Dec 21, 2024
Dec 21, 2024
When the United States of America snooped on millions of Indians, none from print, TV or web and like media or political leaders opened their lips. Why now everyone is obsessed with snoop-gate? Has every one given special concession to the USA to snoop or are they doing too much by making so much noise over an administrative routine? Elections are responsible for every demand. Great!
And in India every six months elections have to be conducted for state assemblies here or there or parliament or panchayats or zilla parishads or municipality or city corporations and the nation is always in an election mode and mood.
Until 1967 both the assembly and parliament elections were conducted together every 5 years. But from 1971, mid-term elections for parliament or state assemblies have become a routine. Thus preventing central government to announce policy decisions or inaugurating schemes already announced because almost throughout the year election code is in force for the irregular conduct of elections due to the cascade effect disturbed in 1971.
It is having a negative effect on the nation and its administration. Now the same is the reason that Bharat Mahila Bank has to be inaugurated at Mumbai and not at Delhi because election code is in force at Delhi because of assembly elections. It is high time both assembly and parliament elections are held together to prevent time, money and energy for the government, contestants, leaders, campaign managers and citizens; it will be a relief from continuous elections for this or that.
If the government falls for lack of majority in between the remaining term can be ruled by a government formed by President or Governor under their headship combining both ruling party and opposition. This saves lot of unnecessary expenditure and discourages fall of governments for silly reasons.
Lot of money and time will be saved and government and citizens can concentrate on respective duties and responsibilities.
It is not democracy to merely conduct elections in time but also see to it that democracy is practiced in letter and spirit by governments, political parties, political leaders and the citizens too.
In India the letter and spirit of democracy is to start from the conduct of the affairs of political parties. It is a dangerous trend being practiced by all most all political parties which unfortunately engulfed Indian democracy, that certain families own political parties and rest of the leaders of those parties are made to" listen to" high command and even neglect the voice and wishes of the citizens. The monarchy-type running of political parties and government is un-democratic; but many prefer that style for each one's own reasons and interests.
It has become a habit and profitable thing for chota leaders to serve a political family and amass money by merely saying that they are loyal workers to that family and they never talk about the welfare of the citizens and well-being of the nation. It is these third rate leaders who are slavishly behaving, uttering and acting towards a political family only to serve their own purposes in the name of being loyal workers of the family owning the party. Thus these chota leaders are doing immense damage to the nation by their disservice by being “loyal” to a political family and not being loyal and devoted to the nation and its citizens. This must be noted by observers of functioning of democracy in India.
Loyalty to political families and amassing money under that guise is the bane of Indian democracy. Election commission must ban leaders who contest elections by professing loyalty to political families and not to Indian citizens and India.
Such “loyal” leaders are working overtime to kill democracy in India and help the political family do all wrongs to the citizens and nation. The political families trying to protect and protecting many such corrupt leaders and keeping them in their parties is very conceitedly played drama fooling citizens continuously.
Let India have political parties sans family and dynastic culture; owning political parties by families and managing running of parties to that extent is feudalistic and not democratic.
Democracy is a sophisticated form of governing and not currently practiced ugly feudalistic management of political parties and nation.
21-Nov-2013
More by : Dr. Varanasi Ramabrahmam
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One sympathises with your concern, but when one is rooted to the soil, as Indians are, nature takes its course as it does in the wild. There are grasses, shrubs and trees, and their hierarchy is the established norm of the landscape. In Indian society, the people are the grasses, the committees are shrubs, but the luxuriant growth of trees that overhangs the forest floor here equates to the great families with their deep and wide spreading roots. Just as it is not only impossible for the grasses and shrubs to wish for the demise of the trees, but to do so incurring the destruction of their own habitat, so the great families operating in Indian politics cannot be wished away without damaging the political ecology of the country. In that context, the contemptuous phrase in the style used in an Indian film comes to mind: 'Democracy, pimocracy...'. India appears trapped by the very ethnicity it distinguishes itself by as a people. It is when the land achieves liberation in the landscape of democratic principles, where there is equal potential for all its members, that there will be any change. But then, I ask, will India still be recognisable? It is clear the face of India, the one it identifies with, is a modern one, where western democratic expectations and standards of life are the norm in the workplace and at home. That the old power-based influence of the few persists is no doubt due to the inertia of tradition in a vast country. Interestingly, this very shift to a democratic landscape, replacing the natural one, has been worked out in the more manageable democracies of the west, where democratic principles ensure the equal status and rights of waves and waves of immigrants, mostly ex-colonial, that in turn acculturates the indigenous people to the same standard. The old national landscape, with its internal hierarchy of privilege, has been levelled to one where democracy flourishes. There are, however, reversions to division within an established democracy, as in the vote for Scottish independence from its role in a functional British democracy, to be regretted thereby as totally missing the point, the expectation of the Scottish people being a democratic one. |
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One needs guts to call a spade a spade. Congrats!. Many feel like you, not many dare to speak honestly. Regards. |