Political governance in our country by way of peoples’ Representatives has now transformed itself into a rule by political parties, which are never assigned any role in our constitution. If we look into the history of the political parties, these groups formed by ambitious persons, have never managed to maintain internal democracy and have always been desperately trying to capture and retain power at any cost, at least in the developing countries. A Political Class, a new caste has emerged filling the ranks of the parties, exercising power and enjoying many prerogatives and privileges. Particularly the regional parties are spending all the tax money unproductively and unaccounted, and are even borrowing to corrupt and to buy voters, leaving not much money for long term investments for the benefit of the entire society. Power is captured, personalised and transmitted to the dynasties, and is used to eliminate other parties. All other parties which are not in power, work continuously for the next five years only to agitate and to over-throw those in power, without any constructive or socially-useful agenda. Thus, the governments formed after such a struggle, naturally turn authoritarian and claim and pretend to know and do everything for the people, and react intolerantly to any suggestions and criticism even from non-partisan sources.
The bureaucracy too enjoys their own power by making rules and more rules and by inspections, thereby leading to delays and corruption, while suspecting the honesty of the private sector and the competence of the civil society organisations. The parties see that the media works for them and that nobody else in the society is allowed to appear to be prominent or popular. Independent individuals and intellectuals have no voice and no role. Each party wants, ultimately to become the only single party in the field and wants ultimately to possess and operate the entire state and also tries to control the whole society, as in China. Our Representatives, therefore are not promoting more participation of the citizens, but are also preventing our society from evolving towards more economic and social democracy. Caste divisions are financed. Thus, human relations are poisoned by political power race and mutual accusations of dishonesty, distrust and enmity, thereby keeping us away from contributing to build a fraternal, mutually- cooperative and harmonious society.
How can we stop this political situation from worsening ? Three Remedies for the Current Maladies of our Democracy.
Whether you entirely agree with the above analysis of the present state of politics in our country or not, and in addition to whatever you have been already doing according to your own standing in the society, can you agree upon the three following propositions and act to implement them in your own way?
1. Specifically during all local, state and national elections, to launch campaigns to persuade people to vote for only candidates by identifying them by their photos, and not to vote for any party nominees and to their symbols.
2. In general, as a matter of our social and political philosophy, to take all initiatives and attempts to encourage and organise peoples’ direct participation in all governance institutions at all levels, local, state and national, as much as possible through the civil society organisations.
3. Read only those newspapers and see only those TV channels which are not openly pro-party and to use more extensively the Social Media for all information and communications.
Rao V.B.J. Chelikani, raovbj@yahoo.com, cell: 9849067498. 24th March, 2021.
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