DEMOCRACY IN PERIL: IS INDIA A PSEUDO-DEMOCRACY?

Democracy as a potent tool to exercise control over the governance can be effective only when the citizens of a country are empowered in terms of :

a) Expressing their viewpoints without fear;
b) Assured dignity & enforceability of rights & liberties against arbitrary actions of the state
c) Possessing the ability to bring the requisite change & accountability in the system.

The vibrance of a democracy is best expressed through the amount of emphasis it places on human rights. If indices to measure democracy should be arrived upon, it should primarily include the attribute of “implied human rights”. There is a difference between universally agreed attributes of human rights and implied human rights. While the former is confined to defining human rights from the point of view of rights which a man/woman/child should enjoy, the latter is concerned with the emotional –psychological content involved by the virtue of being human. Accordingly,
even acts which cause small inconvenience/dissatisfaction for an individual citizen could be treated as a human rights violation. While there is a rising consensus among countries of the world with regard to maintenance of human rights, such an approach is essentially a micro-approach. There is a need to strive towards achieving implied human rights. The Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Sweden & Finland are already on that path. It is high time that India being the world’s largest democracy takes a baby step in that direction.

When the whole world condemned china for its gross violation of human rights during the 1989 Tiananmen square incident(where army tanks were sent in to crush protesting students),there were imminent comparisons with the human rights scenario in India. Media entities urged china to “learn” the “art of valuing a citizen’s rights & upholding their dignity” from India. In the past, India’s compassion towards its own citizens was setup as a benchmark /ideal to be followed .both nascent democracies like South Africa & seasoned ones like the USA & Canada sought to emulate the “gandhian vision” of a democracy.

However, recent trends in the human rights record of India have been abysmal. While overt violation of human rights in Kashmir, northeastern states etc have been highlighted in the UNDP human development report 2009, there are gross HR violations happening every minute in India as we speak.these go unreported or even unnoticed. We Indians thrive on this callous attitude. There is a scant respect for the “ aam aadmi “ whose everyday problems are treated as “minor glitches or aberrations” in a largely successful government machinery.

The treatment meted out to the common man in the event of a VVIP visit is particularly appalling. It goes on to show, how we value our citizens. It is ironical, how the government servants & elected representatives, who derive their purpose, authority & value from the citizens of India are given precedence over the citizens of the country!!. Traffic snarls during VVIP visits, cordoning off public places to ensure safe passage of VIP convoys etc have become the order of the day.

a recent incident , in which three aircraft loaded with around 500 passengers were not given clearance to land just because the president was supposed to return from Beijing. Over 11 flights were delayed, some of them cancelled and the three in question were circling in the air waiting for ground clearance. The flights were not notified in advance of plans to divert the flights elsewhere due to “security concerns which could endanger the life of the president”. They were left hanging perilously mid -air running on reserve fuel, with all the passengers hanging on to their dear lives. Now, if we are a true democracy, does it make sense to endanger the lives of 500 passengers & cause so much inconvenience to ordinary citizens , just to give clearance to the first citizen of our country? Is it not the moral responsibility of our government to value the lives of our citizens? ...and considering that this incident occurred just days after the tragic aviation disaster at Mangalore speaks volumes of our indifferent governance.

To top it all, apart from a few news items in the media, there was little public outcry. The people of our country have come to live with it. They have accepted it as a part of their life.it is difficult to say whether this is due to the passiveness ingrained in Indians due to nature of our freedom struggle or due to loss of faith of the people in general that any progress is achievable. But irrespective of what the reason is, we continue to live in misery & have accepted it as our fate.
This is in complete contrast to the attitude of citizens of western countries. There the citizens are proactive in demanding for their rights and the authorities are obliged to provide what the citizen demands of them.

A pivotal characteristic of a vibrant democracy is citizen activism. There is a need for the citizens of our country to shed their impassive & indifferent nature towards what is happening around them. Social consciousness brought about through awareness could help them in sensitivising individual towards other’s problems & issues in the society in general. An important lesson should be learnt from our freedom struggle. No change could have been possible without collective representation & demands. However, effective citizen group action should be accompanied by acquired human sensitivity.

If our civil society can take over the reins and act as a responsible “fourth pillar” of governance, its contribution towards strengthening democracy, ensuring the wellbeing of all citizens & achieving the ideal of “inclusive growth” would be priceless.

