by Lakshmi Narayan V
A famous ad line goes like this, “Aap Janta ki sunoge, toh woh aap ki sunegi, varna bahut maaregi, yehi toh hain democracy.” (If you listen to the people, then they will listen to you or else will beat you up very badly; this is democracy.) Is this the democracy that we truly experience in India? As the word indicates, does democracy in India empower the proverbial “Aam Aadmi” with the power to determine his welfare?
There are a lot of Aam Aadmis who find it difficult to manage one square meal a day. Day by day passes like this and then comes the day when, once in five years, the Aam Aadmi gets to be the decider; to choose his fate and elect his Parliamentary Representative. But how does democracy really work in our country? Does an epitomizing Aam Aadmi exist as the politicos have branded and made a propaganda of nursing him in this country? Is ours a country at all in its entirety? Are our identities collective? Are our needs common? Are we all Indians, each one of us a sample of a larger population? How complex are we to be electioneered, addressed and governed? How many more questions are there to be asked? And answered?
The General Elections ‘09 are in the offing and the campaigning air is filled with promises and expectations galore. Each one belonging to a particular social strata, sub-strata has an expectation of his own. And there are lots of social, regional, religious, caste-based strata, sub-strata and super-sub-strata in our country. Therefore, we realize that there is no Welfare State as such, but colonies of welfare individuals. Ask the different political alliances. Compromise is the key word when it comes to surviving in our socio-political framework.
For the greater part of the last century our biggest hoax has been a famous brag-line which claims, “Unity in Diversity.” We are cursed by our differences. Yet we somehow cling on to them and identify ourselves academically as “Indians.” While in reality, we are Tamils fighting with Kannadigas for Kauveri; Mumbaikars assaulting Biharis accusing them of swindling our jobs and crowding our state; Hindus who burn a Christian reverend and his sons at the stakes for religious vendetta; Islamic Extremists who bomb posh shopping malls in Delhi; Conservative Cultural Torch Bearers who beat up girls in a pub; God-Saviours without whom Ram will die without having a temple or will lose his oceanic bridge; Dalit Law Students who beat up students of other castes like hooligans for not addressing a leader’s name in an invitation; Policemen who stand and watch the Law College students wrestle with no holds barred; Entrepreneurs who cook the books and embellish a whooping 8000 Crores when our country is hit by economic recession.
All this notwithstanding the political tamasha that is staged right in front of our eyes and let off the hook in a matter of but very little time. Our short term memory loss is worse than Gajini or we are left without enough choices that a politician once branded a criminal becomes a politician again. May be we have resigned to the fact that only criminals make better politicians in this country.
Our politicos are prepared to kill someone while extorting huge sums for their birthday celebrations under the hood of Welfare Funds and yet get on with it unabashed. Our ministers can lose the country’s Exchequer revenues amounting to 60,000 Crores and continue to be ministers. We are a tolerating lot. We are anything but Indians as a collective noun.
We are divided and in such an intricate fashion that each individual finally has to put up with more than one identity and therefore more than one cause to support. We have had a totally impotent regime this closing term. The opposition too doesn’t seem prudentially constructive in a common cause. All that they are keen to construct are the left overs of a temple in Ayodhya, an increasing symbol of massacre, one-upmanship and religious jingoism.
The usual election scenario is an approximate fifty percent casting their votes. Mostly those who are used to waiting in long queues under the skin burning tropical sun. The other comfortable, complacent half doesn’t want to venture out of their comfort zones to punch a stupid ballot. What they in effect do is double the chances of those who they don’t want to elect. And if, as it is so normal in our polling processes, someone else makes use of the absentee’s quota, quadruple the same.
How will it weigh in those Masters’ minds when they realize that their Maid Servants actually decide their next five years for them because they never vote? The problem in our country, or even our constituency is that we are quite not sure who to entrust the people’s power with. In a farce of a political sport we often find ourselves in a position to decide between vultures and hyenas weighing up which one causes the democratic body the least of damages. While the scavengers themselves mutilate its body parts and devour them for their creed. And then they bring in their heir-to-the-throne and each party becomes a Monarch by its own. Individual representation in Indian politics is but a feeble theory. Our British sahibs have left our country long ago but we still can’t stop the habit of licking our Masters’ shoes in servitude.
