Insurgency and Other Disruptive Forces Crippling India

Apart from the problems of precipitous decline in political morality, rampant corruption, growing impoverishment and stark economic disparities, other serious problems, which are distinct but related to or caused by these problems, plaguing India are insurgency and other disruptive movements raging in, and outraging various parts of, India. These movements appear in diverse forms which may be categorized broadly as separatist including secessionist movements inspired by cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic identities or movements caused by socio-economic disparities and marginalization. Very often these movements are violent, being directed against established authorities of government. Sometimes, they are directed against certain groups of people who, being outside the identities characterizing the local population, are perceived to be either exploiters or undue beneficiaries at their cost. Depending upon the nature and strategy of perpetrating the violence, the movements may be termed as militant, extremist or insurgent. With the advent and currency of suicide bombing, these movements, particularly those associated with religious fundamentalism, even deploy terrorism involving wanton killings in order to make their point.
Except for religion-based movements which originated in pre-independence India due to the British rulers playing the religious card in an attempt to preserve and perpetuate their colonial rule and promoting the preposterous principle of religion as the rationale for nationhood, all other movements are post-independence phenomena. Even if the seeds of these problems existed then, they remained dormant and subjugated to the British rule. They blossomed and bloomed in the post-independence Indian republic, bringing the Indian nationhood in question and to ransom. The salient such movements and consequent disruptions in various parts of India are indicated below.
India’s independence accompanied by its partition into two nation-states based on the two-nation theory, which was unacceptable to India, set the stage for future separatist movements in free India. One example is the emergence of many self-styled organizations in Kashmir demanding autonomy, self-determination, independence, or even accession to Pakistan, often using violence, mostly aided and abetted by cross-border instigations and occasionally accompanied by terrorist activities. For the last at least two decades, Kashmir has been an insecure and disturbed part of India, resulting in several hundred thousands of casualties involving civilians, militants and security personnel in insurgency and counter-insurgency operations, and in near collapse of the thriving tourist and related trades. Another example of unrest and violent movement emanating from the acceptance of religion as a basis of nationhood is the Khalistan movement aimed at creating a separate Sikh nation, which rocked the Punjab region by violence, militancy and terrorism for almost two decades in the seventies and eighties. It was preceded by a movement for creation of a Sikh majority state, which was done in 1966 through an Act of the Parliament. The high points of the Khalistan movement were Operation Blue Star of the Indian Army in order to quell the armed secessionist movement, assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the subsequent outbreak of anti-Sikh riots in Delhi and the mid-air blowing up of the plane of an Air India Flight. The movement, in which the Sikh Diaspora have played an active role, is now at least dormant largely because of other overwhelming developments in the country.
Another part of India which has been one of South Asia’s hottest trouble spots since the sixties is its seven north-eastern states. As many as 30 armed insurgent organizations such as ULFA (United Liberation Front of Asom), NDFB (National Democratic Front of Bodoland), PLA (People’s Liberation Army) of Manipur, NSCN (National Socialist Council of Nagaland) and NLFT (National Liberation Front of Tripura) have been operating in the region, fighting the Indian state with demands ranging from right to self-determination and autonomy to secession. As this region having an area of 255,000 sq. km. (8% of India’s geographical area) has 4500 km long highly porous borders with four countries, China, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar, this insurgency has been rendered complex and intractable due to its trans-border ramifications and operations. It takes several diabolical forms such as extortion, kidnapping, wanton killing, particularly of people having migrated from other parts of India and settled here, as well as confrontation with the police and the army. Even though some of these organizations have been banned because of their patently anti-national activities and agenda, insurgent activities have been going on, overtly or covertly, for the last four decades or so in this region.
Apart from these major insurgencies, various other events and activities such as narrow regionalism in the name of ‘sons of the soil’, demands for bifurcation of states with the professed objective of more balanced development and various water disputes are actually manifestations of negation of integrity and unity of India. Moreover, due to these forces of separatism, India has increasingly become a soft target of pan-Islamic terrorism.
The above-mentioned insurgencies are abetted by, and ultimately aimed at, separatism and are based essentially on religion or ethnicity. In the last four decades, however, altogether another type of insurgency has gripped parts of India and is growing. Originating in an obscure West Bengal village called Naxalbari, marked by strident poverty, as a left-wing extremist uprising against the establishment, this movement now afflicts almost half of the 28 states of India, concentrated mostly in tribal and mine rich parts of eastern and central India. This insurgency has been expanding both in area and population being affected as well as in level of violence associated with it. Today, the Naxalities or Maoists as these insurgents are called control about 92,000 sq. km. of India, where only the writs of their parallel government run. Their cadres consisting of both men and women are mostly recruited from their rural strongholds and are given professional training in armed insurgency. Their primary targets are police, government property and installations, highways, railways and the activities symbolizing present day governance such as elections and even developmental works.
Thus, we see that basically two types of insurgency afflict contemporary India, one based on fractured identities of religion, ethnicity, region and language as against a national identity, and the other based on increasing impoverishment and widening socio-economic disparity. At the root of both these types of insurgencies lies a sense of non-participation and alienation from the prevailing system of governance. While the first category of insurgents reacts to this sense by seeking a separate institution of governance in which they matter, the second category expresses their wrath at the failed system of governance which has not been able to deliver the goods over the decades. Whatever, these insurgencies cost a tremendous amount of national energy and resources. A nation saddled with such disruptive and dissipative forces can hardly hope to get out of the woods.

