoints: as voters, parties, independents, and the like. I would recommend the eager reader to skip to the final section, knowing that the claims therein are substantiated in the main body. I also undertook a comparative analysis of the three systems using the outcomes of the last three elections under each one, which can be found in the appendix.

The three systems under consideration are:

1. Single-Transferable-Vote Proportional Representation (hereinafter, STV-PR) which is the current system at Ashoka;
2. Multi-Member First Past The Post (hereinafter, FPTP), similar to the system followed in India, UK, and the US; and
3. Modified Swiss Proportional Representation (hereinafter, Swiss PR), which employs a modified version of the system followed in Switzerland, but with dual-EQ.

In the table below, I have listed, exhaustively, and as objectively as I can, every single difference between the three systems and how they work.

STV-PR

This system ensures proportional representation: the seat share of a party will be based on their vote share. What is unique to it, however, is that it ensures PR while respecting the principle of one-person one-vote, which also implies a simplicity to the system that neither of its counterparts can boast of. This is the only system that does not lead to any wastage of votes, i.e. every vote cast has an equal potential of influencing the outcome. However, this simplicity comes at the cost of voter choice, in terms of not allowing cross-party votes. As it follows, parties don’t need to make an effort to differentiate themselves in this system per se, because the ballot itself forces the voter to pick one over the rest. Finally, perceptually, a voter may think that by voting for an independent over a list, they are ‘wasting’ their vote, if they do not understand the concept of transferable voting.

FPTP

The promise of this system is the maximisation of voter preference, and maximise it does. Now, each voter can cast upto 15 votes for every single candidate they wish to see in the House. However, as a tradeoff, it kills, not two, but four birds with one stone: proportional representation, list voting, one-person one-vote, and NOTA, virtually making every candidate an independent candidate. PR gets replaced by plurality, which means the 15 most popular candidate across the field will get in, and can leave little to no room for representation from the electoral minority. The removal of list votes from the system means the voter needs to know all the candidates that they want to vote for by name. And should any voter choose not to exercise any of their 15 votes, it automatically leads to those votes getting discarded, i.e. a partial ballot will have lesser influence over the outcome. NOTA also becomes another type of wasted vote in this system, for it stands to have no bearing on the election whatsoever.

As the only system without proportional representation, there is a good chance that lists get a much bigger or smaller share of seats than their share in the total votes. This is in fact a regular feature of FPTP, with the best case being our 2014 Lok Sabha elections, in which the BJP won more than 50% seats even as it got less than a third of votes (also attached the outcome of 2017 UK general elections below.). The only difference is, while FPTP conventionally carves up the electorate into multiple constituencies that send one candidate to the elected body each, this version of the system makes the entire student body one single constituency which sends the top 15 candidates to the elected body, thus exacerbating the issue at hand. In my sample count, I also notice that the vote share of individuals declines significantly under this system. Here, I am inclined to believe that this problem will be minimised when the system is implemented, for two reasons: first, that independents are no longer competing against lists for votes, but in fact just need to find a place in one of the 15 votes that a voter can cast; and second, votes for individual party candidate will also deflate as they will no longer be able to piggyback on the party wave or receive the benefit of competing on the same list as more popular candidates. Nonetheless, the playing field for independent candidates gets more competitive, because as opposed to competing against 3 or 4 lists for votes, they are now contesting as one of over 40 separate individuals.

I have to admit I was quite surprised at the AUEC’s decision to even put this as one of the systems on the referendum, because the world over, people are moving away from FPTP. In Canada alone, there have been 7 referendums to switch from FPTP to STV or PR in some form. It is also worth noting that the Electoral Reform Society of the UK (the oldest such organisation) famously called FPTP “bad for voters, bad for governance, and bad for democracy.”

