History & Mission Statement

Great India Trust was evolved from Janathipathya Samvada Vedi (Forum for Debate on Democracy) which I convened in August1996 at my home village to propagate newly dawned 'Great India ideals': a basically different-from-usual diagnosis on the causes for degradation of our society and its remedies. But, being an NRI, my absence at the real battleground affected its further development. After my return I undertook 3 days fasting at my home town Kodungallur during 19^th, 20^th and 21^st of May 2010, to re-affirm my own resolve for any sacrifice in my endeavor to reform our political system to salvage our Mother Land from the ridiculous degradation She is subjected to. Since then few of my like minded friends got together on 12^th June 2010 to organize and further its activities. We have got it registered on 16^th July, under 'Indian Trust Act 1862', at Sub-registrar Office, Kodungallur in Thrissur District of Kerala. We plan to file a PIL, in couple of weeks, in High Court of Kerala to order restoration of Inner-party democracy - a supervised and standardized 'Inner-Party Elections' in all political parties to elect party functionaries at all levels. 

Objectives:

1. Trust's aim is restricted to Reformation of Indian society by rectifying flaws of its present political system according to the ideals laid down in the book: 'Great India: Indian Democracy  'Problems and Solutions', authored by Sudhakaran, founder of the Trust and published in Sept 2006. 
2. Conduct campaigns to propagate that ever increasing in corruption, communalism, criminal-political nexus etc.., usually projected by our reform activists and pretentious intelligentsia as the causes of our society?s degradation are not causes but are symptoms only. and that the 'pseudo/perverted Democracy' we practice is the causes.
3. Try to form a pan-India federation of like minded reform activists and NGOs   as tool, to help easier/earlier realization of the above two objectives.
4. Even though members of the trust may harbor political ambitions and lenience sot spites Trust should not indulge in partisan party politics, transform itself in to a political party or part took in electoral politics in any manner because the inducement of political power would bring compulsion on the members to compromise the reform agenda.

History

Great India Ideals were dawned to me during 1996. Till then I was, as almost all other patriots are, disgusted by, and was clueless also on the causes of, the undesirably degrading quality of our political leadership and the way they are leading us in a degenerative path from one ridiculous fiasco to another. Fought against corruption, with some success, as and when I confronted it in 1970s & 80s. But realized its temporary and limited effect on the corruption in our society. And was bemused by the dangerous wide-spread/all-encompassing growth of corruption and communalism, despite Laws, regulatory mechanisms and relentless onslaughts against them by many anti-corruption & anti-communal activists in every part of the country. Was clueless on the reasons for such phenomenon and many other ills of our society such as ever degrading quality of leadership, proliferation of political arties especially that of the regional religious parties, instability of governments etc. But 1996 itself and immediately preceding years provided some important political developments, in Indian and world over, providing some clues to solve the puzzle. And my stay in UAE, a cosmopolitan society, really helped me with near world class, impartial and deep analysis and reports of world political developments in their print media.      

Two consecutive elections and related developments in Bangladesh, Our own hung parliament and Sree.Vajpayee's 13 days Prime-Minister-ship and the succeeding political dramas, election of Bill Clinton and evolution of new Democrats in US and a similar transformation of Labour with Tony Blair in Briton and proliferation of political parties in newly democratized Hungary? all that were very useful clues to solve the riddle of inefficiency and degradation of Indian democracy.  Two discussions conducted by me in Oct. 1996 at my home village under the banner 'Janathipathya Samvada Vedi' (Forum for debate on Democracy) and my association with TN Seshan?s Desa Baktha trust, CNC of Mukut.M.Sah, party-less Democracy of VijayaRaghavan & co and Brastachar Virodhi Andolan fame Anna Hazare  etc. and the discussions I had with many prominent persons during my India tour in 1997 to propagate this ideals and seek support from the reform minded patriots from other parts of the country gave me exposure to the usual perception about the ills-&-causes of and remedies for out society's ills.           

