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Mainstream, VOL L, No 11, March 3, 2012

Whither Indian Politics/Elections?

Sunday 4 March 2012, by Rajindar Sachar

#socialtags

Democracy is a basic feature of our Constitution. Parliament and Legislative Assem-blies are instruments created to give effect to the democratic content of people governing themselves. Political parties are the medium through which representatives are elected. It stands to reason that after the election, the implementation of the principles and policies continue or should continue to govern the programme. That is of course text-book teaching; but how close are these sound principles to the reality of the present politics?

A mini-general election with the largest State of UP going to the polls seems an apt time to have a close look at the way our political parties treat the elections and the social and political philosophy to woo the voters.

The minimum test for a candidate should certainly be that he/she is not foul of criminal law. That is why the Supreme Court as for back as in 2002, in a writ petition filed by the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, directed that a proposed candidate should disclose whether there is a criminal charge-sheet against him at least six months before the date of election, so that the voter may try to avoid politicisation of criminals, in the sense that criminals should not be elected so as to prevent them from wielding power over the reins of the state. But alas, India continues to remain a mystery to not only the foreigners, but even to us, because we find that the political parties still continue to warmly welcome the criminal elements to their bosoms.

Thus of the 337 candidates (upto the fifth phase) for the UP election, about 32 per cent belonging to the parties SP, BSP, Congress, BJP have serious criminal charges pending against them.

This notwithstanding the warning about criminal elements in our legislatures given by the Vice-President of India at the All India Whips Conference: “Exactly 23 per cent of MPs elected in 2004 had criminal cases registered against them, over half of these cases could lead to imprisonment of five years or more. The situation is worse in the case of MLAs.” Contrast it with Europe—not that I am fond of political standards in Europe. But recently the President of the German Republic resigned because he had threatened a person who was demanding loan given to the President or in England where a Cabinet Minister resigned because he made his wife take the blame for rash driving when he himself was driving the car. How ironical that all the major political parties in India are resisting to frame the law debarring persons charged with criminal offence from contesting elections!
Another grim reality of the present elections in Punjab and UP is the amount of illegal money circulating and the distribution of drugs and liquor, the danger of which the present Chief Election Commissioner has highlighted, and election expenses are mentioned to have gone upto Rs 3 to 5 crores per seat. Is it not farcical to call these elections free and fair?

NO party is talking of real problems. Minorities are being treated as football of this small politics. An unacceptable competition of claiming to be custodians of minorities is being given by some parties by pressing the panic button of security, while on the contrary some parties are donning the artificial garb of nationalism. This is insulting the minorities. They are nobody’s pawns. They are equal, proud citizens of India. Parties which behave in such a manner are ignoring the well-established code of Universal Human Rights that proclaims: “In any country the faith and the confidence of the minorities in the impartial and even functioning of the State is the acid test of being a civilised State. This is accepted wisdom.”
The real problems overwhelming the electorate are many and yet there is a conspiratorial silence from all the parties. A report by Save the Children (an NGO) shows that more than 100 million children in our country have not enough to eat; 24 per cent of families say their children go without food for one day—what a tragic mockery that the Central Government is resisting the PUCL petition in the Supreme Court for the right to food for all on the specious plea of lack of funds, while merrily and proudly proclaiming its purchase of 126 Jet Fighter aircraft for thousands of crores! This perverse priority is further heightened by the admission of a Central Government Minister that India accounts for 60 per cent open defecation in the world—the reason being that building toilets requires Rs 8000 each, but under the government’s norms only Rs 3000 is provided. Can there be a more sardonic double-talk? And yet no party is talking about these issues.

Of course all parties are talking with their mouths wide open of giving laptops (the irony of the untruth is so stark when the fact is that 40 per cent of India is not electrified), motor cycles to students, without batting an eyelid or feeling ashamed that a large number of schools do not even have blackboards or toilets for girl students.

In 2009, 17,368 farmers killed themselves. Agriculture growth, the mainstay of the Indian economy, has remained stagnant for the last decade at 1.6 per cent and it has now slipped to 0.4 per cent. The Planning Commission Report of 2011 has had to admit the gross inequality of assets wherein the top five per cent possess 38 per cent of the total assets and the bottom 60 per cent owning a mere 13 per cent. There is one-third high incidence of poverty amongst SCs/STs, and one-third of Muslims live below the poverty line.

In spite of this stark reality, no major parties in the elections even mentioned these vital issues—this shows an attitude of contempt like that of the old feudal master towards his serfs. This contempt towards the electorate cannot be described better than what I chanced to see on my computer on blog posted by one teenager, Sunil, thus:

• “It is time for the next elections and his previous promises have not begun.

• “I am a very young child and today I have learnt that you can call politics, corruption too.”

The parties should seriously heed the warning given by Babasaheb Ambedkar who on Novem-ber 26, 1949 warned: “How long should we continue to deny equality in our social and eco-nomic life…. we must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from this inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this assembly has so laboriously built up.”

The author, a retired Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, was the Chairperson of the Prime Minister’s high-level Committee on the Status of Muslims and the UN Special Rapporteur on Housing. A former President of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), he is a tireless champion of human rights. He can be contacted at e-mail: rsachar1@vsnl.net/rsachar23 @bol.net.in

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