Culture of Corruption in Public Life in Contemporary India

In the previous posts on this Blog, it has been discussed how democracy has been an illusion, both at the top as well as at the grass roots of governance in India, how secularism has been negated in the practice of politics for pursuit of power, how sovereignty of people of India is far from a reality, how socialism has been formally forsaken by India and how India is far from being a true or ideal republic. Thus, the declaration made in the Constitution in its Preamble of India being a “Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic” remains a pious wish rather than a reality of life and living in contemporary India. In fact, India has diverged more and more from the path envisioned in the Constitution over almost six decades of its republican journey. Alongwith this divergence in basic constitutional values, other concomitant values have also progressively deteriorated in India. Among these, the most pervasive and intense is the cankerous growth of corruption in the Indian republic, so much so that it has evolved as a culture of its public life. Growth of this culture in public life is quite at variance with that in personal and social life in contemporary India, or what may be called the core culture of India evolved over centuries and millenniums of its national life.
Obviously then the cause of corruption and its growth is inherent in the operative part of our Constitution, i.e. the system of governance adopted. As this system remained essentially the same as was used for colonial administration of British India, the corruption that prevailed in that administration in a systematic and established manner, particularly at lower levels, continued unabated in free India. With the Constitution, which retained the same system of governance, coming into force on 26 January 1950, corruption became more pervasive and it spread to higher levels at accelerated pace. The Mundhra scandal, which involved the then Finance Minister was brought to notice on the floor of the parliament in the fifties just serves as an example of corruption at the highest levels even in the initial years of Indian republic. In those years, however, the political morality was still at high level. The case was promptly and transparently investigated by a judge of impeccable reputation and upon establishment of the charge, guilty officials were punished and the Finance Minister had to resign. In later years and decades, cases of corruptions at high levels, scams and scandals came to light with increasing frequency, each dwarfing the previous ones in magnitude, pervasiness and turpitude of political morality. The latest major scandal which came to light 10 days ago relates to a scandal involving embezzlement of public funds, illegal laundering of black money as well as depositing and investing in foreign countries to the true of more than 50 billion rupees. The king pin of this scandal had been a minister and then Chief Minister for only a few years of a newly created mineral-rich poor state. The story of his rise to being a minister or the Chief Minister in spite of being an independent member of the State Legislature makes an interesting reading in democratic functioning in contemporary India. It demonstrates how all tenets of right political behaviour and ethics are blatantly thrown to the winds in order to capture and retain power, directly or by proxy, and how contemptible and obnoxious maneuvers are done by political parties to have a pliable government of choice and convenience.
While talking of major scams and scandals involving political leaders in power, one must not forget that corruption is not confined only to the political levels. Far from it. Corruption is rampant in various measures at all levels of governance in India, from political to bureaucratic down to the lowest ones.
There is one qualitative difference between the scandals and corruption in the earlier years after independence when the first generation post-independence political leaders were still there at the helm of affairs, and now. Then, while the system of governance was prone to and promotive of corruption, people entered the profession of politics with a sense of service and the system still operated under certain norms and canons set by the British administration. Now, the morality of the political profession has tremendously fallen and the whole system of governance has commensurately degenerated. Then, people from the grass roots took to politics inspired by a sense of service to the nation, and political wrong doers were a rather scarce commodity. Now, 56% of the MPs in the 15th Lok Sabha belong to upper less than 0.1% of the Indian people and about 30% of them have criminal records. Increase in the extent and magnitude of corruption and fall of the political morality and criminalization of politics in India have gone hand in hand. This progression, however, has been happening not with constant speed but rather with acceleration.
The inference is inescapable and obvious. This Indian phenomenon is not specific to political parties or people as politicians per se. It is rather systemic and the system is obviously the system of colonial governance that was chosen and adopted to govern a free nation aspiring to become a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic.

