Election 2014: What Is There For A Common Man?

Year 2014 came with the promise of giving the chance to choose the government for the next five years. People from all over the country are more active and excited this time as compare to last election in 2009, atleast on social media, as many of them wants to exercise their voting right. The conventional political fight has become more interesting with the entry of AAP and activation of some regional parties. People are joining some party or other in an attempt to make an impact in the development of the country which is not bad. Couple of months ago, I failed to understand when Kiran Bedi said that people too can work a lot from the outside. Is there anything for the common man to do in the current politics? Can he/she participate from outside?

There are three types of people in the elections; one, political parties and their leaders who will be the direct beneficiary for victory in the election, two, volunteers of these political parties, which are seen as supporters, are the indirect beneficiary of these election as they KNOW SOMEBODY who is in the power, third, the common man, who is always at the at the mercy of their leaders for whom they voted for.

Let us see what common people are doing right now; they have some preferences for some political party like BJP, Congress, AAP or any other region party. They think these parties can do something good for them, which is not wrong. They post everything for the support of these parties on Facebook and tweets in the favour of this party, they want to win every discussion which is related with the party of their interest. People are searching and researching material to post on their wall and if any one comments anything against it then there are exchanges of news articles, youtube links, reports and anything and everything which is in favour of his/her party or against the other party. Isn’t it happening right now?

“Whatever is good, it is for me, whoever says”, may be the another strategy of this common man but when they commit to some political parties, they have to prove everything right, inside he may be feeling it wrong. Do they have any obligation to prove their leaders correct in all respect? No political party can be envisaged as free-from-doubt and has the magical stick that will change everything. Biasedness is our greatest enemy. All political leaders are delivering their speeches, although it’s political, and one can judge it correctly if he/she is unbiased. Our leaders, most of them if not all, are very good students of marketing and they know the power of positive and negative branding. They give us the spectacles of negative brand from which we 

see our opponent leader with.

Time and again we blame them for their arrogance, autocracy, nepotism and cronyism but we have also contributed in some way or another to make them powerful, we prefer to defend them by giving the examples of opponents that they are more wrong-doers than mine. Let negative criticism leave onto these leader and their paid-agents we need to adopt positive criticism from all the depths of our wisdom, which is the required most at this time.

An Experiment With Democracy

The democratic power of India creates its distinction and many countries approach India to study democracy and how it works. India is not only the world’s largest democracy but has shown its robustness in unifying the countless differentiation that exists in the country in the name of religion, caste, language, region, beliefs and idiosyncrasies.

A successful democracy needs to weed out the archaic concepts and introduce the new to fulfill the demands of the people. The system that has been created in the long time needs an overhauling to benefit its stakeholders. People are the owner of the country and of its resources and they choose some people amongst them for its governance which constitutes a ruling party or the government. All is well so far, the ideal version of democracy is in place and people are happy as they are ruling their own country. But the satisfaction goes to an end when the representatives become the owner of the country and people, helplessly, have to look at them for their shares. People, through the constitution of India, give power to their representatives to work effectively for them but distribution of resources are based on favouratism and cronyism and this is called ‘Corruption’.

Such type of system is all prevalent in the country where people are not participating in the decision-making for the country and they are left with agitations. When people are reminded of their responsibility in casting their vote and sit back to see the drama in the parliament, they feel cheated on the name of democracy.

Something needs to be change, people have to be asked their wishes from time to time; direct democracy is required where people’s participation is encouraged. Atleast something is to be experimented. For a big country like India, direct democracy seems impossible but it can be encouraged and experimented in small parts and find out the ways that how it can be organized. It is easy to say, if people don’t cast vote then they don’t have the right to ask any question but when they feel themselves participative they surely come forward. In direct democracy citizens can oppose any law legislated by their representatives or ask for a referendum to be hold.

Countries, like Switzerland, can be studied where direct democracy exists and working successfully and what we can adopt from them to make it applicable in India. It is first time in the history of India when people are asked their opinion after the elections are over. The step AAP (Aam Admi Party) has taken can be seen with the spectacles of doubt and which is not wrong; it may be their drama for the already accepted decision of forming the government or they are showing that they are different from the current political parties. Democracy gives the right to its citizens to doubt the intentions of any political party but that doubt should not block our vision so that we would not see something that is good for them.

