Deepak, what amazing memory! Wish I could playback conversations like you! You guessed right — I don’t remember the incident, or any debate with Harshan.

I was your junior by four years at school. I remember your election speech from 20 years ago . In the middle of your speech, you said something that the students found very amusing, so much so that they broke out into boisterous laughter. You didn’t see the humor in their overreaction and immediately admonished them, saying “There is no need to laugh so much” or something to that effect. Fr. Philip Thayyil, the Principal, who you may not have observed because he was seated behind your field of view, was very impressed by the way you put down the audience. He smiled and nodded his head in approval.

Staying with the topic of elections, albeit from a national perspective, I also happen to remember you and Ashok (the owner of this blog) standing on the steps at the east side of the main football field, and engaged in a spirited impromptu argument about the future of Indian politics. You were predicting that a particular political party which at the point of time has less than 90 seats in the Lok Sabha, would come to power. Ashok was predicting that it would never happen. Your prediction came true 6 years later. I doubt whether you gentlemen still remember this incident, but I still remember the ferocity with which you both were arguing your respective cases. Nice to see you guys at it again, even after 20 years!

Deepak

Really disagree…….I was a candidate for School Leader Elections in1989-90.I was from SSLC and Mr.Ben George from ICSE.Do agree there was a competition between SSLC and ICSE but it was really healthy.

I lost the elections by a Huge Marging of 4 Votes and I never felt any body was behind that, and to let you know, Mr.Issac Mathew was given the best Loyolite for that year, for his total academic performance.

Its all a part of life…..Take it positive.

In the 2007 batch, there were 47 students in ISC and 52 students in HSC. That’s the information I have. If you are confident that all guys in your ISC class voted for the ISC candidate, you are only adding more evidence to my observation that caste plays a role.

If the elections were transparent, such doubts about the role of teachers, would not have arisen. And every candidate would know how many votes he got from each class. The ISC vs HSC caste voting was the norm, and by all reports, it still is.

But caste wars will still continue… this time its gonna be one ISC class vs 2 CBSE classes. The school leader elections of the next few years are going to be some what like this….

2009-10 ISC(1) vs CBSE(2) vs HSC(1)
2010-11 ISC(1) vs CBSE(2) vs HSC(1)
2011-12 ISC(1) vs CBSE(2) vs HSC(1)
2012-13 ISC(1) vs CBSE(2) NO HSC CLASS
.
.
.
.
and so on.

Why the teachers and Principal now interfere in the election process may be because at some point of time some unworthy candidate might have become the school leader purely based on the so called caste votes..But for the last decade, Loyola has been getting some fine leaders…

2001-02 Arun Andrews
2002-03 Arun John
2003-04 Rakesh V
2004-05 Arun Mohan
2005-06 Rakesh P
2006-07 Aravind A Menon
2007-08 Syamnath G S
.
.
.
.

Practical ‘Democracy’ is just a mask of politicos layer maintained by the demand of power by the lower power layers (majority of the population), and the ever feuding capitalists’ need to prevent that transition of lowers into their group.

An idealistic solution may seem to be a distributive political framework, which is practical only in fantasy stories.

Better would it be for the political structural framework to be entirely traceable to a single point of concentration of power, with an ‘Emperor’ at the centre, rather than the pseudo political ‘structure’ promised by ‘democracy’ or the very unpractical ‘parallel distributism’.

The ‘Emperor’ may allow for the setting up of a multi-level distributism, as is exhibited by all of Nature’s natural obedients such an example being a humble tree (where the trunk is the ‘Emperor’) or the planets around the sun, the sun reigning over the rest.

So knowingly or unknowingly (the latter seeming the most true), Loyola is teaching (or showing) the students the true condition of the political structure in the outer world, in a very adorable way!

Hail Emperor Principal!

I do not deny to be a victim of caste politics and vote for candidate from my class.

In times like these, I wish that LENS had faithfully recorded the change in voting system, the official explanation, and the unvarnished truth.