Is India a True or Ideal Republic?

A Republic has been defined in several ways. In a strict limited sense, a state or a country headed not by a hereditary monarch but by a citizen of that state or country fulfilling certain eligibility criteria, generally titled as President, is called a Republic. Here, any of such citizens can potentially be a candidate for being a President. On the basis of this definition, even a country having a dictator as its head can be said, and has been actually proclaimed, to be a Republic. Also, countries which are non-secular and are governed in accordance with a set of religious laws and edicts have proclaimed themselves to be republics, such as Islamic Republics of Pakistan and Iran. Similarly, countries having one-party or authoritarian rule call themselves as republics such as People’s Republic of China. Nations subscribing exclusively to a particular political or socio-economic policy are styled as republics such as the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Certain countries which have a particular desire to emphasize their claim to be democratic, even though they may have only limited or circumscribed democracy, call themselves a ‘democratic republic’ such as Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

This definition is then further qualified that the President has to be elected directly by people such as in the USA or by elected representatives of people in which case it may be named as a parliamentary republic such as in India. This also has been subjected to manipulation and maneuvers by powerful and crafty military and civil dictators. Another definition, which is not too specific but is imbued with its essential sense, is that a state or a country where people have impact on its government and is headed by a citizen fulfilling specified eligibility criteria is a Republic. In an ideal sense, a state or a country having a government ‘of the people, by the people and for the people’ is truly a Republic. Thus, we can see that while India is a republic in a technical sense, but is not so in a true or ideal sense. On account of the prevailing system of governance, people have impact on the government in a very convoluted and indirect manner which almost negates it. Ideally, India is still far from having ‘a government of the people, by the people and for the people’, as indicated in the previous posts on this Blog.

What Happened to India's Socialism?

