Political Ideologies and Administration in India

“Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.” – John F Kennedy

Going by the above statement by JFK, I would like to make a few observations in the Indian context. Our political parties should frame ad hoc policies not based on their past, but, on the basis of the situation. We have once seen P V Narasimha Rao keeping the traditional Congress socialist ideas aside and paving way for a globalized economy. Having said that, the present day Indian politicians too should start looking at the present and future rather than the past.

India, being one of the youngest and the largest democracies in the world has the distinction of providing security to all its’ citizens irrespective of their faith. That is what we term as secularism. Here also comes an aberration worth being pointed out. The two major political forces in India, namely the Congress and BJP are at contention most of the time with regard to the interpretation of secularism. Both have their own definitions of secular principles. While the Congress claims to have championed the cause of secularism by relentlessly speaking of minorities welfare, BJP, on the other hand took the side of the majority Hindus in the country. Thereby, both the major political parties in India have involuntary subscribed to the protection of interests of a particular section of the society. With the Congress using the provision of affirmative action in their attempt to cash the votes of the minority and backward sections, BJP has mostly struck to the idea of upholding the historic Hindu domination in the country.

It is good to have the rights of all the faiths upheld equally as that forms the very foundation for harmony in the society. While affirmative action is welcome to the extent of bringing up the downtrodden classes, that does not necessarily mean that the interests of the majority section are compromised as that very idea shackles the foundations of our secularist ideas. In my view, a government that completely ignores the faith of its’ citizens can be said to be secular. That means, religion becomes only a matter of personal choice and will not be a part of the political administration in the country. The caste based census, in a way, goes against the ideas of secularism as the government seems to be more interested in the faith/caste of its’ citizens. Rather than striving for bringing out policies that reach to the grass-roots of the population, the government is more bothered about identifying a set of people for framing its’ policies. I, therefore, advocate for a constitution that has no definition for faith/religion, caste, and race. That forms a true secular state.

A lot of people are wary of the very word ‘fascist’ and mostly associate that term to something that’s evil or cruel. For a country like India, keeping the foreign relations with neighbors in mind, it is very essential to be obsessed with the ideas of nationalism and national security. We can’t ignore these ideas just because they form the foundation for a fascist state. We need to be nationalistic in our approach and have complete control over our security. However, that may not happen as long as we don’t have a completely autonomous army. Our constitution should make provision in such a way that army need not be answerable to anyone for its’ actions against other countries. That means, it should be the army which should decide whether it should wage a war with another country or not. While, this provision may be branded as ‘fascist’, but, still, holds good the interests of our country.

We, being a very young democracy, have not learnt much yet practically about the hassles in administration. Our law and constitution are not the tried and tested ones yet. The very fact that we’re still debating the concept of the “Basic structure of constitution” shows that. Still, we are in the stage of learning, as a democracy. Having said that, we have seen numerous instances of misuse of power and authority by the legislature. The declaration of emergency by Indira Gandhi, and the abuse of Article 356 on various instances in the course of political vendetta go on to show that the legislature and executive can’t be trusted blindly although they represent the voice of the people. We therefore, even by being a democracy, can afford to have the judiciary as a completely autonomous and supreme body in the country.

The famous judgment in Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala has triggered a conflict among the legislature and the judiciary on the row of having the ultimate say. However, we have instances where judiciary did give in to the power of the legislature and remained silent even though the government was making a mockery of justice and human rights. One can easily make out that from the statement read out by the only dissenting judge Justice J S Khanna in the case of ADM Jabalpur v Shivshankar Shukla. Justice Khanna described it as the “darkest hour” in the history of Indian democracy when a petition of Habeas Corpus was struck down by a Supreme Court bench comprising four other judges Justice A N Ray, Justice Y V Chandrachud, Justice M H Beg, and Justice P N Bhagwati.