I started, since 1997 itself, to compile all that awareness, experiences, perceptions, fears etc.. to give a concrete shape to 'Great India' ideals. And the result is my book: 'Great India: Indian Democracy  Problems and Solutions'. The book deals with usually projected ills of our society and remedies prescribed and administered against them by many reform activists; and my evaluations, especially on the reasons for failures of many yore-&-present-day reform efforts and on the continued degradation. It, after explaining the inconsistencies in the present day views on the ills and remedies, exposes the real causes and the possible and workable remedies. And the book would be considered as the basic guide line for the 'Great India ideals' and the Trust's reform efforts.

Analysis on the present day reform efforts.

Degeneration of our society is manifested in almost all fields of life. Corruption is rampant; our national trait has becoming synonymous with Sycophancy, Hypocrisy, and Cowardice. A nation of abundant natural resources, a rich heritage and a billion plus people has not established leave alone leadership - even a credible presence in any field of competence. Our mission is to expose and rectify reasons/causes/flaws for such ignominious state of affairs.

Almost all of us have read many articles, mission statements of reform activist individuals/organizations, heard speeches or debates on the malaises of our society; few even partook in the reform efforts to eradicate the malaises they perceived; but most of them got frustrated by the failures.

Failures, we impute after due analysis, because all such efforts were not targeted at real causes; not even a serious effort is made to decipher symptoms, ills and their causes. All such reform efforts identified and fought against Corruption, Selfishness, Communalism, one or the other party/leader/dynasty, moral decay, lack of awareness, etc as the ills or as the causes itself.; while they really are just symptoms of degradation. And we have identified that those degradations are caused by some basic causes/flaws of our political-system.

Those symptoms are/were being incessantly projected by our pretentious intelligentsia as the causes and we are/were ever provoked to fight-against them. Such incessant hype, acting as suggestions have psychologically conditioned us - not only the common man but many prominent persons also - to believe such hype as the ultimate truth.

Vilification and disproportionate magnification of these symptoms, by the media and intelligentsia, as the causes of our society's degeneration and nudging us to fight them does not only waste our time, energy and other resources but also camouflage  the causes and deflect our attention from them, denying needy diagnosis and proper rectification of the causes. As far as the causes are not addressed they would continue to produce the symptoms  irrespective of whatever amount of remedies we administer against them. Occasionally such remedial efforts may produce a small and temporary relief providing us a false feeling of success. The fame (awards also at times) one get through such success would tempt to continue with similar efforts even if one, in due course, realizes futility of such efforts? realize that the results were short lived and the ills are getting aggravated. Many renowned reform activists, knowingly or not, have become prisoners of such fame, awards and followers and are wasting their resources on such symptoms. Anna Hazare is one such I met, convinced and admitted of the futility of anti-corruption platform and still could not resist to above said temptation.

It would be a difficult task to convince and wean off other reform activists afflicted by such suggestions and addicted-to/being-prisoners-of the fame and followers they have acquired. But I would help them overcome this psychological barrier conditioned through decades of incessant suggestions by pruning the symptoms and exposing the real causes and propagating it through all available means.

Real Causes

I have identified that flaws of our political system - a PSEUDO and PERVERTED DEMOCRACY - are the real causes producing/aggravating all those ills.

1.    And its pseudo-ness is: Negation of inner-party democracy, and its substitution with the anti-democratic practices of Consensus/party-panel/nominations etc. That was created  by our opportunistic political causes exploiting the vacuum in our constitution about the functioning of political parties, to perpetuate their own reign by expropriating positions of political power between themselves and their lackeys? causing character crisis in political leadership - the most important AIDS like ill of our society.

2.    The Perversions, inherited genetic flaws of Westminster Parliamentary system, are:

a.   Flawed Election system causing Proliferation of political parties. 

b.   Indirect Election of the Heads of Governments not ony compromise their quality but also make them inescapably susceptible to coercion by political caucuses and the related Instability & inefficiency of governments and intermittent elections:

Trust consider that the remediation of Character-crisis in political leadership warrants unquestionable primacy in the scheme of any political (societal also) reform effort because of its overbearing potential to corrupt all institutions and aggravate all other ills.  And because I believe that a competent and virtuous leadership is a prerequisite for any reform efforts to be productive and for optimal functioning/governance of any society.