The government and its functionaries(civil servants included) are responsible to the citizens of this country both “collectively as well as individually”.i am stressing on this point , as the concept of responsibility of the government towards an “individual citizen” is often underplayed ,in favour of responsibility to the citizens as a whole. There is a need to revise our traditional concept of democracy and work towards establishing the notion that “the responsibility (of the state) towards the people of India is the sum total of responsibility of the state towards every individual citizen of India” .further, there is a need to define a new paradigm of democracy where, “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts”…..meaning, it is the primary responsibility of the state to uphold the rights & dignity of an individual citizen. The responsibility of the state towards an individual citizen cannot be shirked or compromised in the garb of securing responsibility towards the citizens of India as a whole.

Having said that, there are many problems involved in ensuring that a regime of participative governance & citizen activism emerges. Based on the experiences gathered in western countries, it can be inferred that people become proactive only when their basic needs are met. As long as there is deprivation, people would continue to be self-centered and not work towards development of the nation as a whole. The bureaucracy & the political heads would continue to wield a great deal of power there by jeopardizing the lives of ordinary citizens. The paradigm of “developmental bureaucracy”, “participative democracy” & “compassionate representatives” should work together in unison towards securing the goal of achieving a true democracy. If this is not done & if they pull in different directions, any claim of being a democracy would sound hollow.

is the indian defense sector the proverbial "dinosaur" ?

high profile bickering among the "nuts & the bolts "of the government machinery has become the order of the day!!.taking a cue ffrom the "twitter happy" shasi tharoor , its now the turn of DRDO chief saraswat to embarrass the armed forces top brass before the hordes of lens-men media.marking a departure from the hushed up boardroom jibes ,he chose to bring out the sharp differences from within the defense establishment into the open....now the pending question is will he like tharoor get the sack too?

would defence minister A.K.Anthony save the skin of his scientific advisor?all this drama remains to be seen ..if at all such an issue snowballs into epic proportions.speaking about the content of discontent between the armed force top brass , both the sides do have a valid point.the armed forces have long argued that the DRDO has not been able to churn up cutting edge defense technology at the pace required to maintain battle readiness.the armed force cite the slow pace as the sole reason why they are "forced" to secure weapons from abroad.the truth however is that , the armed forces are happy being plagued by the "dependency syndrome " akin to pasting "made in India" on cheap Chinese goods!!.

the pathetic state of affairs has not even spared the space industry where india is supposed to be a "global player". the "bottom up" approach is often negated and we always choose "tested patterns" to developing one ourselves.we preferred to be pampered by our Russian friends with all the discarded technology.a clever Russian ploy to keep our technological obsolesce intact.

will india be able to stop the chinese jauggernaut in the event of a war?...the answer to this is obvious isnt it?...the question is if india should be able to stop agressive neighbours to infringe upon its sovereignity, what is it that needs to be done?

thankfully, there is a way out this dilemma.instead of resorting to a blame game, why don't we just unshackle our defense industries & push them towards becoming world class industries.there is a need to press for an aggressive agenda on this front.if Indians do want to not let go of their "copycat"tag, let them copy the practices followed elsewhere and not the technology!!.practices such as heavily relying on the private sector expertise to develop world class technology and innovative practices would go a long way into developing our industries into the future Lockheed martins & Boeings.

UNWARRENTED BRUTE FORCE

KALINGANAGAR The upcoming steel hub in Orissa's Jajpur district is a classic case of how the rehabilitation & resettlement policy 2003 has failed to be complied with.The 12,000-acre Kalinga Nagar complex, some 100 kilometres from Bhubaneswar, has about 10 industrial units and steel plants.While development of backward states to reduce disparity among various states of our country is the right thing to do,the methods followed by the authorities in place & the motives too are questionable.the high handedness of the district administration in using brute police force to deal with the anti-displacement agitations taken up by hundreds of tribals, who were opposing the construction of a common corridor road to give access to Tata Steel's six million tonne proposed steel mill shows lack of sensitivity in dealing with the marginalized sections of our population.the police opened fire at the protesting tribals, injuring about 50 men and women, living in the tribal hamlets. isn't mainstreaming our tribal population to be part of our "inclusive growth" strategy also a major dimension of development? if so how do we justify this brutality ? were there not better ways to bring about infrastructure development in these backward regions? agreed that most administrative decisions are tough ones where the axiom of "greater good" should be applied at the cost of a few.but what is hard to digest is the fact that the very development of these regions is against the interests of the very people whose well being the government is considering.