Socialism has been defined, interpreted and understood in various ways. Broadly and essentially, socialism means, and should mean, that whenever and wherever the interests of the society conflict with those of the individual, the former would prevail. Ideally, the social and economic interactions in a socialist society should be so structured as to promote and preserve this concept of socialism. Moreover, any type of modern government should dominantly serve this purpose, whether or not socialism is explicitly adopted as a sole or a guiding doctrine of governance. In British India, as the dominant purpose of the colonial government was economic exploitation of the country, serving of the social purpose over the individual one was subordinated to the colonial purpose for which a type of governance system suited to this unwholesome purpose was devised and put in place. When India became independent on 15 August 1947 and framed its own Constitution, which came into force with effect from 26 January 1950, it declared itself to be a “sovereign democratic republic”. Although there was no specific and explicit mention of ‘socialism’ or ‘socialist’ in the constitutional declaration, provisions or even in the non-enforceable directive principles of state policy, there are certain clauses incorporated in the latter which are characteristic of ‘socialism’ or ‘socialist state’, such as the state striving, (i) to promote the welfare of the people, (ii) to minimize the inequalities in income, (iii) to secure that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as to best subserve the common good, and (iv) to ensure that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and means of production to the common detriment.
As the dominant motivation for India’s struggle for freedom under the inspiring leadership of Mahatma Gandhi was the abject poverty of the masses of India, the leaders of free India’s government adopted policies and measures which may be termed as ‘socialist’ or ‘socialistic’. Under the charismatic leadership of Pandit Nehru, who was also the head of government, the dominant political party in power, the Indian National Congress adopted a resolution for “a socialistic pattern of society” in its Avadi session in 1957 and a resolution of Democracy and Socialism in its Bhubaneshwar session held in 1963. Similar resolutions were also passed in the India Parliament. In view of rather strong anti-socialism forces in various interest groups in the country and even in the ruling Indian National Congress, who were ever ready to resist or even sabotage what they viewed as radical socialist measures of the government, the word ‘socialist’ was introduced, along with ‘secular’, through a constitutional amendment passed in 1976 under the stewardship of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, in the very Preamble of the Constitution, declaring India to be a ‘Sovereign Socialist Secular Democratic Republic’. Various socialistic measures were taken under this dispensation, such as nationalization of banks and insurance; establishing many public sector undertakings, particularly in key and critical areas of national economy; setting up a system of licenses and permits to regulate the wayward behavior of private industries and businesses; providing subsidies to promote agriculture and other economic activities pursued by the masses for their livelihood; and governmental programmes targeted at the poor and vulnerable sections of the society. However, these well intentioned measures of a democratic socialist republic were executed under the same system of governance which was used for economic exploitation of a colony, thus resulting in the same sort of ills that afflicted other general activities of the government such as inefficiency, corruption and callousness. Instead of realistic analysis and diagnosis of these ills, the policy of socialism itself was brought into disrepute by powerful vested-interest groups. Aided and abetted by certain sweeping global trends such as liberalization, globalization and privatization of economy and catastrophic event like the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic, which was actuated by its own inner contradictions, the cherished ideal of socialism was formally bade good bye, many public sector undertakings were disinvested and subsidies were withdrawn, all in the name of economic reforms in the early nineties. This no doubt gave spurt to enhanced economic activities by indigenous industrialists and entrepreneurs. This is, however, at great social cost. Several of the directive principles of state policy such as those related to disparities in incomes and concentration of wealth have been grossly outraged. The vast consumer market and cheap manpower of ‘economically reformed India’ also attracted multi-national companies to operate here. Thus, while the Indian people were considered as a ‘vote bank’ by the political parties in their bid for power under the post-independence colonial system of governance, they now also became a ‘market’ for exploitation by the multinationals in the globalised economy.
In its zeal for privatization, India has left capitalist countries behind even in certain such vital sectors as education and health. While in the USA, public funded schools cater to more than 90% of school going children; in India school education has emerged as a big lucrative thriving private business. Even in higher and technical education, the government seems to be contracting its role and being selective in expansion to meet the growing demands, leaving ever widening space for private entrepreneurs to play, understandably with profit motivation. Similarly, in another vital sector like health services, while the trend in capitalist countries is towards more and more socialization, in India it is just the reverse. Increasing number of people have to take recourse to private doctors, clinics and hospitals on account of deficiency, inadequacy and low standards of health services provided by the government. And obviously, this is to the enrichment of the private players at a high or even back-breaking cost to the people who pay taxes for various services including health and education.
So, where is India’s socialism and what happened to it during the post-independence period? It is a moot question for deliberation by all concerned. It may reveal certain disconcerting and disturbing facts and indications about whither the Indian Republic is heading.