Swiss PR

This system is a hybrid of FPTP and Proportional Representation, meaning that it maximises voter choice by allowing to cast upto 15 votes for who you want to see in the House, while also ensuring that the seat share corresponds to the vote share. What differentiates it, then, from STV-PR, is that it gives up the principle of one-person-one-vote to provide for cross-party voting; it also retains two features of STV-PR that FPTP does not: voters can vote for lists as a whole, and NOTA still has an impact on elections. The option of list voting itself is another addition to voter choice, in that it now offers a broader option for those voters who do not wish to cast all 15 of their votes to specific individuals, which also reduces discarded votes. The dual-EQ system helps ensure that list voting does not disrupt the playing field for independent candidates, who cannot get list votes, as a separate EQ is calculated for individuals after subtracting the list votes from the total votes. Upon resignation, the individual candidate’s votes are deducted from the total votes and the seat share is reconfigured with the lower EQs. In my sample count, I notice that like in the FPTP system, with the current number of votes, we also see that independents do not get a seat in any of the sample counts, and here too, this problem gets minimised as independents are no longer competing against lists for votes, but in fact just need to find a place in one of the 15 votes that a voter can cast. More so, as the proportion of list votes in the total votes increases, the individual EQ gets lower for independents. Finally, you may note, NOTA in fact becomes more impactful with a greater vote share, as each NOTA vote sends 15 votes in favour of NOTA.

The Verdict: Various Perspectives

Voter: The STV-PR system ensures parity between every voter, through the principle of one-person one-vote. Given that my vote can only go to one list/independent, I do not need to be too informed as long as I have my mind made up on who I want to see in the House. If I agree with any of the above, or if I am a status quoist, I will probably vote for this system in the referendum. However, if I want to be able to vote across party lines, then I am looking at one of the other two systems. Under FPTP, unless I am a voter who comes to the polls with my mind made up on 15 names I want to send to the House, I am in for a lot of discarded votes. This is bad news for three kinds of voters: the less informed voter, who simply does not keep up with student politics as much; the voter that is not as ‘well-connected’, and would find it difficult to personally know 15 student politicians; and, the ideologues and party loyalists, who adhere to a party’s ideology, but do not know which of the party’s candidates are best disposed to carry it out. Worst of all, if I am a NOTA voter, it is as good as not voting in this system. Swiss PR has a place for both, the voter who knows which 15 candidates they want to vote for, and the voter who does not. As far as I know which party or bloc I support overall, few to none of my votes get discarded. It also empowers the NOTA voter even further. However, for those who believe in the principle of one person one vote, neither of the two reforms are acceptable.

Independents: Under the current system, I would feel like I am at a disadvantage against parties, because every vote to me is a vote that could have gone to a list, where it could fetch more than one seat, potentially even a majority to form government. But if I have to select an alternative, I have to weigh the trade-off in the two systems. In FPTP, on the one hand, I am not competing against lists so a voter is no longer forced to make an exclusive choice, but on the other, I am now up against a much larger pool of competitors, with over 40 individual candidates. And in Swiss PR as well, while I am not competing against lists, I still need enough votes to meet the individual EQ. The system however provides that I am only competing against a field of individual candidates, and not lists as a whole.

New Parties: The current system gives a good headstart to newer parties, because the election outcome depends on the total pool of votes that the parties receives. A move to either of the systems will put newer parties to a greater disadvantage, especially if the party is started by first-year students. They will be up against students who have been on campus for longer, and thereby have had more visibility — an issue gets exacerbated when each voter has 15 votes under the two proposed systems. However, at least Swiss PR in a way encourages new parties to not just depend on the faces of their candidates, but to come up with newer platforms and ideologies, so that under-represented opinions find somewhere to cast their list votes.

Established Parties: This is a system in which we are acquainted and comfortable, and it gives us the structural advantage of forcing the voter to choose between parties, so there is no incentive for us to necessarily promulgate any distinct ideology. We can bank on our more popular candidates to “carry” the less popular ones, and count on our loyalists to vote for us. At the same time, as the custodian of the House seats, we are fully accountable for any and all individual actions of its members, unlike in FPTP, wherein we are reduced to a bloc of independents in this system, without any formal accountability for the actions of individual members. If we want to get more seats, we will seek out the more popular kids to contest for us. We would also have a great disadvantage during campaigning, because each of our candidates are competing, not just with the rest of the candidates, but with each other. Because we probably won’t get to send all our candidates to the debates, this can also incentivise candidates to just run as independents to get the advantage of an assured voice at the debates. Then there is Swiss PR: because there is still list voting, there is accountability for the actions of individual members. However, because there is cross-party voting, unless we ideologically distinguish ourselves from others, we are still a bloc of independents. In other words, unlike STV-PR, parties need to ‘earn’ their list votes, because the system no longer compels the voter to pick one party.

