Cool Bihari: Indian Democracy Debate:II

I really appreciate the thoughts put in by Amitabh for suggesting some novel ideas.Now here’s my take on his comments.

( Political parties should have a set of duties, Tasks, in Tangible terms for them to be registered as a political party.)

· Political Parties have different roles to play. Unlike other professionals their Key Result Areas can’t be demarked. No where in the world do we have this kind of criteria’s. However as Political Parties there are certain norms to be followed for being recognized as a national or regional party but in terms of quantifiable work there is no such rule.

· Regarding the idea about impartial institutions judging the performance of political representatives it’s slightly difficult because that will destroy the basic tenets of democracy. Institutions corruption is the worst kind of corruption and at the best we can think about a comments or evaluation for their work performance and that can be circulated amongst the candidates which will help them make better choice when they go to vote.

· We can even think about an institution which has representatives from all walks of lives and they prepare an impartial annual performance report of democratically elected representatives. This institution’s role has to be advisory in nature and just as you have credit rating agencies and ATP ranking for players we can have an objective assessment just like a performance appraisal for our representatives.

Now as far as the success of Indian Democracy is concerned I would say YES it’s a great success for the following reasons.

Look at the challenges we had to face and let’s be a little reasonable we had a whole lot of challenges like poverty, illiteracy and poor infrastructure. However I think the key lies in creating the right educative environment which will make the citizens truly aware of their rights and duties.

I slightly differ with you on the issues of literacy being the reason behind the partial failure of democracy. In fact on the contrary I feel that it is the poor of the country who have kept the democratic values alive. These are the people who brave the odds cast their votes. These are the poor souls who believe that yes they can bring about change by casting their ballots.

I strongly believe that it’s the poor and the uneducated mass which pins their hopes on democratically elected representatives to meet their basic aspirations and needs of good road, electricity, law and order and subsidies. The banes of the democracy are the results of the haves and not the have not’s of the society. The rich and the middle class is only concerned with its own benefit and tax relief, they are least concerned about their elected representatives. In fact the so called educated ones need to be educated about democratic values and institutions rather than the poor and have not’s.

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Posted by Ajit Chouhan on Tuesday, September 27, 2005 at 11:16 AM | Permalink

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