the basic paradigm in tribal administration & development is the framing of sustainable policies bearing in mind the attachment which the tribals develop towards their land.unless this is followed the authorities would be in no position to negotiate & assure them of the benefits which would accrue to them due to development projects.because for a tribal, his land,his culture & customs/traditions/beliefs figure in the top of his priority list.a suitable way could have been to by pass tribal localities in construction of the road or the governor of the state applying his discretionary powers with regard to regulating administrative action & overlooking the effective implementation of the rehabilitation policy before any work was started.instead all that the administration could muster was the use of brute force against a largely peaceful protest.

the tribals claim that they have lost all faith in the administration since no discussions were conducted with them by the authorities before the road project could be started.further they allege that the administration is out to prove that they were maoists. to compound the problems of the tribals,the local police seemed to have gagged any aattempts to voice the concerns of the tribals by denying entry to politicians and representatives of different organisations into the villages since the police action. it is high time that the government of orissa & the central government proactively prevent such attrocities from happening lest it could detoriate into another situation like what happened in lalgarh.

RTE Act 2009 :AN EVALUATION

The provision of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 which gives legislative sanctity to the 86th amendment act 2002, is a progressive step towards realization of universalisation of elementary education and realization of the ultimate goal of securing “inclusive education” .however, the provision of the same without proper planning could result in rendering the act ineffective & work in contravention to the purpose for which the legislation has been brought about.
Various niggling constraints stand as hurdles in the effective implementation of the act:
The lack of sufficient educational infrastructure in our existing schools (both public & private)is a serious concern. By not providing for sufficient elementary school infrastructure, prior to the enactment of the act, the legislation which comes into force on April 1 2010 may choke our existing schools and overburden them. The huge number of children (92 lakh) who become eligible as a matter of right to claim for education would still be marginalized as schools would be ill-equipped to handle the sudden surge in pupil population…further, while adequate school infrastructure is an essential pre-requisite for the legislation to serve its purpose, it is insufficient to ensure that all children attend school and participate in the learning process. The school may be there, but children may not attend or they may drop out after a few months. There are a whole gamut of social, economic, cultural, and indeed linguistic and pedagogic issues, factors that prevent children from weaker sections and disadvantaged groups, as also girls, from regularly attending and completing elementary education these issues should first be subject to intellectual enquiry and probable solutions should be arrived at.
The RTE 2009 may not put a stop to the current crisis experienced by the union HRD ministry in meeting shortage of qualified teachers for our existing schools. Bringing in the legislation would only augment the need for qualified school staff. Conservative estimates put the requirement at around19lakh additional qualified teachers. For making this a reality we again need more teacher training schools, a drive to improve recruitment of teachers. Primarily, there is a need to fill in the existing pending vacancies and bring in B.ED graduates waiting in the wings .then a new scheme which could harness the services which unemployed graduates for an interim period, could be envisaged.
The third major constraint is provision of employment opportunities for the educated lot. We live in a globalised era of specialization .the key mantra to be employable today is to have greater qualification and work experience than your nearest competitor. Under such circumstances, if the legislation is not able to effect a smooth transition into higher educational institutions & subsequently seek quality employment thereafter. The purpose of providing inclusive education would be lost; it would cease to be an attractive avenue to pursue & could increase the incidence of child labour.
The introduction of a national knowledge network to link up all educational institutions and research institutions is a welcome step in that ,it would help bridging the gap between the school & the universities. However, such a linkage should be effectively utilized to dynamically update the syllabi and bring in the best practices followed elsewhere in the world. Another vital element of concern is that, the RTE is mum on the non-uniformity of standards of education (in terms of resources, facilities & efficiency) which persist between private & government schools & within govt schools, between the central, state, municipal & panchayat schools. Unless concrete steps are taken towards achievement of uniform schooling system the act cannot assist in development of our human resources.
.A scientific approach is needed to bridge the gap between education and employability. An ironic fact in our country is the co-existence of shortage/unfilled vacancies on one hand and unemployment on the other. What is needed is a scientific mapping of all possible avenues where employment could be created & then expediting the employment of unemployed qualified youth. The government cannot afford to be complacent on this front.
The RTE provides for certain protection to children from corporal punishments, detention, expulsion etc.while the intentions of these provisions are mature, any changes in the fundamental notions of discipline and control embedded within the teaching methodology adopted by our teachers could be a very difficult task to achieve. The onus would rest on the choices teachers make with respect to accepting /rejecting the National curriculum framework 2005 for teacher training.
While the progressive strides made by the government in according education & health top priority is laudable, a massive overhaul in infrastructure should be carried out on a war footing.it is the duty of not only the government but also the NGO’s,civil society ,private sector, media & every individual citizen of india to ensure that this remarkable piece of legislation addresses all the aforesaid concerns & stands apart from all those numerous legislations which were rendered inefficient due to improper planning.