Blocs: The current system is not conducive for any blocs to be formed successfully, because every list is equated to a party, and a list with fewer candidates, say less than 8, will find it difficult to get votes since they do not have a chance of forming a majority. Both the new systems give us more parity with parties, in that someone who votes for us need not discard the remainder of their votes, as they can now vote across party lines. For example, a list of 7 people does not need to displace an entire list of 15 to get votes, only enough of those members to make room for themselves on the ballot.

AUEC: For us, STV-PR is a fairly simple system to implement, but has its own technical challenges. Vote counting is somewhat complex, but that is only a challenge on our end, not the voter. Compared to that, FPTP is the simplest system to execute, in all aspects of managing an election, starting from candidate registration, to designing the ballot, to calculating the outcome. Finally, Swiss PR is the most complex to implement in the backend of things, in terms of the ballot design and the counting of votes.

House: The current system is the most stable system one can hope for. It gives parties control over the seats, so resignations will never lead to any reconfiguration of the seat share. That ensures a continuity across the term, and thereby, improves efficiency. Then there is FPTP, which creates an entirely individualistic House, one where each candidate can claim to be elected entirely on their own. This does not come without its pitfalls. Firstly, this could give us a populist House, with little to no representation from the electoral minority. Secondly, there is no collective accountability, meaning that if I resign, nobody else is answerable for me. This can also lead to instability, and more frequent reconfiguration of seat share. Finally, it makes consensus-building and collaboration — what I personally consider to be one of the primary functions of the House — more challenging. Swiss PR offers an amenable compromise — a balance of stability and individualism. Parties can potentially lose a seat over resignation, and there is the possibility of a reconfiguration of the seat share. That risk, however, will keep parties in check when it comes to control of individuals. More so, looking forward, when the student body grows in size, it’ll be all the more difficult for a voter to know 15 people by name, so the list votes become crucial in letting voters express their preference more accurately.

Appendix: Sample Counting for Last Three Houses

Here is a sample of the different Houses that each system would give us in the last three elections, provided that voter preferences remain constant across each system which is very unlikely. The voting data is from the AUEC, while my exact methodology can be found here, and I gladly invite everyone to identify and inform me about shortcomings or errors in the same. I want to give the reader due disclaimer that using the same election data makes an assumption about constancy of voter preferences under the three systems, and in my defense, I am making that assumption very knowingly, because that also reveals how we might expect voter behavior to change under the proposed systems, and evaluate their merits for ourselves. Below is a summary of my findings, and the legend is as follows:

1. Votes: self explanatory. Under STV-PR, it is taken as the sum of all list votes; under FPTP, it is taken as the sum of all individual votes; and, under Swiss PR, it is taken as the sum of all list votes and individual votes.
2. Vote Share: share of votes received by the group, expressed as a percentage of total votes cast.
3. Proportional seats: Vote Share ✕ 15, rounded down (Indicate how many seats they would have in a perfectly proportional allocation of seats.)
4. Won Seats: number of seats won by all candidate groups except NOTA under that system.
5. Skew: Won Seats-Proportional Seats (Indicates whether the number of seats they have is an under/over-representation of their vote share.)

Note: While NOTA cannot win seats, its allotted seats are calculated under STV-PR and Swiss PR to check whether a NOTA committee (2–5 seats), by-election (5–8 seats), or reelection (8 or more seats) will be required.

Deep Vakil is a Politics and Society major and IR minor, in the Undergraduate Class of 2020. He is the President of the Fifth House of Representatives, and served as the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs in the Fourth House. The AUEC designed the Modified Swiss PR System in consultation with him, specifically the dual-EQ model.

#HowAshokaVotes: An Exhaustive Guide was originally published in The Edict on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.