Nerve Endings Firing Away

Written by Aditya – [aditya(at)theindicast.com]

I follow twitter B50 on twitter who has been pushing the Vote Yatra 2009 campaign even before the mumbai attacks ever happened. Vote Yatra 2009 is a campaign to spread voter awareness and voter rights in the upcoming 2009 general elections. I am all for it. In fact, I had a few queries about registering to vote which the Vote Yatra promptly and effectively helped me out with but now the problem of lack of leadership is abundantly evident. I think everybody would agree that India lacks political leadership in the short term. One would argue that the young leaders could bring about a change. But I dont expect them to be the revolutionaries. The young leaders are part of the political monarchy in India where the political reins of India are handed down through generation by select families. It’s a matter of right and not eligibility that Rahul Gandhi will be the PM some day. This hurts India in two ways. First, leading India is taken for granted because there is no sense of achievement to lead India. Second, due to political monarchy, there is no way for a worthy person having no political background to be a leader. Lets take the case of AB Vajpayee, he had no apparent political background and had to climb all the steps of party leadership ladder and hence by the time he became the prime minister he could barely walk. I don’t mean to belittle the young leaders but they haven’t stepped out of the typical political mould as yet and I dont see it happening in the near future either.

Going back to Vote Yatra, the campaign would be effective only if there were a confusion in choosing between leaders. But currently, there is no confusion! Everybody, including the “uneducated” class, knows that the leaders are just not interested in governing. To make this thought more objective, let me trouble you with a few numbers. In the 1953 and 1957, the parliament met for 137 days (almost 6 months). In the 2008, the government recorded the lowest number of parliament sittings with only 32 sittings in the entire year. The decreasing trend has been noticed since 1999, hence the earlier governments were no good better than the one we have. This falling number clearly indicates the reducing importance of parliament and in administration of the country. Another important fact is that 125 out of the 552 members (almost 20%) have criminal backgrounds. So the question I think we really should focus on is how do we ensure that right people are occupying the right position in the countries administration?

There probably isn’t a right answer but here are my recommendations for the above problem. Currently, it is impossible for any party to get a clear majority hence India will always have an alliance government which is acceptable provided that the alliances are formed before the elections and not just to gain majority. Before the elections take place, the various alliances will have to propose their PM candidate and the proposed PM will be nominate and elect his cabinet before the elections take place. How will this help? People will be able to clearly see who will finally be the PM as a result of their vote and the cabinet portfolio allotment will be done more scientifically than the way it is done currently where ministries and cabinet positions are promised in exchange for number of seats in the alliance government.

I am not attacking the Vote Yatra campaign but what we need now are political reforms in the way we choose our leaders and not which leaders we choose. How do we operationalize my recommendations? I have no idea and would like to crowd source is. Also, you are more than welcome to trash my recommendation but only if you have a solution or think that there should be a different issue to focus on.