I would
like to discuss three important things in this part with regard
to our democratic practices.
We boast
of ourselves as the largest democracy in the world. In India, we
have 40-50 million handicapped people who are eligible voters.
This is almost 7-8% of the total voters as of today. The
handicap could be of any order but the fact is that they can
think and vote and are legitimate voters of this democracy. They
have the right to decide who should be legislating in the
Parliament. These handicapped people do not receive any
special attention from our Election Commission and the
governments. There are many amongst them who can not walk on
their own to the voting machine, see the voting machine or press
the button in the voting machine. How have we helped them to
participate in the divine process of strengthening our
democracy? It is the time that we take care of these Indian
voters. Many amongst them who aspire to contest the election are
not able to do so because of their handicap. We need to innovate
a way whereby they also get to contest and campaign without
changing the rules of the level playing field.
It
is quite heartening to note that the Election Commission has
asked the petroleum companies to give an explanation for not
effecting the much delayed changes to the oil prices in line
with the international market trends in the last 3-4 months. It
is the common feeling that due to elections, the government at
the Centre had asked these companies to delay the price hike.
Is it not violating , albeit indirectly, the code of conduct?
We need to plug all these loopholes if we want to really conduct
a free and fair election. If by a word of mouth these kind of
violations can happen, we need to preempt such possibilities.
The nation is incurring huge loss by way of subsidies to
the oil prices or else the oil companies must be making loss due
to the impending election as they could not increase the oil
prices. One of them must be true. Isn't it unfair on the part of
tax payer's money?
Thirdly,
this author is annoyed about the lateral entry of industrialists
,actors/actresses, legal luminaries, sports persons and above
all the sons/daughters/spouses/in-laws/close relatives of
leading politicians into our politics. This is a very dangerous
trend in our politics. This should be avoided by framing a
regulation that a person has to spend/serve in the
public-political arena for a minimum of three years before
contesting in an election. Otherwise, these short cut
lateral entries would prevent the party cadres from raising up
the party ladder and would set in dejection about our democracy
and polity. The only thing that helps these public figures to
manage a lateral entry into party politics is their popularity. If
popularity alone is sufficient to become a legislator, we need
not bother about it.
Also,
some/many of these public figures are known for their tax
evasions or issuing a bouncing cheque to the party that deals
with them. An actress who had to be issued an arrest warrant for
issuing a bounced cheque and not presenting herself to the court
during the hearing is now contesting in a southern state to
become a legislator. How can a person who has scant regard
for law become a legislator?
With
more than half the population struggling without drinking water,
closed toilet facilities, and more than one-third of this
largest democracy struggling under unhygienic habitats without
proper nutrition, two major phases of this 14th general election
is already over. With
all the talks about another hung parliament emerging, the nation
is yet to raise upto the occasion.
(To be continued)
