I have always been aspiring to hold my head high and declare to the world: ‘I am a proud citizen of a strong and prosperous India – a Great India’. But, even though we had all the ingredients to become a world leader in almost every field, unfortunately I never got a chance to do so yet. And it has dawned that I cannot hope to attain that cherished goal as far as the present political system continues to exist. I am, as almost all other patriots are, disgusted by the way our political leaders are leading us in a degenerative path from one ridiculous fiasco to another.
Almost all of us have read many article or heard speeches or debates on the malaises of our society; even partook in the efforts for the eradication of the perceived malaises to regenerate the society; but have been getting frustrated by the futility of such efforts. My argument is: all such articles, debates and efforts were targeted at the symptoms not the cause of the degeneration; and hence the failure. All of them had been taking one or the other symptom of the degeneration and harping up on it as if it is the biggest villain and the basic cause of the degeneration, magnifying it out of all proportions obscuring the real causes. My effort here is to cut down the symptoms to its real size to expose and address the real causes.
Political instability and inefficiency are appalling. We are always in an election mood – parliamentary, legislative, mid-term and/or omnipresent by-elections, pushing all the developmental works to backburner and wasting precious time and resources. Our chief executive, head of the government, mostly a pawn/benmi of a caucus, is inescapably susceptible to coercion by such caucuses and pressure groups to sanction their self-serving schemes – mostly nefarious and detrimental to national interest.
Degeneration of our society is manifested in almost all fields of life. Corruption is rampant. Our national trait has become synonymous with Sycophancy, Hypocrisy, Cowardice - ‘Hindu Cowardice’ of Khandahar fiasco fame - and incompetence. Even after 50 years of independence illiteracy, poverty, poor-infrastructure and over all backwardness are still poignantly staring us. A nation of abundant natural resources, a rich heritage and a billion people has not established – leave alone leadership but even a credible presence in any field of competence among the nations. Surely we have made some progress and a few pockets of affluence also. But that is nowhere near our potentials or the desired levels when compared to the achievements and standards of other nations with much less potentials.
Our society is, as our politics is, a divided house today. Instead of national integration we seems to be heading with accelerated speeds to disintegration. After the post-Independence euphoria, when we dreamt that caste has been cast-off, the course of democratic India has seen the resurgence of caste in the politics through the decades, with caste awareness reaching a detrimental high in the post-Mandal 1990s. Hundreds of regional, religious and caste groups, the disintegrative forces, have proliferated, organized themselves as political parties and gained undue prominence.
These parties, to create and maintain their vote banks are pandering to, adding-fire to, our communal/regional and other savage passions of all nuances, always reminding us of schisms of our diversity and driving wedges in these ruptures. National political parties have degenerated to impotence and have become subservient to these small regional or communal parties. Today there is not a single National Party that claims to have sufficient public support, can get sufficient votes and seats, to form a government of their own. Coalition-politics, national parties and/or governments succumbing to the manipulative/blackmailing tactics of these divisive forces and their self serving leaders, political instabilities and intermittent elections have become the norm of the day.
Political parties - national or otherwise - and our representative bodies at all levels, from Panchayat to Parliament, have become a den of criminals, sycophants, and hypocrites causing a ‘Character-crisis’ in our political leadership and morale decay of the masses.
Reign of such politicians have degraded our representative bodies to ridiculously low levels degrading it to a den of goons. Have you heard of any orderly disciplined debates on any subject in our parliament or state legislatures in recent times? It is always pandemonium there. Whatever the treasure bench brings the opposition objects vociferously, they call names, even indulge in obscene acts and physical assaults, snatching papers, throwing chairs and mikes… like gang-world street fights. Walkouts in the house to deny a meaningful debate are rather routine – except when it is to approve a higher perks for themselves. Instead of democracy it can reasonably be called a caucuso-cracy or Goonda-cracy.
Contrast this with the quality of people’s representatives and their behavior in the concerned representative bodies of the most vibrant and strong democracy in the world, the American contrast, even at most difficult times like Monica Levenski episode when there were all the incentives to behave mean. This difference in the qualities and behavior of representatives explains the difference between their prosperity and our poverty. My search is to determine the flaw that causes such degeneration in the quality of our elected representatives and to see how to rectify it.
