Democracy was seen as a system to bring in people’s power and banish unelected royalty or despots. India chose to be a sovereign democratic secular republic with envious Constitution, strong Institutions and a credible Election Commission that provided a level playing field for free and fair elections. For 60 years after Independence, we managed to conduct this massive exercise and change governments with minimum of violence, enforcement of a Code of Conduct drawn up and agreed to by all parties.
Unfortunately the elected representatives started considering themselves as VIPs to rule and “We the People” forgot that they were our employees chosen to serve. Checks and balances were removed one by one under the guise of security and administration. The people became dependent upon the MLAs’ largesse and favours for development, right to life and liberty. The politicians started misusing government, using criminals and bribes to intimidate people and win elections whilst amassing wealth. The criminals decided to get into the act themselves when they saw that with power and money they could get the nation’s resources! Corruption and black money became our forte.
Elections turned into parties choosing “winnable” candidates and manipulated people selfishly voted for law breaker politicians, even in jail who were elected and given the key as law makers to our nation.
We still have the right to vote and a right to transparency and accountability from those we vote and pay for to serve us in office, do we not? However, we are denied/fed doctored information and real problems cannot be solved if they are not admitted in the first place? Economist Kaushik Basu exposes how aspirational India is today being squeezed out by competitive religious and emotional popularism. Export growth over the last five years has been zero. Savings and investments have slid from 35% in 2008 to below 30%. Leaked NSSO figures showing unemployment at a 45-year high are reportedly being suppressed by the government! Luckily we have the Azim Premji University and Centre for monitoring Indian economy employment report showing us that the situation is grim! The stated aim of wiping out black money miserably failed. The seizures in this election of hard cash are ten times the amount in 2014 elections! But we are high on nationalism and pride.
A uniformed sub Inspector on duty in Andhra Pradesh was slapped and made to touch the feet of a TDS MLA’s son for daring to check him! An official of the EC was sacked for checking the helicopter of the PM. A Sadvi Pragya Singh Thakur jailed for terrorism charges in the Malegaon blast out on bail on medical grounds has been campaigning on BJP ticket and says 26/11 martyr police officer Hemant Karkare killed during the attack as she had cursed him for her incarceration! Raids by IT and ED authorities increased just before elections on Opposition leaders and conspicuously absent on ruling party members!
The PM of India and the BJP party President are serial offenders of the election Code of Conduct! The EC is reluctant to act despite goading from the Supreme Court! In January last year four senior judges of the Supreme Court including our present CJI, held an unprecedented Press Conference stating Democracy is in peril. Now the CJI due to hear sensitive cases has been targeted for sexual harassment by an Apex court staffer, with allegations sent to residences of 22 other SC judges! A lawyer alleges a larger conspiracy. The CJI opines that Judiciary is now under very serious threat!
Prime Minister Modi with Amit Shah, master political manipulator and event manager, is the Supreme BJP Leader with mentor RSS. Supremos like Mamta, Mayawati, Mulayam Singh and many such Satraps of many castes and clans hold sway. I cannot understand why all such people, their relatives and followers are treated by us with such reverence like Kings and Queens of yore? They can do pretty much what they want at our cost and peril like blocking roads for their motorcade, build huge statues, name constructions, and intimidate rule of law and democracy itself!
We need to reclaim secular nature of our sovereign democratic republic earliest and re-establish control over those supposed to serve us all. We need to uphold the majesty of the law where all citizens can get equal justice without fear or favour! Will we ever be permitted to have elections again with a level playing field? Will all the venom and hate that has been spewed so far having run its course ever dissipate? Will the opportunists of different ideologies, the professionals from different walks of life who have jumped ship or joined the BJP, and the nation that has been split into a north/south, majority/minority divide realise, in their own interest, that for India to be a progressive happy modern nation, and be able to credibly take on the world, unity in diversity is a necessity?
Modern nations have progressed with people’s happiness quotient the greatest where the State and religion have been kept apart! These Lok Sabha elections and By-Polls have brought out the best and worst in the people. The nation has now woken up and is painfully aware of fake news, deceit, propaganda, the hateful divisions created and what the real problems are. Whichever government comes into power will not address them at their own peril.
(The author is a retired naval officer, freelance writer resident in Porvorim)
