Undoubtedly, our democracy is imperiled today with the octopus like grip that black money has on impacting our elections at every level of our polity. In addition to that political parties are vying with each other and outdoing each other in brazenly wooing the people on caste and religious lines. All these unethical practices have totally vitiated our political land scape across all states and center and the outcome is that large number of the members of legislative assemblies as well as MPs have criminal records, writes former IAS officer V.S.Pandey.
On the eve of general elections to elect the 18th Lok Sabha we need to heed Ambedkar’s warning, which has been neglected at a humungous cost to the lives of our billions. Ambedkar had presciently stated, “On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics, we will be recognizing the principle of one man-one vote and one vote-one value. In our social and economic life, we shall by reason of our social and economic structure continue to deny the principle of one man-one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril.”
Undoubtedly, our democracy is imperiled today with the octopus like grip that black money has on impacting our elections at every level of our polity. In addition to that political parties are vying with each other and outdoing each other in brazenly wooing the people on caste and religious lines. All these unethical practices have totally vitiated our political land scape across all states and center and the outcome is that large number of the members of legislative assemblies as well as MPs have criminal records.
Many gangsters, either as MLAs or MPs, are now deciding the fate of our society and nation and some have even become powerful ministers with commandos escorting them. The system cannot even think of vanquishing them as they control the levers of power. Political parties, of every hue and color are courting criminals, industrialists, businessmen and financiers. The criminalization of politics gets exacerbated with politicians creating fiefdoms to suppress the democratic empowerment of the lower social orders and the new challengers to authority. To establish new power equations, services of the selfsame bahubali criminals are used. Weak and inefficient governance leads to the criminals becoming even more brazen. For the political class, winning elections, where first past the post system means mobilizing voters by any means, is all that matters.
Although our constitution declares that the goal of a government is to make it easy for people to do good and difficult to do evil -the reverse has become the norm. We have ended up electing representatives who are busy manipulating the system to serve their nefarious ends. After elections, they use their political connections to muscle their way into the lucrative business of contracts. India’s infrastructure is expanding-roads, bridges buildings and railway lines and countless other construction activities are undertaken- the criminal entrepreneurs begin excavating the contracts goldmine. They become rich and affluent at the expense of the State exchequer and public and then begin demanding seats from parties and end up becoming MLAs and then MPs. In the era of secular versus communal divide, the political leaders brazenly induct criminals as electoral candidates; justifying the secular cause. The moral aspect has stopped bothering the national political leadership-moral values have been quietly buried by all our political parties.
Hence the need of the hour is to provide the critically needed honest alternative to the people. The present order has just failed our nation as the gap between the rich and the poor is one of the highest in the world with the rich now controlling the major part of our nation’s wealth and are increasingly monopolizing more. The people need to be mobilized and made aware about all that has gone wrong with our political system and to encourage them to construct a new order in its place. The public needs to understand this clearly that an effective and people centric government will become a reality if and only after we realize the imperative of integrity and honesty in our public life.
The cancer of corruption and the influence of money and muscle power along with the use of religion in our electoral process and the resultant aberrations of our political functioning -corruption, criminalization and the communalization of politics, inadequate representation of women and growing signs of bigotry and intolerance in our society-have already caused immense damage to our social fabric. It is time to discard divisive and sectarian politics and deny them any space in a broad-based national political agenda. Our people deserve a credible political outfit as an alternative to defeat those who have been manipulating the democratic process on the basis of money, muscle power, caste and religion.
The nation needs to pursue politics as a ‘clean’ profession with focus on development, honest and effective governance wherein every citizen gets the opportunity to lead a life of dignity and realize his full potential as a human being. The unfortunate part of our politics is that it continues to pay lip service. ‘Garibi hatao’ rhetoric and antipoverty schemes have been promulgated by every government since Independence, still millions remain deeply mired in poverty. The political class keeps shedding crocodile tears about freeing Indians from poverty. If the energies of these millions had been productively utilized by society, the result would have been massive national growth. We have to end this misgovernance. A well governed , poverty free India where every citizen is provided with equal opportunity to attain his full potential will become a reality only after the cleansing of our political land scape. The exigent need of the hour is principled politics based on truth and moral values and purged of caste, religion, black money and muscle power. We, the people, have to strive to make it a reality.
(Vijay Shankar Pandey is former Secretary Government of India)
