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.

Who are the real anti-heroes?

In a country like India where democracy is to its maximum, we blame politicians for all the underdevelopment and delays in implementation of government aided projects. But are politicians alone are responsible for this? I don't think so.

More than the politicians, bureaucrats are responsible for all this. They are eating up the tax payer’s money and doing nothing for the people and the country. The ministers cannot look into every single issue and instruct the officials to do the needful. The officials are responsible to do the work at the ground level. The ministers will get the required approvals and provide the funds. But in reality, most of these funds will go diverted or unused. 

The current political setup itself is not favourable for the overall development of the country. Our ministers should minimize their time spend for public meetings and do some productive work utilizing this time. Even to inaugurate a public tap, ministers are coming. This pathetic situation should change. For this to happen, the outlook of politicians and general public should change. More and more young faces have to come up. The role of aged veteran politicians should be limited to advisory in nature.

Considering all these facts, we can put the blame on both politicians and bureaucrats. But can we wash our hands off by blaming them? No, not at all. We, the general public are also responsible for this. We should react against this. But all of us have fear in our life. So we are not reacting. We Indians claim that we have the right to raise our voice against injustice. But in reality, do we have that right? Yes, I would say but at the risk of our precious life. 

But still the question remains: who is the real anti-hero? I would say it is the democratic set up existing in our country. We enjoy too much of democracy in India. That is the problem. We’ll realize the importance of something only when we are deprived of it. So for Indians to realize the value of democracy, we should be deprived of it. That is not going to happen in the near future. So the only way out of this is to change our outlook.