Hello Friends,

Have you viewed the happenings in Karnataka recently? A couple of months ago do you remember Jharkhand issue?One or two years ago what happened in Goa?

The topic 'real politics and Indian politics' itself appears crafty and diplomatic. Is Indian Politics not real. Is Real politics not Indian. I hope members will discuss this point as well.

Let us discuss the ideal politics and actual tactics adopted by real politicians.

Politics is the art of statecraft. Managing public affairs honestly by dedication is ideal politics. a politician must take keen interest in all affairs of nation and his region as well as in international affairs and provide leadership and coordinate efforts for better economic condition of people, harmonious and cordial relation between all sections of society. The politician must be democratic minded and honestly abide by his political party discipline and stay in same party despite election prospects. A politician is supposed to subscribe to certain ideology and thus there is no place for defection like rats that desert a sinking ship.

Indian politics was almost ideal and fair in the beginning under leadership of Pt Jawahar Lal Nehru. Later, we witnessed the phenomenon of large scale of defections for petty gains. This was called 'aya ram gaya ram' politics. Caste factor is another salient feature of Indian politics. The Indian politicians work on principle of 'divide and rule'. Religion, region and caste are being used to divide people. such divisions help politicians in creating vote banks. Under leadership of Pt Nehru, there was more unity among people. Currently, vote banks based on caste, region and religion help politicians to win elections without doing any constructive work for people. In recent period caste based parties like Samajvadi party (Yadav votes- U.P.), Rashtriya janata Dal (Yadav votes- Bihar, Bahujan Samaj Party (Dalit votes- U.P.) emerged. This trend harmed the national parties like congress and the left in many states. The BJP also emerged as a major party by fanning Ayodhya Temle/ Mosque issue and Hindu sentiments.
It is happy sign that people are gradually realizing the vote bank politics. In Bihar, people are for the first time giving more weightage to development and administrative issues than caste issues.
The Indian politics involves money and muscle power. In the past, politicians sought help of criminals and moneybags. Now the criminals and industrialist are directly participating in politics. Thus our politics is criminalized and there are powerful lobbies of Industrialists and business interests.
It is in interest of politicians to have more semi literate and illiterate voters. We may hope that with spread of more education and experience, our people will gain maturity and politics cleaned of vote bank politicians and criminals.

There is no response from other members to this discussion. May be they are not interested. But let us participate in all discussions even if we are not so interested in a topic. This enhances our general knowledge and language skills as well besides chance to earn points and cash.

One aspect that comes to my mind is that women sarpanch and Pradhan in many many villages are in fact proxy for their husbands and more powerful male members. The politics at village level or grass root level is very significant as ultimately all activities at national or state level are ultimately for our people who are mostly in villages. Although reservation for women has enabled them to get representation in local body, the actual power is retained by male members of their family. Many Pradhans live in Pardah. A new phrase 'Pradhan pati' has been coined to convey the status of the husband of Pradhan. Everyone visits the Pradhan Pati and not the actual Pradhan for any work. This fact needs be looked into. Similar conditions may also emerge at state and national level when 33% reservation for women is implemented. This will defeat the object of women empowerment.

The phraseology of the topic and the introductory reference to the murky happenings in Karnataka politics suggest that there was a presumption in favor of something postive in politics and its departure in the context of defection of BJP MLAs whose legitimacy is still before the Karnataks High Court and we have to wait.Interestingly politics was and is not a saintly business as the political history down the ages would indicate.The real-politic is essentially a game among the players whose backgrounds are as diverse as their interests and the ways and methods employed by these groups who give themselves various names as political outfits are the art and craft of it.Before delving into the history of Independent India's experiment with democracy,it would be appropriate to look at the background of the prevalent political situation which led to India's opting for parliamentary democracy.The founding fathers of our constitution had the foresight to see the practical wisdom of preferring democracy over any other system as a country as big and as diverse as India could not have been ruled by any other system.But a system could be as good as the men who are behind running it! The kind of distortions that have crept into the system and Karnataka drama is a manifestation of one the same owe to their roots in the intial days of our republic.