Thereafter, the cold war didn’t end between the legislature and the judiciary. The controversy in the appointment of Supreme Court Chief Justice A N Ray superceeding 3 senior judges resulted in the resignation of 3 judges. This is rather an unfortunate event and went on to prove that the judiciary lacked the power to protect the interests of people if the government is unfair. Therefore, we need a stronger judiciary to uphold the confidence in our democracy.

Coming to foreign policy, Nehru’s non-aligned doctrine may have been appropriate in the immediate post-WW II situation to avoid polarization and safegaurd our relations with the US and USSR at the same time. However, our current policy makers should bear the fact in mind that we cannot all the time remain indifferent (Read non-aligned) to injustices in the world and may have to take a stand. During the 1962 war with China, it was not the NAM countries who met at Colombo who extended their support to India’s fair side, but, the non-NAM US’s Kennedy administration which termed the situation as a “blatant Chinese communist aggression against India” and reached out to us with their Air Force support before a ceasefire has been declared by China. President Kennedy, in his historical statement, said, “We should defend India, and therefore, we WILL defend India”.

Taking the above example as a lesson, it is important that we time and again take a firm stand on various international political issues and demonstrate our global influence. Again, going by what John F Kennedy rightly said, “It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for a war”, we need to exert our aggression in dealing extremism in Kashmir and in dealing with Pakistan. Pakistan has time and again demonstrated its’ reluctance in heeding to India’s fair claims and it’s certain we can never solve the problem with bilateral talks. Considering the fact that we’re a much stronger army than Pakistan, we can always take advantage of that and show our dominance in the Kashmir region. As Theodore Roosevelt puts it, “Walk softly, talk softly, but carry a big stick in your hand”, we should always pose a threat to Pakistan through our military aggression.

Now, let me conclude by summarizing what I’ve stated till now. We need to consider our past only to the extent of learning lessons and progress with an eye on the present and focus on the future. We cannot confine ourselves by our self-inflicted wounds in the form of flaws in the constitutional framework. Also, our political parties should think a step forward rather than blindly glorifying their past leaders and their policies.

The Curious Case of LAVASA

We won’t talk about how bad the rich are and how tolerant the poor have become. Unlike a Bollywood script, we excuse ourselves from the class stereotypes and emotional brouhaha so that some tangible change can be worked towards without wasting any more time. Our cinematic classifications are so deeply rooted in our collective memory that we can no longer recall the origin of most of our biases. Case in point - the broken Indian village. Who first introduced a village with innumerable poor farmers under the evil domination of an opportunistic money lender? Of course, the money lender, bad guy as usual, would lend the money, get dodgy documents signed or imprinted with the poor farmer’s thumb and then he would force himself upon the unwary farmer’s widow or hapless daughter. As time proceeded, the setting changed locations but without changing mentalities. The village was replaced by a city where the rich became posh and the poor remained squalid.  This disproportionate change in social strata comes into the picture as soon as a ‘city’ comes into the picture. There’s something about the idea of a ‘city’, I think, that speeds things up – both the rise and the descent. 

As soon as a place decides on becoming a city, it seems as if unfairness and disproportion are automatically associated with it. What are we talking about? LAVASA. Located near Pune, Lavasa has been granted an enviable portion of electricity in the face of 6 other villages [Dasve-Ramnagar, Bhoini, Mugaon, Koloshi, Gadle, Dhamanhol and Sakri, situated barely 60 km away from Pune city] who still run their daily business with the help of Kerosene lanterns. With the rising prices of essential fuels, we highly doubt the longevity of this arrangement. The geographical viability of Lavasa and SEZ status granted could have something (or everything) to do with it. The villagers have lobbied for the Right to Electricity (surprisingly, not a fundamental right) with the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL) since 1995 however; the officials are yet to take concrete action in this regard.   