Secularism in the Indian Republic

The matter of secularism in contemporary India can be best appraised with reference to its independence on 15 August 1947 as the watershed event. It was on this day that British India emerged as two independent nations, India and Pakistan created on ‘the two-nation theory’ which the former resisted and the latter insisted upon. This theory propounded that the Hindus and the Muslims owing to their religious, cultural and social diversities and distinctness cannot have a common nationality. The Indian National Congress (INC) formed in 1885 with the objective of obtaining a greater share in government for educated Indians and ended up spearheading the movement for freedom of British India, never subscribed to this pernicious concept of nationality. At the instance of the British colonial government in India under its ‘divide and rule’ policy aimed at perpetuating or at least prolonging its exploitative rule, the All India Muslim League (AIML) was brought into being in the first decade of the twentieth century as a counter to INC and its growing movement. At the insistence of AIML and under acquiescence of the British Indian Government, the masses of India having an enviable record of living in unity under diversity for centuries were sought to be divided first under the peculiar principle of ‘separate electorates’, leading ultimately to the partition of what was India under the Mauryan empire of Ashok, under the Mughal empire of Akbar and even under the British empire of Queen Victoria on the outrageous ‘two-nation theory’. Understandably, this act was attended with one of the bloodiest and heart-rending mass migrations of people in history. This is rather ironical that a country which won its freedom from one of the mightiest empires through a path of non-violence was immersed in violence on attaining it. While Pakistan declared itself an Islamic republic, the architects of freedom and leaders of free emergent India having a large Muslim population and sizable populations of other faiths such as Sikhs, Christians, Zoroastrians, Buddhists and Jains, apart from the dominant Hindu population, dispersed through out the vast country went to great lengths in stating and maintaining its secular belief and credentials. While drafting its Constitution, the supreme law of the land, the people resolved to constitute India into a “sovereign democratic republic” and to secure to all its citizens ‘liberty of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship’. Through various provisions made in the constitution, which came into force on 26 January 1950, it was ensured that no special favour was conceded to any religion or faith, nor was any religion or faith stood discriminated against. In order to further reinforce its secular credential, the Constitution was amended in 1976 through its 42nd Amendment to explicitly include ‘secular’ in the declaration made in its Preamble to “constitute India into a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic”.
In spite of all these constitutional proclamations, provisions and credentials for secularism in India, politics as practiced in India is far from being neutral to religious or communal considerations. While all political parties profess to be secular and it is difficult to challenge their claims on the basis of their written or formal documents, some parties castigate some other parties as being communal, overtly or covertly, and project themselves as secular parties. This castigation or projection, however, is patently to influence votes in elections, rather than to expound secularism as a principle of political functioning. In fact, the predominant ‘religion’ of all political parties in India is to capture power. As nothing is said to be unfair in love or war, so it is in this power-centric politics, subject only to any inviolable constraints of the Election Commission. The ‘citizens’ of India are blatantly regarded as ‘voters’ by all political parties, giving rise to what is commonly understood as ‘vote bank politics’. The voters are considered, or instigated, to be divided on the basis of caste, creed, community, or even gender by the political parties, their professions and even manifestos are insincerely tailored accordingly and the game of vote bank politics is played to the hilt. In this game of politics, communal feelings of the voters are exploited, appealed to or excited, patently religious issues are taken u p on the political agenda of the parties and championed, to the utter neglect of vital issues affecting voters of all communities and sections. Policies and pronouncements aimed at appeasing the minority communities are resorted to without much regard to their wider impacts. Participation in religious festivals and visits to religious places of the minority communities, often donning dresses of the devouts, are undertaken by politicians seeking elective positions, ensuring media coverage for popular consumption. All in all, the communal identities of the voters are cultivated, kept alive and even stoked in a negative and divisive manner in pursuit of power by the political parties. While the communal identities of Indian citizens as sportsmen, entertainers, scientists, etc have traditionally been indistinguishable indicating the essentially secular characteristics of Indian people, their communal identities as voters have become more strident over the years since independence.
The moot question is why this aberrant behaviour with respect to secularism afflicts Indian politics and not other sectors of the Indian scenario. Does it have some thing to do with our politicians of the day or is the problem systemic? Considering the sparkling secular credentials and commitments of our political leaders at the time of independence in spite of the forced imposition of the abominable two-nation theory and gradual degradation of Indian politics over the decades, one must conclude that the problem is systemic rather than with politicians. In this connection, it is instructive to remember that the colonial government of India, which was definitely secular, played the communal card to keep themselves in power. It is the same behaviour which is displayed by the present day political parties in power or in pursuit of power. The commonality between the colonial government of India and the government of the Indian republic is the system of governance. The Indian republic adopted essentially the same system of governance as was used by the British government for exploitation of a colony. This will be dealt with more pointedly in a later post under this Blog.