I agree with Chinmoy that we cannot expect something positive in Indian politics. What happens in Karnata is nothing new. The defection game has been played in many states. The legislators owe responsibility neither to people who elected them nor to party that gave them ticket to contest election.

The parliamentary democracy is best system and was rightly chosen by founders of Indian republic. But as rightly stated by chinmoy, it is the people who run a system. system is just a tool. It is the people who use the tool. There is crisis of character. everyone works for his own selfish interests and the collective interests of society, nation and people are given a decent burial. We have seen the moral standard of Indian politicians in recent commonwealth games.

What is the remedy? The ultimate authority is with people. As long as they allow themselves to be used as vote banks, there is no chance for any improvement. The caste, religion and other vote bank factors conceal the misdeeds of politicians. so, the first step should be to get ourselves rid of vote bank politics. Enlightened citizens who are not actively involved in politics can take a lead. Defection is another game played by politicians responsible for instability. In western democracy, a government survives even with razor thin majority. The enlightened people can keep track of turncoats and reject them. All this is easily said than done. But let us not lose hope and do the best to rid our political system pf the rank opportunist and bring some stability and morality to body politic.

Now it is time to have a hard look at the functioning of our democracy over the past few decades.The issue of universal franchise raised a fierce debate on its adoption.There were quite a few skeptics led by Rajagopalachari who were never in favor of granting the voting right to all the eligible adults as they argued giving them this powerful without educating them over its use would lead to diastrous consequences and looking at the scenario today they were not far off the mark!.They favored linking it to some kind education qualification but Nehru held his ground and the first elections based on universal adult franchise was held and it's interesting to note it was held at a time when the literacy rate was as low as 35%!Thus the cart was set before the horse! Whatever ills that afflict our system could be attributed to this unwise decision on the part of Nehru who brushed aside pragmatic suggestion of Rajaji to have seperate electoral college and gradual introduction of voting rights.As a result of which people started exercising voting rights through proxies and proxies of a different kind.Here there was no appointment of proxies.Some rentier interests emerged and money and muscle started showing their ugliest powers.Before I proceed further which I intend to do in my later posts,I request my readers just to think of the cardinal mistake and the consequences which it produced in the later years which promoted casteism,electoral corruption and all the monstrosities that one can think of!

Coming to the next point of demorcracy and Pandit Jawharlal Nehru,it's reasonably agreed that he was a liberal democrat and he tried to consolidate the democratic foundations by nourishing and nurturing the democratic institutions which came under various serious attack under his own daughter late Indira Gandhi who was a woman with a very complex personality.Let me discuss it later.Pandit Nehru realized the importance of th role of democracy in India in keeping the country together with its diverse core.Under him elections were held regularly but the participation of uninformed and illiterate voters produced interesting electoral results.Kerala produced the most upsetting results for him when the state elected its first Communist government of the country under late E.M.S Namboodripad.As the Congress Party was still riding on its success in bringing Independence for the country,the party developed a kind of delusion that it had a moral and legitimate right to rule this country.Not only at the centre,it expected all the states to follow suit by opting for this party at the hustings!The first rude shock came in the form of Kerala Communist government.And Nehru's response was most undemocratic as his government sacked the Namboodripad's government in manner which hardly did justice to Nehru's democratic credentials.

The Congress Party at that time was more of an umbrella organization giving a place to all shades of opinion ranging from left to right and Pandit Nehru tried to do some tight rope walk!Although his stand against caste-based was firm but in electoral calculations casteism was very much practised! He identified a few persons whom he considered to be representing their class interests.It was a dangerous gamble on his part.For instance he chose late Jagjivan Ram to be the Dalit face of Congress.Jagjivan Ram was known as the weather-beaten cabinet minister of the Independent India.Although he remained an important minister throughout his political the average lot of a Dalit hardly improved.This tokenism on the part of Congress in dealing with caste-based politics and the larger question of Dalit emancipation had a profound impact on the competitive Dalit politics in India which later saw a motley group of Dalit leaders in the political map of this country.I would continue posting my views on other points later.

