The architectural firm usually participates by sending in entries either after paying for a membership or by paying for each entry. The magazine uses the money to organise the grand award event and at the same time ensures that they have content for the next year to publish within their pages without doing any work.
Architectural magazines in India are rarely critical - cynically I would say that it is because they do not want to pay for the content and people who would create content. The role of the architects in this system is equally disturbing.
The magazines are essentially catalogues of projects with little or no editorial system behind them. Many magazines do not even pretend to present a frame for viewing them.
With social networking we see another view to the process - voting. By voting for your friends you become active participants in their victory. You may never have seen the work of the other architects, may never have been interested in your built environment but that is irrelevant. To at least complete the sham the google docs that I published above could have had links to a small write up and compilation of work - but again that would imply work and thought!