IS TELENGANA WORKABLE?

the prolonged agitations on the streets of the capital of andhra pradesh --hyderabad has thrown life out of gear...studying at saraswati's @ nampally proximal to the state assembly & ravindra bharati,frequent bandhs due to agitations came to be viewed as a norm than an abberation...poor migrant daily wage labour from fringes of hyderabad city were those who were hit the most as agitations (both the telengana & samaykhya andhra movements) robbed the city of its usual vibrance .while saraswati lib was relatively immune from the agitations , one couldnt ignore the constant lament of an "outsider" student over fall in real estate value in hyderabad & plans of shifting to vishakapatnam or a pointless debate of a pro-telenganaist with a samaykhya andhrite!!.
in a classical case of divided loyalities , i have always been caught in the storm of many such debates!!...while my personal opinion on the issue may seem to be status quoist ,i believe that my aspiration to be a civil servant has prompted me to reason out things in a fairly objective manner.the first question which many of my colleagues asked me was " is a seperate telengana state really needed? "--- for answering this question, one needs to thoroughly verify the arguments of the pro-telengana & samaykhya andhra lobbies on the query.
the pro-telanganaists believe that 60 years of assurances of the united andhra government towards the telengana region have not brought about any remarkable change in the quality of life of the people of telengana...they allege that, the govt has perpetuated inequity in development....the samaykhya andhrites on the other hand argue that any future telengana state would siphon off a major chunk of the industrial base of the present day A.P. (the relatively higher concentration of critical heavy industries in hyderabad,mahbubnagar,medak ,ranga reddy ,nalagonda etc--all telengana districts form a large revenue base for andhra pradesh).this they argue would set back all the development achieved in andhra pradesh in the last 60yrs. futhru the major contentious issue is the question of hyderabad as the capital of telengana.the samykhya andhrites argue that ...they were responsible for pouring in investment over the past six decades into hyderabad ...any division of the state would result in "dadagiri" of the telanganaists on enterpreneurs & property holders from other regions of the state who have settled across generations in the telengana region....they say that , there would be utter lawlessness in hyderabad as pro-telenganaists would indulge in land grabbing & bullying tactics...
while both arguments partially hold merit, what baffles me , is the inability of the successive governments of andhra pradesh to adopt an attitude of equitable development of the telengana region itself...the very strategy of using the barren/fallow telengana lands for industrial development, in order to safe guard the fertile agricultural tracts of the coastal andhra belt itself is flawed in conception.....the cause of the people of telengana for a seperate state , has arisen out the erosion of trust on the govt of andhra pradesh.if telengana region was well developed from within , there would have been no reason for the people to agitate and demand for seperation. the quality of cultivable land has degraded to a great extent in the region.the fact that the region falls in the rainshadow region hasn't helped it a bit....the people of telengana are a disgruntled lot , constant refferal to telengana people as "modhunaayaalu"(dim-witted people) has transformed the telengana movement into a quest for identity...so in any case be it equitable development, social indicators or identity ,the telengana people have been oppressed to a great extent & their cause is a genuine one.
however, having said that, we need to examine whether the feasibility of formation of a seperate state.the formation of telengana would not satisfy regional aspirations of the people(as proclaimed by the TRS & the JAC)...as the newly formed state would not be fully equipped to provide employment to all the youth who have been starved of employment opportunities...the sustainance of the current movement ,stems from the relentless support from the students of osmania & kakatiya universities...if any future government of the newly formed state fails to deliver on the promise plank it has ridden on, it would plunge the region back into chaos.when the agitations began, there were reports circulated in the media about intense mobilisation of the maoists to infiltrate the student ranks & part take in violent agitations to serve their own agenda....such a case could become a norm if a separate telengana government fails to address the needs of the employed youth. the Maoist top brass may have already sniffed at an prospective oppurtunity!!.