Character-crisis in our political leadership is so appalling that political parties have become a den of tainted opportunistic caucuses and their sycophant lackeys. Such degraded leaderships, by being a viciously wrong role models for the masses to follow, are causing moral-decay of the whole society and have corrupted all our institutions including judiciary through their manipulations. They have degraded our representative bodies to ridiculously low levels, turning debates there into ridiculous pandemonium.

We believe, as prophesied Dr. Rajendraprasad: 'If our elected representatives are (competent) men of integrity and character they can deliver good to the nation even if this constitution is defective, but if they lack in these qualities this constitution is not going to save our nation'? But, unfortunately, framers of our constitution failed to put checks to restrict entry of persons with undesirable qualities or to incorporate conditions to promote competent and virtuous persons and to purge the not so competent ones. So, I firmly believe that, any reform effort that do not understand the primacy of a competent and virtuous leadership and that do not address the curse of 'Character-crisis in political leadership' - would be futile because:
 

• The present genre of politicians would not be competent enough to comprehend the importance of the factors we raise.  
• They would not be inclined to act even when they understand it because such reforms, if enforced, would harm their ulterior vested interests ,
• Even if some how the reformers succeeded to bring about the desired legislation or court order, such politicians, in collaboration with other corrupt institutions and individuals, would distort/defang such orders/acts/laws to continue with their exploitations, as was the case with 'Anti-defection law, Declaration of assets of politicians, and of Judges & RTI etc.     

& 

Few reform activists, who vaguely identify the inferior quality of leadership as one of the many ills they perceive, start their leadership concept at the elected representatives (MLAs MPs) level only as was considered by Dr. Rajendra Prasad and his colleagues in our constituent assembly. Declaration of criminal records and assets of candidates was one of the options they sought and obtained to improve the quality. That with the RTI, many thought, would work wonders to improve the quality of our elected representatives. But such theories/hopes have proven wrong. Number of MPs with criminal records and the seriousness of their crimes did not only not decreased in 2009 elected Parliament than that of 2004 and in may state legislatures but also have increased (refer ?Election Watch? report presented by Anil Birawal of ARD in the First National Seminar on election reforms). Even after many such experiences of failures they are clamoring for 'Negative vote option' and 'Right to recall erring members' etc. I am sure that such measures may not only do no good to the cause they seek to address but may even create chaos.  Such proposals show how shallow their vision is. I am at loss to understand why they desist to analyze (some times to admit) the cause of such failures and ask themselves the simple question: 

·         How can our political parties provide/field good candidates for us to elect good people to our representative bodies, if the parties themselves are devoid-of a hierarchy of competent men of integrity and character in their leadership?

·         So is it not imperative to improve the quality of the leadership in the political parties first, even before thing about the elections to the representative bodies?

Restoration of Inner-party democracy, inner-party competitions and elections to positions of power in booth-to-national level of political parties - the renovating/rejuvenating force of the democracy itself - is the only natural way to remedy this AIDS like ill - Character crisis in leadership. All other means proposed yet are un/anti-natural and un/anti-democratic.

I appeal concerned patriots to partner in this patriotic endeavor and propagate the need to decipher cause, ills and symptom (most, as explained earlier, err at this satge and mist the symptoms as the causes) and the primacy of restoration of Inner-party Democracy practices in internal functioning our political arties to cure our society?s AIDS like curse - the Character-Crisis in political leadership in the scheme of any reformation agenda aimed at realizing our cherished common dream: a Great India. Your present political affiliation, if any, is not a bar as every political party is afflicted by this curse and Great India is to reform/strengthen all political parties. Even though trust members may have their won political likes and dislikes, The Trust would not directly or indirectly, promote/oppose one or the other party/ideology/group/leader. We are dedicated to the rectification of systemic flaws of our political system nothing else.