Such impotent vicious leadership has caused moral decay to the society, manipulated and compromised the integrity of the bureaucracy and even judiciary and baptized each and every institution in corruption. Character-crisis is so poignant that common-man has lost trust and hopes in any of the institutions and is turning to religious sects and extremist/secessionist groups, giving ready recruits to enemies of nation.
Myself also had been dallying with the familiar view, often projected by our intelligentsia and social leaders, that corruption, communalism, selfishness, poverty, illiteracy, etc… are the causes of this degeneration and had been seeking ways and means to neutralize them. But those efforts and failures, of myself and of others, and related postmortems were always leading me to few more basic questions. I myself was, like many other concerned patriotic Indians today are, also groping in the dark for the right clues to find out the real basic cause.
Few political events of recent past in India and abroad provided me the necessary clues to solve this riddle. Dangerous political dramas following two successive elections (1996) in the span of few months in Bangladesh [See ‘indirect election’ in ‘Perils of Westminster Parliamentary System’], our own hung parliament of 1996, 13 day BJP Government, overt and covert political dramas and two coalition governments that followed were the most important events among them that helped me to understand the undemocratic practice of our so called ‘biggest democracy’ and the dangerous congenial flaws of Westminster Parliamentary System. Ascendance of Mr. Bill Clinton and Mr. Tony Blair as the leaders of Democrats in America and Labor in Briton respectively, multitude of political parties and resultant hung-Parliament of Hungary - which was then just five years into Westminster parliamentary system, were other important events provided me with essential clues. Kiran Bedi’s reforms of, and her unceremonious removal from, Thihar Jail, experiences of G.K.Khairnar of Bombay Municipal Corp., Sree.Anna Hazare’s ‘Brashtachar Virodhi Andholan, JMM bribery scandal of Sree.Narasimha Rao era and increasing number of criminals reaching our representative bodies were among many other leads that helped me to conclude my analysis with a clearer answer: ‘Our political system is basically flawed and those flaws are producing all those degenerative symptoms’ which our pretentious reformers and intelligentsia wrongly identify and vilify as the cause of degeneration itself.
My awareness about the dangerous flaws of our political system that cause this degeneration, and the appalling complacence exhibited by our demoralized socio-political leaders and intelligentsias, were frustrating me. Concern about the degeneration and the imminent dangers compelled me to try to do whatever I can to regenerate our society. This book, ‘DEMOCRACY IN INDIA - Problems and Solutions’, is the product of this concern and compulsion: a means to propagate my views. Literary works and political campaigns are otherwise alien to my talent.
Work on this direction started immediately after our 1996 parliamentary elections. Few group discussions were conducted and a book-let in Malayalam was printed in August 96. Being my first effort in writing, it contained much more fat and lacked much explanation. Also as the subject is of all-India relevance, need of an English version was felt during my interactions with many reform-activists from other parts of India, whom I had met as part of my efforts to convince and partner them in my endeavor to rectify the flaws in our system. So work on this book was started in early 98 incorporating answers for commonly raised questions and opinions came up during many discussions and through many articles by our intelligentsia appeared in print media.
Despite my best efforts, due to my limited literary talent, I do not boast of this book to be a work of any literary standard. I urge my readers to evaluate this book not on its literary value but on the merit of its contents.
Back to subject: I would compare a vibrant democracy with a multi-layered pyramid with two doors, each with opposite characters, on each layer. Lowest layer the grass root institutions and the apex of the pyramid with a single seat - the highest power, being the seat of its Chief executive – PM/President.
One of the door at each layer continuously attracts and filters-in the most competent ones from the layer bellow it to govern it, and the other door continuously purge any one seen not so competent to be promoted to the next layer during their time in the concerned layer. So only the ‘better’ keep rising while even the ‘good’ fall on the wayside. This ensures that the apex layer of the pyramid, seat of the highest authority of the institution, is always occupied by the most competent of that society; and each layer is perpetually rejuvenated with most competent new blood.
Unfortunately those doors in Indian Democracy are tampered to malfunction- they have reversed their function: Attracting and filtering-in the tainted opportunistic sycophantic lackeys only and purging any one exhibiting a grain of competence, integrity and independence during their time at the concerned layer.
My endeavor is to expose the cause of this flaw and rectify it. I appeal for dedicated effort from all concerned patriots to partner in this effort and do whatever they can at their level to fulfill our cherished common dream ‘A Great India’.
Jai Hind
‘The human urge to go beyond what seems to be impossible, and his perseverance to follow the cause, would lead to unbelievable achievements’. |
