Monday, August 25, 2008

Democracy in Indian Context – My views

Dear friends,


I thought, I would just mention this weird thought of mine that comes quite often that, what would have happened had India been never allowed democracy and would have remain dependent on Presidential Rule of some kind...

Please don’t kill me for this view, as this is going to very controversial but again I would like to mention that I should be protected by constitution to express my constructive thoughts in a decent manner

Now why on earth would I think that democracy is not the right choice for India…especially when it’s the second largest democracy of the world??…I guess, it’s because of the lack of some very basic principle that should be followed. and one of those is
“Quality is more important than quantity…”

How come that’s related in here??.. Of course, that’s the only thing that comes to my mind first, when I try to think about democratic elections…
Even if we assume a free and fair election (yeah right!!!…),the candidates win by sheer volume…I mean the quantity of his “vote bank” counts only and not the quality nothing. Isn’t it?…Now I question the very senses and sensibilities of this “vote banks” basically.. How much improved can it be quality-wise…considering the fact that we have only about 60% literacy in our country consisting of 113 cr. people??…I guess that takes care of the quality of 50 crores at least I mean, at least qualitatively. …J

Now to give you another interesting statistics, in each year, only 5000 odd students get their Ph.D. in Science and Engineering. Even if we assume this number to be 50000 to take care of a decently educated lot…we come up with a meager figure 50000*50 = 2500000 only (considering the "voting life expectancy" 0f 50 years) as a decent vote bank figure for a given year…Or was it too outrageous a figure?? OK, even if this figure of 25 lakhs comes out to 1 crores also, does it count at all? Even if that becomes 10 crores, is it still worth it? The “winner” will be selected by the rest of the 100 crores…Isn’t it?

So with so many politicians selected by the “incapable lot” (may I??) they reign supreme with their narrow, cunning minds and in vested interest to satisfy the “class” that would keep him in power…Some “populist policy” and hypocrisy and eyewash would do the trick for most of them and especially when politics is the only profession in India that doesn’t need any “qualification” per se, as an entry criteria, the elected leaders are bound to show their culture of mean, cunning back-biting, greed and jealousy to save their face in front of their “supporters”…

Now then, don’t we have so many worthless leaders elected out there just by sheer quantity rather than quality, who are always fighting in vested interest and making the common people suffer?? I encountered an interesting term called “competitive populism” that kind of explains the best of our democracy in most cases …Quite naturally, as someone has observed, that it’s nothing but a “functioning anarchy” that’s going on here in India in the name of democracy with the “willingness to do good” keeping it floating…

May be, it’s because of some such factors and for people we see scattered voting also which results in Coalition Governments only to be toppled after a few years again because of the inherent quality, culture, and mentality of the people involved, to say the least… I think they show quite some caliber as Opposition Leaders also to oppose anything and everything that their counterparts say and in “arm-twisting” tactics also, as a part of the Coalition Government.. Isn’t it?

Actually what I was trying to point at was many people have lost their faith in the system and how about a new poll system, where a handful of people gets a chance to select the leaders of the country something inline with “Presidential Election”??…and the facility of votes being taken from rest of the population can be taken through web-sites or SMS’s and that will have some weightage associated with it…???How’s that for a thought…?


But are there people ready to burn me alive for this view of mine??…Am I trying to demean and degrade the population or the politicians?…No Sir,…I’m trying to present my view as humbly as possible, but as said before also, this is a part of “Thinking Aloud…” blog of mine that anyone who finds it “weird” is more than welcome to skip…Also
even in democracy we can show some dissent towards the system, right?, … that would give rise to a better system? Isn’t it??

Thoughtfully yours,
-Dev

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