Except for the fact that people cast their vote, and a "free" media there is hardly any semblance of democracy in the ways of our country.
This system of governance that was designed by the British,with the sole purpose of ruling and not serving the country;the rules - for the British,of the British and by the British-has been by and large adopted with the British replaced by the power hungry and greedy section of the society,that are our politicians.Thus so much power vests in the hands of the politicians that the one begins to wonder about the independence of the judiciary,legislative and the executive,as laid out in our constitution.The executive has a much stronger hold over the society than the judiciary –having the whole civil law enforcing agent of the constitution-the police-as its puppet,to play with the people as it wills.
The MPs make legislations,the government implements them.The disapproval over the law that follows in many cases, mostly stems from the fact that the decision-making process does not involve the people that are going to be affected by it.
As one would wonder that if the MPs are choosen by the people,does not that mean people have a say in the process of making legislations. Thinking of it,how do people decide which candidate they should vote for?
For almost all of rural India,caste is the most important factor. For urban regions(where educated people need evolved tools to be manipulated) the parameters are both larger and somewhat complex,but nonetheless including caste,money(hence power and influence),media(and hence the extent it is biased depending on a candidate's "influence")...
The incumbent government is always at a higher ground thence,as it gets to advertise as it wills-by using hoardings that we see all across the cities and the newspaper pages exclusively dedicated to "let" the common man know of the various schemes and projects being undertaken by the government all over the country-these fooling only the most naive,and is an important tool for rural regions,where people are so desperate for any development that even though they know what most of the candidates are up to,they want themselves to believe the promises that are made to them.And depending on which candidate has made better promises,combined with caste factor,they go to polls each time hoping for a government that would give them somewhat better chances of survival than that "ruled them" earlier.
Also the voter is faced with one more dielemma;when he votes for a candidate in his constituency,not only is he choosing an MP for that constituency,but at the same time choosing the national leader,PM, by voting for a particular political party to which the local candidate belongs.Thus he has to shoot two targets with one arrow;this is so as the voter may like the leader of a party say Congress to be the PM,but to vote him up he has to choose the congress candidate of the constituency he is in,who he may or may not like to represent his constituency.
This system of voting makes things as complicated and ugly as it can get.Bills cant get passed(except for those that serve the MPs) as the arithmatic of the coalition government is far to complex;no government gets elected with a majority of its own,and is thus always too weak to make any radical changes that the situation of the country demands.
As a result we have become a country that cannot decide whether women should have more say in the administration,whether the PDS should be universalised(or should I say whether let millions die from hunger or not);the number of pending bills just goes on increasing.Even though we have an economic-architect as our PM,we dont see the most obvious reforms being implemented,as he can hardly take a decision on its own.
I think I will stop here .More when I get frustrated again with the ways of governance...this time it was the CWG and the MP "salary" hike(now 68 times an average indian earns,not including the salary they get for not spending public money on public projects).
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