Secularism in India

India is a socialist, secular, democratic republic. But to what extend India is secular?

Each and everything is based on caste and religion in India. Even the Indian political system is not secular in nature. This in-secular nature is visible from the time when responsibilities are shared among party workers. Elections are the time when this is most exposed. During the allotment of seats, during the selection of ministers, everything is based on caste and religion.

Kerala is a state which has almost 100% literacy. But even in the state of Kerala, the situation is not so different. Religious organizations have a direct control over the political system. Political parties are selecting the candidates based on the inputs from them, even though half-heartedly, because they fear a leak in votes from a particular community.

Even the reservations provided by the government are based on caste. It is time to do away with the reservations based on caste and religion. Rather reservations should be based on financial backwardness. But it is a fact that people from backward caste are treated with untouchability by their upper caste counterparts. The mentality of the public should change in order to have a change in this situation.

This is the time when everyone should think in the way of Sree Narayana Guru, ‘one caste, one religion, one God for mankind’.

Degradation of Indian Democracy

Indian democracy is hailed as one of the best democracies in the world, and obviously the largest. Indian democratic system is degrading day by day. Are only the politicians responsible for this? Definitely not.

A 72 year old man had to go onto indefinite fast for us to start raising our voice against corruption. Corruption is not confined to politicians and bureaucrats. Its spread everywhere in civil society. Even some of us who are raising their voice against corruption are corrupted in some way or the other. They may be evading tax, involved in hoarding, violating some laws etc etc.

The political parties are offering many freebies to the voters if they come to power. We must understand that these freebies are not the basic necessities required for people. They are luxury goods like TV, fridge, washing machine etc. We are living in a country where many people are struggling hard to eat food once in a day, where people are at the mercy of the government and officials for getting drinking water etc etc. Instead of spending the money for the betterment of these people, they are spending the money in favour of corporate giants.

We cannot tar the politicians alone for a corrupt system. There are a few politicians who are making the entire system corrupted. A single drop of poison is more than enough to make a bucket of water poisonous. The only way to get out of this is to prevent that single drop from falling into the bucket. Elections are the best time to filter some of these poisonous drops. In order to do this, we should think beyond politics.

We are the World Champions…

YES, we’ve done it once again. After Kapil’s devils, now Dhoni’s daredevils have done it for India. After waiting for long 28 years, we’re once again on the top of the world. Kudos to everyone who directly and indirectly contributed to this win. Now another job is on the hands of Indians – to maintain this supremacy. I’m sure that Indians are capable of doing that.

I couldn’t wait till the last sixer hit by Dhoni landed on the ground. Before that I erupted in joy. Nobody can deny that Indians are the true champions after seeing the fantastic run chase. Dhoni played a captain’s knock and Gambhir too was superb. During the first half, Indian bowlers did a fairly good job by restricting Lankans below 300. Indians paced their run chase perfectly after losing two quick wickets.

This is a great moment for Indian Sports. But cricket is not the only sport. We need to achieve this supremacy in every field of sports. I’m waiting for the day when India finish No. 1 at Olympics, lifts the football and Hockey world Cups…the list goes on… Can we do that???Yes we can, I believe.

India – The largest democracy in the world

We Indians feel proud that we are the largest democracy in the world. A normal citizen enjoys more freedom than a citizen of any other country. We enjoy the privilege of expressing our views anywhere at any time. We enjoy the right to elect our representative.

But Indian democracy is now in a rotten state due to the cheap tactics played by the political parties. The government is tied by the strings of both coalition and opposition. The government along with the opposition should show some more responsibility and commitment towards the people who elected them to power.

Politics has now become a profession rather than a service. Other than the elected representatives, other politicians should consider politics as a part time service. Politicians are willing to spend lakhs of rupees just to get a ticket to contest in elections. Is it because they can make many fold of this money during and after elections, no matter whether they win or lose? May be.

The world is witnessing protest against autocratic rules. If the attitudes of corrupt politicians are not changing, soon India will witness a revolt against democracy itself. We cannot blame politicians alone for the inefficiency of governments. The government officials play a crucial role in it. Lot of government schemes are getting wasted because of the officials handling this.

Criminals are using politicians and politics as an instrument to dilute their illegal activities. Unfortunately politics has now become the safest profession for criminals. There are many people in our parliament and different legislative assemblies who have a criminal background. We, the people of India, only are responsible for this. We should show some more maturity during elections in order to avoid such unfortunate things.

Inflation inflation inflation...

The life of common man is becoming more and more miserable day by day. Food price inflation has become the greatest concerns of all time. Aam admi is struggling hard to cope up with the rising prices.

The government and the RBI are taking many steps to control inflation, but in vain. For some reason, the steps taken by them seems to be too little and ineffective. The government in the race to achieve double digit growth rate has forgotten the concerns of common man.

The opposition also has some responsibility in building the nation. The role of an ideal opposition is constructive criticism. But now it seems that the current opposition in Parliament is blindly criticizing everything there by holding the country at ransom in certain occasions. This situation should change in order to address the real concerns of common man.