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| Democracy hijacked | | The rich and criminals take to governance | |
Individuals and societies often fall into despondency due to their exclusion from the process of governance, growth and development. The exclusion can be at three levels — financial, physical and mental.
If exclusion is pervasive enough to involve all the three elements, the situation becomes disquietening and despondency develops at an exponential rate. This is where a large majority of the people in India stand today.
Exclusion from governance is the mother of all other types of exclusion. Indian democracy has progressively degenerated to involve the character of a democracy with all the hues of a functional anarchy.
Functionally, democracy in India can be defined as “government by the people, of the bureaucracy, for the politicians”. People as voters are the vital statistics only. They are periodically wooed, misled, cajoled and bribed for appropriating their votes and are then left to fend for themselves.
Ironically, this symbolism is projected as a largest functioning democracy of the world tested over a period of six decades. But, what is the reality beneath the surface! In reality the people have no choice.
The political class, irrespective of the parties, has ganged up and formed an exclusive group in which party tickets and plum positions are distributed within their circles and in most cases are inherited.
Raw-hand youngsters and children of the aging and demised politicians are inducted to pass on the inherited business of politics. The entry of outsiders is effectively blocked through making elections a prohibitive money matter, a battleground of muscle power and loud mouths with little scruples.
Jawaharlal Nehru rightly surmised way back in the fifties that if the people were not vigilant, governance in our democracy would pass into the hands of the strong-muscled and loud-throated criminals. It has come true.
Whether we admit it or not, today an assembly election costs crores of rupees. The candidates pay for tickets to the parties and supply intoxicants and bribe illiterate, poverty-ridden voters. The expenditure limits put by the Election Commission are exceeded with impunity and the code of conduct is flouted with abandon. All this expenditure comes out of black money only. Muscle power plays its role unfettered and the filthy language remains no bar.
Under this unwholesome situation and vitiated political environment, no civilised service-minded person would dare to step in for elections. Whenever such persons offered themselves for the purpose, they failed miserably.
A live example is of our intelligent, gentle and honest Prime Minister. He dared to contest elections from South Delhi and lost. The system could not absorb this fine piece of a man. Today he occupies the position because of very peculiar circumstances.
The electoral battle ground has become the monopoly of moneyed bigwigs and in most cases of hard-boiled criminals and bad characters.
Often voters are blamed for not making a right choice of representatives. This is an absolutely misplaced blame. What can a voter choose out of equally undesirable candidates. Someone very aptly said that political parties put rotten apples before us and give us the option to chose any one of them!
The rot has gone so deep that even the Rajya Sabha (House of Elders) has not been spared from their depredations. Young wards of senior politicians have been placed in the Rajya Sabha.
During the last Akali- BJP regime in Punjab, three defeated MLAs were kicked upstairs to the Rajya Sabha and one of them remained a Cabinet minister for five years. The Congress regime was not to be left behind. They sent two defeated MLAs to the Rajya Sabha.
One wonders as to what moral grounds and justification the political leadership of any party has to elevate a person to occupy a seat in the Upper House when he or she has been rejected by the electorate in assembly elections!
Unfortunately, it works in the Indian version of democracy where moral grounds and political ethics find no place.
Within the parameters of such a vitiated political environ, dispassionate governance and people-oriented administration take the back seat. Politicians in power become money hungry and scheming tricksters.
The bureaucracy becomes self-serving and unresponsive to the needs of society. Law and order goes haywire and corruption seeps down into the very nerves, veins and blood of society. Every pot and place start stinking. This is where we are placed today.
We have fallen from the sacred heights of a healthy democracy into the vortex of sick democracy, wherein the service and welfare of the people lag behind the self-interest, family promotion, greed, crafty manipulations and unhealthy mechanisations of politicians.
Except for the persons who are attached to the political parties out of their self-interest, for the general public it matters little who comes to power. They acquiescent and are reconciled to the fact that all the politicians are equally corrupt and self-centred and they have to suffer them in any situation.
This is the primary reason the educated class has largely withdrawn itself from the election process and it is mostly the poor and people living in shanties and innocent villagers who look forward to the elections that fetch them sops and intoxicants.
Political parties suffer from the illusion of well-attended rallies, “sangat darshans” or “vikas yatras”. They know it, yet refuse to accept it that these are almost the same hired crowds that attend the rallies of opposing political parties carried through impounded and hired vehicles. Such shows of political strength are more or less spurious and have no meaning on the day of reckoning.
Now the million-dollar question is: how can this drift be stopped and who will do it? This can be done if the state assemblies and Parliament become the framers and custodians of law only and members are restrained from holding offices of profit of any shade.
But the well-entrenched present-day politicians cannot be expected to bring about such a change in the system against their own mean interests. Crystal-gazing, therefore, shows the malignant democracy dimming the lights of healthy democracy. Is there anyone listening!
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