Chinmoy has well described the formative years of Indian democracy. He has particularly pointed out the controversy on universal franchise versus elite franchise. Pt Nehru decided in favour of universal adult franchise by rejecting C. Raja Gopalachari's plea for giving voting rights only to the educated. I believe that in spite of illiteracy and ignorance of vast majority of people, it was wise to introduce universal franchise for all adults. People learn more by experience than by class room theoretical study. The limited franchise only to educated would bring aristocracy and not democracy. Secondly, as a balancing act, the upper House of parliament- Rajya Sabha would be through indirect elections by state assemblies. There was also provision for nomination of eminent persons from different walks of life to Rajya Sabha. The real crisis is lack of moral character. Most of the corrupt and unscrupulous elements destroying democratic norms are educated ones.

Chinmoy has also mentioned that initially Congress was an umbrella organization covering all shades of opinion. Our democracy was virtually one party system. It goes to the credit of communists to change one party system of congress to multi party system by winning Kerala assembly elections and forming first ever democratically elected communist government in the world. The first non congress government was undemocratically removed by Pt Nehru.
As India won independence mainly under congress leadership, it was natural that the congress would enjoy public support initially. It takes time to evolve healthy traditions. We have now traveled quite far after gaining independence. It is for intellectuals and non party citizens/ journalists as well as media to awaken the people to the need of voting on basis of performance and refused to be pawns in vote bank politics based on caste, region, religion and family/ personality cult.

It's very good to know Gulshan's views on universal franchise which he has obviously discussed from his own perspective.Whether Rajaji was right or wrong the subsequent events which unfolded clearly vindicated his stand.Let me make it clear that his views were more based on apprehension on turning India into a mobocracy than promoting aristocracy!Experience can be a good teacher provided the learner wants to learn.The question is if we have learned at all!A few pages of Vohra Committe's report on criminalization politics in India would make our stomachs churn!The goons and thugs who procured votes for the politicians are bold enough now to come into the open and are contesting elections and winning them to enter the floors of Parliament and Assemblies.The dwindling standards of parilamentary debates are an ample proof of the fact that the popular vote which is underpinned on the free will of the voters is simply not there in most of the cases.Where do see the evolution of healthy traditions over the years and decades!There is another aspect of Gulshan's reply which relates to education.To blame education for the misdeeds of the educated would be tantamount to turning the logic on its head!An uneducated and uncritical mind is barely in a postion to exercise this potent right! All the ills which are threatening Indian democracy into a 'phoney' stems from this fact!

Now let me come to the question of defection politics.Defection per se should not be confused with 'horse trading'.There are instances in the Western and other democracies where eminent politicians defected on conscientous grounds.And in some cases they were quite justified in doing so in raising their voice against the oppressive majority!

Chinmoy has pointed out that Rajaji wanted to prevent mobocracy and not promote aristocracy. with all respect to Rajaji, I may point out that Rajaji had promoted and supported a political party called 'Swatantra Party' that consisted of ex rulers. Thus he supported aristocracy. I mentioned that the upper house in parliament and some state assemblies and the provision of nomination were intended to balance the parliamentary system. Shrei chinmoy has not commented on this. i hope he will consider this aspect as well.

As regards defections, in most cases, these are not genuine. There have been defections from BJP to congress and vice versa. BJP is considered a communal organization whereas congress claims to be secular. I fail to understand how the leaders these parties change their ideology overnight and defect to the other side. It is the lack of adherence to principles and moral standards that is really responsible for horse trading.
I reiterate that intellectuals, writers, journalists and others who seek clean politics should come forward with a platform to educate and inspire people not to be victim of vote bank politics based on caste, region, religion and other narrow considerations.