Dear Members,
Our country is passing through a phase of slowdown or a no growth economy. The unchecked monetary accumulation in the form of black money and the increasing poverty (the rich and poor gap) has been extensive over the past few years. At such a stage, the various questions that bother us are: Who is responsible for the same? Why, even after 65 years of Independence, and despite having abundant resources and talented people, are we still at the stage of a developing country? In the scenario of globalisation and industrialisation, why should our country lag behind? Why should we tolerate our flawed education policy, which makes nothing other than providing the sheet of paper that is called a degree? Why is half the population below the below poverty line, what are the reasons for increasing unemployment, which results in people getting frustrated, and increase in criminal activities and hindering of overall progress.
There are a number of factors that can be attributed to the situation. But the most important one is our political system and the persons who are at its helm. Our political system has some weak points and just because of that, our politicians have become the kings of the political system. They are ruling our political system. They just think about power, money, life after retirement and hence, we come across innumerable cases of scams, rather than welfare of the society. The fact is that political leaders are taking undue advantage of public wealth, the wealth of the common people.
Ours is a democratic country and to a large extent, the system of coalition government especially for the last two decades has given rise to new tactics of saving the government rather than reviving the country. And because of these coalitions as well as opposition parties, it often takes a long time (almost years) to pass certain bills or implement policies like; FDI in multi brand retail, Companies Bill, Lokpal Bill, Grievance Redressal Bill etc. (these are a few examples of the same).
It is said that, a system is as good as the people manning it. Our political system consists of the representatives elected by us. Thus, blaming the political system directly for being in such a sorry state of affairs is solely due to the negligence or wrong voting or non-voting policy of the people.
It is the people or we as citizens, who don’t have the collective courage to go against the people who try to finish our democratic tradition, knowing well that we have elected our representatives to echo our feelings, fulfill our needs and to support us always. Today, common people fear entering politics. Alas, the people have allowed the soul and the principle values of our freedom fighters that their life demonstrated to die. Weonly put up pictures of freedom fighters on the wall and name the streets after them, without learning anything from their life.
One should know one’s responsibility towards the country and one should know one’s rights. When each and every individual know’s his own role towards the society, we will be a leading country in the world.
I think it is always important to see the core of the situation before analysing the surface of it. Firstly, we have to change the inner world (ourselves), then the outer world (politicians) will change automatically. So the solution is, that we have to return to good values and not allow ourselves to be misguided. There will always be bad elements who will misguide, the problem is our willing participation in allowing evil to win over good.
At the same time, certain reforms should be brought in: like a candidate stanting for an election should not have even a single case filed against him and investigating agencies like CBI should be given autonomy as against being under the control of the government. We can see that many CBI cases haven’t been solved yet due to political pressure due to vested interests of the leaders.
Also to a large extent, the manner in which election campaigning is done is itself a cause for worry. Politicians openly indulge in vote-bank politics. They target the vulnerable poor population which represents 60% of our population. As a result of which, wrong people, who are just interested in promoting their own welfare, are elected. But, now it’s not the time to remain ignorant and just be a spectator. I hope there will be a strong appeal for electoral reforms in the near future.
Is it not the time to move a step forward and see that our political system does not puncture our country’s values any more, and is not an obstacle to the Indian growth?
So, it’s time to rise up. We should all gear up for the ensuing elections, motivate our talented youth to break the shackles and show that our country can no more be manipulated by any politician – either regional or national.
It’s time to think differently and prepare ourselves to usher in some radical changes.