Inactivity on the part of officials and the exploitation of innocuous villagers propelled Mahesh Kamath to stand up and do something substantial to avert further agony. ‘Solar lanterns’ is the answer. As an alternate solution to the power deficiency solar lanterns are an ingenious solution. As you might know, irrespective of which resource our villages are deficient in, sunlight is always abundant. The solar lanterns Mahesh Kamath plans on introducing stay lit for 4-5 hours with a single recharge and have an average life of 15 years with a negligible amount of maintenance. You are needed here. The first target is providing lamps to 50. It can’t be difficult for an entire country. 

The JaagoRe event page http://www.jaagore.com/event/taking-stand-improving-living-conditions 

Provide your support in any manner possible. The event is on till December this year. The target is not huge. We can make it before time and move onto bigger goals. If the government doesn’t stop unfair treatment we can certainly go out of way to help those who are in need. This is your chance to light up lives and show the corporate interests that big money isn’t always needed to make big change. 

About the Indian Passion for Corruption

Once there was a milkman who delivered milk to a busy middle class society of Mumbai. As part of his daily ritual, he milked his cows early morning, collected the milk in a utensil, measured the day's produce and then, as his unspoken responsibility as the ideal milkman, added water to increase the quantity. Of course, aunties complained and growled about how milk was bland and wouldn’t produce decent yoghurt. They bickered together under the banyan tree and even gave an earful to their disinterested husbands. On his part, the milkman never once failed to defend the milk and its purity or himself and his honesty. He fought the noisiest women, convinced the suggestible and reasoned with the most logical. By the end, he was accepted as ‘the milkman’ for ‘this society’ and they all got used to watery milk and unsettled curd.

The shameless open secret of adding water to milk now serves as a constant fodder for jokes and wisecracks and is thus accepted as well. What would a society be without its jokes? It has become part of the society’s culture and they cannot think of living a life with no water in their milk anymore. Everybody happy.

This story of resentment, anger, expression and then acceptance sounds reminiscent of our struggle with corruption. As an independent free country, we embraced socialism and inducted every inch of it in our fractured democratic system. Socialism did not pave way for the liberation of 'Aam Aadmi', instead unleashed a big monster of bureaucracy and red tape-ism. The task of clogging every functional artery with the bile of corruption was undertaken with such  brute force that we were left no choice but to learn a life with clogged veins pumping evil. We withered, lost economic independence and surrendered our collective progress-economic and psychological, to  corruption. Getting any work done without a decent amount of donation started sounding like a fable - Possible in our imaginations, yet so unreal.

We, on our part, like women in the household society, bickered and tried to rebel initially but, eventually embraced the system with its many follies. (Few exceptions, like that of Janta Party's movement in 1977, led by Jayprakash Narayan, which brought down Indira Gandhi's Governments)

Over the period of time, our undue tolerance towards this sweet habit of corruption has made Switzerland synonymous with bank accounts with over US $1456 Billion of black money, apart from snow-clad mountains and pink sarees. Hefty scams spanning everything from food, railways, clothes, oil, aviation, sports, international sporting events and 2G spectrum have made an Indian contribution to Swiss accounts. If Transparency International ranks us one of the most corrupt governments in the world, we are not surprised. Frankly, nothing bothers any one anymore. It's all a given to Indians. It’s accepted; and expected.

This is what the cynic in us would have us believe. Because he would choose to ignore the calls made by Anna Hazare for the draft committee of Janlokpal Bill, his hunger strike to table the crucial legislation When Anna Hazare declared a fast unto death, social media and national news was abuzz with activity. People poured all out for the support and common call for justice. They seem tired of Government's reluctance to work efficiently and give them their due. They were tired of terrorist attacks, housing society scams, Common Wealth shame and 2G spectrum fiasco. Tired.

And if you are tired of your stifled capacity to do anything for the country, if you are genuinely looking for potential solutions to the Indian condition, there’s somewhere you would certainly want to be – The Freedom From Corruption meet, April 27th-28^th, India Habitat Centre, Delhi.