Examine the role of the Lyngdoh Committee recommendations in shaping (or stifling) democratic political socialisation on Indian campuses.

Campuses are democracy's first classroom, where students learn contestation, representation and accountability. The Lyngdoh Committee, constituted by the Ministry of HRD in 2005 and reporting in May 2006 under former CEC J.M. Lyngdoh, sought to cleanse campus polls of money and muscle power [1]. Its record is mixed: procedurally cleansing, but substantively narrowing student political agency.

How the recommendations shaped democratic socialisation

• Institutionalised free and fair polls: eligibility norms, a Rs 5,000 expenditure cap, and a 10-day election cycle curbed criminalisation and made campus contests replicate constitutional electoral discipline [1].
• Legal enforceability: the Supreme Court's order of 22 September 2006 made the norms binding, and the UGC circular of 16 August 2007 (with a reminder in 2014) directed universities to comply — giving students a justiciable claim to elected representation [2].
• Merit-based leadership: attendance, age and no-arrears criteria, plus a bar on re-contesting, encouraged rotation of leadership over entrenched career politicians.

How they stifled it

• Depoliticisation by design: by insulating campuses from party politics, the norms weakened ideological engagement and reduced unions to welfare bodies rather than sites of democratic apprenticeship.
• Patchy implementation: many state universities still hold no elections, while others dissolve unions arbitrarily — leaving most students without any elected council [2].
• Exclusionary norms: strict age caps (UG 17–22, PG up to 25) and one-term limits exclude working, first-generation and mature learners [1].
• Displaced participation: absent formal channels, youth energy shifts to episodic digital mobilisation, prompting the ECI to run SVEEP and the "Turning 18" campaign for nearly 1.8 crore first-time voters in 2024 [3].

For a nation with over 382 million people aged 10–24 [4], the answer lies not in diluting the norms but in completing them. Universal, calendared student council elections — enforced by the UGC and read alongside the freedom of association under Article 19(1)(c) — would convert regulation into genuine democratic apprenticeship, turning India's demographic dividend into a democratic one.