Literacy is another major issue in binding us as Indians. Literacy in which language, English? Hindi? Vernacular? We are not one people of India with one thought, one motive and one motto. There is no point in loading our history books with vainglorious claims and hails. At least our children must not be fooled by this pseudo-nationalism. We are definitely not one nation by language. Our regional issues too therefore become exclusive and hence require to be solved, the same issue, time and again. Amidst all this cacophony we are solemnly resolved to constitute India into one nation of SOVEREIGN, SOCIALIST, SECULAR, DEMOCRATIC, REPUBLIC and secure all its citizens according to the Preamble. And all of us, by general proof will have to concur that none of the capitalized claims in our constitution is a reality or even beginning to seem to be.
We had to come together to stand up against a common enemy for independence. And when the common enemy is gone, we no longer find it feasible to stand up for anything, let alone together. We were different empires and colonies stitched together as one country by the Imperialistic Tailor. They have delivered us but we still find the patch work bursting at the seams, each tugging away towards its own inclinations. We realize that we are still a group of colonies and where the British have left us, the Americans have taken over.
We boast of Foreign Multinational Companies while our Farmers commit suicide out of poverty. We are not immune to the countless atrocities around us. We are just numb like lepers. We just observe helplessly as our morbid system wobbles before making the inevitable, long, hard crash. Our economy grows. Our GDP grows by 8% in spite of our bad policies. Our country might do even better without any governing at all. We are prepared to compromise farmers and slum-dwellers for SEZ’s because that is where the money comes from. So much for equality.
With so many civil issues occupying our attention, we might just have to put up with drastic border issues wherever there is another country beyond it. We don’t have protection in our homes from a foreign invasion in as minuscule a scale as ten men armed with guns. Our policemen do not have bullet-proof vests that are actually bullet-proof. Our NSG’s don’t have professional transportation and have to borrow the Army’s Helicopters or ridiculously arrive in Best buses to a terrorist occupied precinct. And we spend more on National Security than some other democracy’s national budgets.
We spend only 1.2% of our GDP on Health Care. And to think that it was one of the major issues in a Presidential race not so long ago across the Atlantic, one cannot but help recognize that India Shining or Discover India are but farcical promos keeping us in this convenient coma of being in a Welfare State. Our politicos can make it to the venerable “Chair,” just by throwing us a few freebies including as trivial as a Colour TV and still boast about such a political manifestation as the “Hero” of the Election Drama. We do not need security, we do not need health care, but we are happy with a free TV set. If only politics was this easy around the world.
Lastly, a little out of the context, but quite comparably, we witnessed a black man elected to commandeer the White House. That man gave his countrymen a direction, a promise, the hope and trust of good leadership. He did not promise freebies but told them what they had to hear from a leader. That things were not good, yet will only become worse before they as a nation could weather the unendurable storm. He urged them to “pick themselves up, dust themselves off and get to work building up their nation again” and united them as one people. Whatever the problems that their country faces now or whatever they shall encounter in the future, at least they have someone to show their way forward.
What we face here are men and women who, although divided by nomenclature and policies are identical in their trade. Candidates who swear in a public meeting to cut the hand of an Indian; opponents who threaten back to squish the former under a roller; men who vow to build a temple for nobody but pride’s sake and don’t care how many more they have to kill; ministers who abscond when wanted under a criminal case; Utter Racists who publicly threaten our Sovereign State’s security if the war doesn’t stop in Sri Lanka; Chief Ministers who take their guests on a special tour into terrorized hotel corridors; party cadres who burn a bus with college students at the stakes because their party leader was convicted under a corruption charge.
May be its time to stop asking questions; or even trying to find answers for them. May be its time to pick up our tools and set ourselves on our own agenda in stringing this nation together, one tiny block at a time. Elections or no elections doesn’t have to matter any more. Because in this country even getting a voter’s identity card isn’t as easy as it needs to be. And what good is even that apart from being a mere documentation when one is not sure who to vote for.
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