India’s position at 94 in the world’s corruption index means that there are 93 countries in the world that have less corruption than us, we need to find out where they are good at and some political parties have to take the initiative and experiment in India to maintain the sanctity of the Indian democracy.

AAP: One of the alternate?

India is blessed with the multiparty system which makes everybody to keep their views in front of the people and can form the political party.

There is a portion of people who don’t want any change in the political system in India and continue to be the fanatic of any one of the political party. But there is a large chunk of people, who thinks themselves as the ideal common men, want the current system to be improved and get the issues resolves irrespective of who does that.

Most alternate parties are way apart from the issues that caters large segment of the people of the county, they hovers around the small/specific issues and fail to represent the people at large.

We’ve given chance to currently-dominant political parties and a lot have been done in the country. But those ideal common men feel that more could be done if they compare themselves with other developing countries like China.

In that scenario, when AAP (Aam Aadmi Party) is claiming to represent the ideal common man of the country and, they are standing on the high mountain of tall promises, people are not apprehensive about that.

Experts says that they are far behind from the practicality of the county’s present situation and only miracles can have this possible still ‘those people’ would like to give chance to miracles when it is the only alternate.

There prevails the possibility that AAP leaders will become corrupt too but they still have an edge over the current political environment. When we have given many chances to the current political parties for sixty years then we can afford to give chance to this ‘alternate’ for five years who shows (although in the air) a light of hope to change or upgrade the present system.

If the alternate will be tested, depends on the number of these ideal common men.

Now its corporates who refuses to disclose the political party whom they fund

Indian corporates refuses to disclose the name of political party whom they refund stating the reason that it may lead to backlash from political parties that feel relatively less-generously funded.

Section 182 (3) of the new Companies Act says that corporates must disclose names of political parties they give money to in their profit and loss account.

Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) requested the government to change the act as it is uncomfortable for them to name the political party.

Association of Democratic Reforms on Income Tax returns and statements filed by six national political parties revealed 75% (Rs. 3,675 crore) of the their income came from the unknown sources. The political parties are not obliged the source of these unknown finds as they fall under the donations that are below 20,000.

Source of Data: ADR

To ensure that there is financial transparency and accountability on the part of the political parties, there must be a strict mechanism with respect to reporting of financial information.

In Forty counties including France, Italy, Nepal, Bhutan it is required by the law to disclose source of income to the people of the country. In countries like Sweden and Turkey political parties have a voluntary arrangement to open up their records to the people. Countries like Austria, Bhutan, Brazil, Bulgaria, France, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kenya and Kyrgystan have a system by law for political parties to pro-actively disclose their financial information to people.

However, in India the political parties are not obliged to submit details to the authorities and to the people.

The nexus of corporates and political parties is the main source of black money and corruptions that leads to encouragement of opaque system.

Financial transparency in the funding of political party reveals the motive of donations and also help the auditing authorities to check the biasedness in allocation in allocating the precious national resources by the ruling party.

But the question is who is going to do that? Political parties and corporates will not cut their own arm with their own sword.

Definitely NOT

Babu Rao Kushwaha, who expelled from BSP, Joined BJP

Why BJP accepted Kushwaha, a tainted minister in their party?
Why this question is not asked from other parties when other people joined other parties. Kushwaha is backward class leader and Mayawati doesn’t want him to be the voice of backward class as she is suppressing the weak in the state of UP.

DEFINITELY NOT
Kushwaha could fetch them 5-10 seats in the assembly election.

To Congress (Why CBI initiated inquiry against Kushwaha soon after he joined BJP?
It May be a coincidence in the proceeding of CBI which was continued long ago.

DEFINITELY NOT
Government use CBI to for their personal benefit. And obviously there is the coincident that CBI raided Jagan mohan Reddy after he left congress

Subramaniam swami is facing charges against provocative remarks in National Newspaper and now the trail is going fast. He as also leading the case against P Chidambram who misuse his position to give benifit to his former client.

BUT DEFINITELY NOT
Subhramaniam's case is not going fast as he tries to stand against, its again co-incidence.