Reality of India's Sovereignty

In order to understand contemporary India and appreciate its problems, one has to see the realities about India through all the declarations and proclamations made and even perceptions held about it. If we allow ourselves to be carried away by them, we shall continue to be turning away from understanding the real nature of the problems afflicting India and from arriving at their effective solutions. In the previous two posts on the Blog devoted to this theme, the realities about the proclaimed democratic functioning of governance of India, both at the top as well as at the grass roots, were discussed and light was thrown at the illusions of India’s democracy. In this post, realty about India’s sovereignty proclaimed in its Constitution is examined – where does the sovereignty lie and how is it really enacted in India’s governance.

As all the institutions of governance and all the laws under which India is governed flow from its Constitution, clearly the Constitution is supreme. As the people of India have framed the Constitution through their representatives, adopted it and gave it to themselves on 26 November 1949, they are the makers of it and theoretically they have the power to unmake it. Thus, sovereignty of India lies with its people and all the institutions of governance derive their authority ultimately from the sovereign people. The moot point is whether this prime fact is manifested and enacted in the functioning of India’s governance? Hardly so. As indicated in the previous post, the relationship between the ‘sovereign’ people and the public servants in the governance of India is far from reflecting this basic constitutional assertion. The public servants at all levels of free India’s governance structure are perceived and act as masters of ‘sovereign’ people they are supposed to serve. This perception and attitude have been continuing unabated and unaltered from the colonial pre-independence days. And why not? After all, the ‘democratic sovereign republic’ of India chose to adopt the same system of governance which the British colonial masters designed and used to govern over their subjects and administer a colony for its exploitation.

Another glaring fact of India’s governance is that ‘sovereign’ people find themselves powerless in ensuring for themselves even fundamental and vital necessities of life and living, such as potable drinking water, standard primary health care facilities, decent education for their children and law and order essential for peaceful community life. While they pay taxes, directly or indirectly, which entitle them to these basic services, what they get at the hands of the government are generally grossly inadequate and often of downright substandard quality. Being able to do precious little in correcting or even improving this situation, they have no other alternative than either to suffer the consequences, which may sometimes be horrendous, or to be compelled to go to private providers of these services, often at torturous costs for many. The situation has given rise to opportunities for lucrative business in these vital services for private players who not only have a vested interest in these public services remaining unsatisfactory but also insidiously they grow a nexus with powers that be for the purpose. Sometimes, the government satisfies itself by creating and nurturing a limited number of show-piece institutions which cater to the few, often at the cost of many, and mostly for serving the multinational and supranational interests.

Such is the situation of ‘sovereign’ people in the ‘democratic sovereign republic’ of India.

India's Illusion of Democracy - 2

In the preceding posting under the same title in this Blog, it was indicated how poorly representative the executive branches of the governments at the centre as well as in the states are of the people who are professed to be governed and served by a democratic government. Moreover, the instrument of governance used by such a ‘democratic government’ for delivering the services to the people remained the same which was designed and used for systematically exploiting a colony and is thus totally anachronistic and unsuitable for democratic governance. This renders the constitutional declaration of India being a “democratic sovereign republic” pretentions and even farcical. This is evidenced in various features characterising contemporary Indian governance. The attitude and countenance of “public servants” towards the “sovereign people” they serve at all levels of governance is far from what the words signify. Also, people have hardly any say or participation in the management of affairs directly affecting their day to day lives. In this regard, just two examples are given for illustration, (i) maintenance of law and order in the community and (ii) education of children. People concerned with these basic and essential services have no effective control over the institutions set up and maintained at public expense. As these institutions are administered by a hierarchical bureaucracy headquartered in the state capitals, people’s accessibility is too tenuous and their control too indirect to have any impact. If these institutions happen to be unsatisfactory, which is more a rule than an exception, people are constrained either to suffer or to seek an alternative, if one exists. Consequently, mushrooming of private schools and emergence of school education as a lucrative business has prominently emerged on the Indian scene. Similar is the situation in other vital services affecting people’s lives, such as healthcare, water supply and sanitation.

