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Indian Democracy in Peril
System is in the clutches of corrupt money and muscle power
S. S. Johl
Democratic system, specially the socialistic democratic system of governance, in spite of its weaknesses and pitfalls, is considered to be better than all other governance systems, the human society has devised so far. Although there are still considerable remnants of autocratic kingdoms spread out in the world, humans have travelled quite far and are trying to define the mix of the densities of the hues of socialism and capitalism that would determine the optimality of socio-economic governance. At present, there is no effective pure free economy based of capitalistic system or controlled economy operating on the basis of socialism and much less on communism. The United Kingdom, a capitalistic free market economy, has the thickest hues of socialism, wherein social security takes the first seat in the system of governance. Medical aid and health services are almost free and school education up to the age of sixteen years is compulsory, free and the same for all children. So far so, the parents are not supposed to tutor their wards at home. While on work, reasonable percent of social security deductions are made and, if and when, out of job, allowances for the complete dependent family, including even milk for children and house repair etc are provided for. In fact, in some cases, it is overdone. Quite a large number of physically able persons prefer to stay away from work and depend on weekly payment of social security allowances. Interestingly, the governance system runs without any formal constitution with the King/Queen as titular head and all legislative and administrative powers resting with the elected parliament.
On other side, China with a declared system of “Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in dynamic context” is exploiting their work force to the full and often ignoring even the basic human considerations.
India’s first prime minister, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru was considerably influenced by the socialism of USSR and under his command India was declared Socialistic-democratic –Republic with a mixed economy. This was another hue of the mix of two systems, wherein private sector had enough space for its functioning. Yet, public sector was put in commanding heights. This created the problem of over doses of bureaucratic controls, restrictions, hindrances, tardiness and procrastinations at every step which lead to the pervasive corruption and inefficiencies we are faced with today. Bureaucrats with no business acumen and practical experience of handling the business enterprises usurped the positions of Managing Directors of the public sector undertakings with almost no accountability. These transferable persons did not show abiding interest in the commercial undertakings they managed. Above that in many cases politician were accommodated as chairmen of the corporations. This proved to be a deadly combination of corruption and inefficiency. As a consequence, except for a few honorable exceptions, all the public sector corporations and enterprises went into loss and several of them ran into zero and even negative equity.
With the passing of time, bureaucratic control became intolerable, because the private sector too suffered suffocation and strangulations at the hands of over bearing bureaucrats and demanding politicians. The system, therefore, kept operating extremely suboptimal and below its potential. Even under these socialistic dispensations the inequities in command over production resources and inequalities in income distribution kept increasing. Partially controlled economy touched its nadir and there came a stage that country was left with foreign exchange of US dollars one billion only. The country was not able to discharge its obligation of repayment of loans from the international lenders. Some suggestions from very responsible quarters were made to default on repayments. Had India defaulted at that stage, its credit rating would have suffered unprecedented and no one would have bailed the country out of this financial crisis. However good sense prevailed and the country pledged its gold to the Bank of England honoured its obligations of repayments of loans due. This sent positive signals to the investors and India’s “Resurgent India Bonds” of four billion US Dollars, floated thereafter got oversubscribed.
The situation left no alternative for the country to loosen the stranglehold of the bureaucratic governance and step by step the economy progressed towards liberalization, privatization and globalization that presented the country with new opportunities and at the same time threw challenges unprecedented. Whereas the liberalized system unleashed the so far constrained private sector and fundamentals of the economy took turn for the better. As a consequence today at the macro level the fundamentals of the economy are robust enough that it withstood the onslaught of the global recession that has not been able to batter the economy as it has done so to the other free market economies of the world including USA and European economies.
Yet the story does not end here. The liberalized, privatized and globalized economy has introduced extreme inequities in the ownership of productive assets and inequalities in the income distribution in the system. The highly skew distribution of incomes based on inequitable distribution of productive assets has landed the large majority of disadvantaged segment of the society into abject poverty and on the other end only one hundred persons in the country are reported to own sixteen percent of the Gross Domestic Product of the country.
This wide spread poverty coupled with illiteracy and lack of any civic and ethics education provided to people, a large majority of the people has become a breeding ground for voters who put them on sale at the time of elections. Unfortunately there is no dearth of small time politicians who have hefty amounts of corrupt money and do not hesitate even for a moment to bid for such votes in their run up to the elections. And, there is no dearth of the agents and dealers on the vote market that has been created in the vitiated election system the country is following. Whereas hoards of deprived sections of the society consider it an opportunity for marketing their votes for cash and/or other petty considerations like liquor and other intoxicants, the educated, richer and elite class voters show scant interest in polling their votes. This is the reason that there is dominance of the unaccounted money rich and muscled criminals that have entered the political arena. The tip of the iceberg showed up in the elections this time with Election Commission going little tough. Impounding more than Rs 34 crore and lakhs of bottles of liquor meant to distribution among voters to buy their votes has shown only the tail of the vicious snake of corruption and criminality that has enter into the democratic governance and has put the democracy in peril. Such a society can never prove to be an effective de facto welfare socialistic democratic society. The country may take pride in being one of the super powers internationally and largest democracy of the world that has withstood the challenges of electoral process over six decades, yet the rot that has set in within, is progressively eating into the very vitals of the democratic system of the country. In order to stem the rot, election process needs to be reviewed and taken out of the clutches of corrupt money and muscle power. Who will do that is a moot question!
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