The curious case of Indian democracy - Part 1

When I was little, I believed. I believed in my parents always being there for me, in the goodness of people, in society, in our great country and in an overall grand scheme of things presided by a wise and loving God. But hell, I believed that the events of "Centurions" could soon come true. In any case, I will talk now about one of my shattered beliefs - that of the Indian democracy. At first glance, it seems to be the only way to run a country. I will come to that later. First, let me explain what I believe to be the deficiencies of the system, as a common man above all else.

India is a diverse country, requiring a regional context to solving problems. Hence, the Government structure was made federal, which means the state Governments have a greater degree of autonomy. But some problems - the inter-state conflicts of interest, like the Mullaperiyar Dam, national issues like the Naxalite problems and security, development issues in the Northeast require Central direction. But with clear conflicts of interest between the centre and the local people and governments, we would need a strong Central Government policy, along with timely judicial intervention. These are not present, leaving these problems festering.

Multi party democracy does not seem to be working. Recent events, like Manmohan blaming coalition politics, the Congress taking a hard stance against the DMK while bowing to Trinamool, the disruption of the Parliament's winter session, throw into sharp relief the differences in interest. Ultimately, without unity in their stance, and with a priority on personal political power, how will they provide effective leadership?

Also, our parties are fundamentally flawed. To maintain their grip over various vote banks, the political parties have constantly played on our 'unity in diversity'. At the same time, ruling parties evoke falsely evoke the name of patriotism whenever they want the entire country to support them, projecting the party to represent India. No pathetic party is bigger than the concept of our powerful nation. But many go along with this propaganda, sometimes even when it goes against regional interests - witness the death of the Dravidian movement, promoting unity of the southern states, which could have solved many issues like Cauvery, Godavari and Eelam Tamils.

We often tout our GDP growth as the indicator of our economic development. Since 1991, by following a top-down approach, enabling FDI, FII, public disinvestment to private players, deregulation, the Government has opened our economy. But this limits democracy to the top echelons of the society. With crony capitalism, and subverting of national resources by unfair means, the spread of wealth has been all too slow, and our 'democratic' Government now plays by the rules of these powerful industrialists, being too weak to bring them to task, with its 'democratic' rulings.

With these arguments, I present to you a series of facts, which I believe highlight the effects of these various problems.

1. An amalgamated group of right-wing politicians and organised fundamentalists actively collaborate in an illegal activity, shield the perpetrators and then walk away.
2. Suppression of local democratic protests, with draconian acts like the AFSPA.
3. Around one hundred thousand farmer suicides. We are globalising our industry, putting our underdeveloped agricultural sector in the same market as the heavily subsidised ones of US and UK.
4. Expansion in contract and corporate farming. Loan provision from non-village banks towards agricultural activities by corporates stood for about 40% of private sector lending towards agriculture. Farmers are receiving less and less.
5. SEZs for the rich to setup their factories, on the pretext of providing employment and export opportunities, exempt from taxes, costing the Government Rs 90,000 crore in revenue from 2006 onwards (Thankfully, this has been somewhat rectified in the last budget).
6. Corruption - I don't even want to go into details, they would be too many.

I could go on and on but I don't want this post to go on any longer. In the next part, I will present what I believe would be a good way to govern our country. Obviously sitting and commenting is easy, but I like doing it and will continue to do so.