In this regard, Panchayati Raj Act passed in 1993 subsequent to the 73^rd Amendment of the Constitution of India may be mentioned, While framing the Constitution, which came into force on 26 January 1950, self-governance for villages was consigned to the Directive Principles of State Policy, mostly in deference to the principles and tenets of Gandhi enunciated by him time and again during the freedom movement waged under his guidance and inspiration. As the Directive Principles were not enforceable by law, self-governance for villages remained only a pious wish. It was only through a constitutional amendment after 45 years of independence and 42 years of India being a republic, an Act was passed to bring about village self-governance in India. However, this Act came not only too late but also with too little for effective self-governance. It is far short of Gandhi’s idea of Gram Swaraj or autonomous village republics. It is only an extension of the state government to the villages for carrying out specified state functions, imbibing the same ethos and ills of governance. It lacks financial and administrative autonomy to manage matters affecting life and living in the villages. Moreover, as the Panchayati Raj system is grafted on the prevailing colonial-model system of governance, village level governance under the Panchayati Raj is riddled with contradictions and conflicts among several agencies and authorities at work in the villages. Thus, while India is saddled with unprincipled, unethical, opportunistic, power-centric, dynastic and vote bank politics at the top in the name of democracy, democracy is far from reality at the grass roots.

India's Illusion of Democracy - 1

India is trumpeted to be the largest democracy of the world. When pressed to clarify what kind of democracy does India have, it is mercifully conceded to have parliamentary democracy. And what does parliamentary democracy mean? It means that the adults (above 18 years of age) residing in a demarcated constituency have the right to elect their representative of the constituency for the central (Lok Sabha) or state (Vidhan Sabha) legislative bodies, normally every five years. Due to multiplicity of political parties and candidates put up by them, coupled with low voting percentage, the elected representative is generally voted for by only a minority of the eligible voters of the constituency. Technically, such representatives choose the leader of the house, who becomes the head of the respective governments, i. e., the Prime Minister of the Government of India or the Chief Minister of the state government, who, in turn, selects various ministers of the government concerned. In reality, due to multi party political complexion of the house as well as the dictates and discipline of the party, the head of the government is hardly the most popular leader of the members of the house, who are themselves elected mostly by a minority of the eligible voters of their respective constituencies. In case no political party is in absolute majority in the house, the election of the leader of the house and hence head of the government as well as selection of ministers by him are both vitiated by unethical, unprincipled and often outright dirty compromises and horse trading.Thus, in the parliamentary democracy in practice, there is no assurance at all that the elected head of the government as well as the selected heads of its various departments measure up to the criteria of popularity, merit or track record at an acceptable level. In any case, the people of the country or of the state have no effective role, direct or indirect, in the constitution of the executive branch of the government. They are reduced to being mute spectators of the game, often degenerating into a dirty game, of the formation, or shall we say imposition of the executive arm of the government on them. The constitution provides them a direct role in electing their representatives only for the legislative branch of the government in theory, which gets diminished and degraded through the electoral processes of parliamentary democracy in practice. Moreover, the instrument of governance that such an executive branch of government has to rely on and utilize for executing the affairs of the country or the state is the same as was designed and utilized for exploitation of a colony by an imperial power. These two together have given rise to most of the ills afflicting the body politic of India, such as precipitous decline of political morality, criminalization of politics, rampant corruption at all levels of government, social divisiveness and unrest due to inevitable emergence of vote bank politics, and most of all, impoverishment of the masses and widening gulf between the rich and the poor. People who are ultimate victims of all these ills find themselves utterly helpless in the situation. All in all, democracy is a mere illusion for the people. And illusion of democracy, being deceptive and giving a false sense, is worse than its outright negation.