indian hockey ---world cup debacle

looking upon the sorry state of affairs our national game finds it self in today,one cannot help but draw comparisons between hockey and the most celebrated sport in india cricket.while lack of sponsorship/patronage,archaic procedures followed by the Indian hockey federation,lack of adequate sports infrastructure & trainers have often been touted as the major reasons for the downfall of the game, a small but significant factor which has contributed to its downfall has been , the style of presentation and commentary adapted by the game.the reason why cricket a much slower paced game than hockey was able to grab eyeballs both in terms of viewership & spectatorship was due to the metamorphosis it underwent once satellite TV brought the game live to the drawing rooms.adopting the “super bowl” style , the ICC & the BCCI(since the IPL)have capitalized on the love for the game by uniquely packaging the game for the viewing audience. Gifted commentators such as Richie benaud,harsha bhogle,geffory boycott etc have livened up proceedings on the field through a mixture of wit & humour.all popular sport events in the world ranging from soccer,baseball to formula one have this important ingredient. Prematch & post match proceedings too help in building up the tempo for an ensuing game & increasing the anticipation of the audience.
One aspect that struck me while watching the hockey worldcup , was the lack of any enthusiasm on the part of the show Hostess Mayanti Langer or the eminent guests Cedric D’Souza(Former Indian hockey coach dumped by the Indian Hockey Federation during the 2002 World Cup) and Jagbir Singh (an Olympian who in 2008, refused to take up the job of a national coach) during the pre-match, half-match and post-match analysis .In an effort to replicate the magic of mandira bedi to cricket analysis, the IHF, recruited Mayanti Langer of zee news to analyse and report on a teams prospects , gameplan etc…its on this count that the effort failed.the hostess kept on brazenly referring to her notes in between to look up names of the players playing in the eleven and the guests looked as if they were about to dose off.the intensity which a world cup match would command was missing.in addition to this fact, another aspect was the nature of commentary during the course of the match….the commentators didn’t seem to be familiar with the names & profiles of the players playing on both the sides…for someone new watching the game, there is a need to familiarize the viewers with the rules, the terms such as “drag-fick”; “penalty corner”etc .on this count too the commentators failed.for popularizing the game ,it is necessary for the governing body to spell out the rules, constantly highlight star players & emerging talents & pack in the zing & glamour quotient where ever necessary.the success of cricket is a living testimony to that. Success or failure of any team can attributed to a large number of factors such as the ones I have mentioned above,which are beyond those issues highlighted by the media.addressing these concerns would in an indirect manner,have a bearing on increasing the morale of the players to play better. If hockey were to regain its lost ground and become a popular sport, it is high time that the FIH & IHF wake up to these ground realities rather than using short term measures such as bringing in virender sehwag & rajvardan singh rathore to vouch for hockey.

RTI AMMENDMENT

Efforts to amend the Right to Information Act, 2005 are underway. The proposed amendment is the amendment of Section 8 of the act (which specifies exemptions to the Act).according to the act in its present form, applications seeking information can  be rejected on the grounds of being “frivolous and vexatious.”.The proposed amendment seeks to add a provision which would authorize the information officers to decide on whether or not an application is “frivolous and vexatious”. Any measure to tamper with the provisions of accountability ensured by the RTI act, without a regulatory framework to cross-check the judgment of the information officers, would defeat the purpose of the legislation. The government should develop alternative mechanisms to check the inflow of frivolous applications rather than encouraging the information officers to shirk their responsibility. a clear definition as to , what decisions would be regarded as “frivolous and vexatious” should be formulated & awareness on the same should be created.in the era of transparent governance, the RTI is a means to restore the faith of the people in our democracy. The government’s attitude to give respite to the “over-burdened information officer’s”, would be a major setback in ensuring that the government are ultimately responsible to the people.