Democracy!

Democracy, the most successful administrative system the time has ever proved.. That’s the soul of this blog post of mine. The term ‘democracy’ comes from the Greek language meaning "rule by the people". The policy of de-centralization and limited period of power stays foremost in the concept, which ensures reduced possibility for abuse of the same in personal interests. A democratic constitution guarantees its citizen, basic personal and political rights, equality, fair and free elections, and independent courts of justice. The public interest stays premier in decision making, and that has to happen in the most judicious and beneficial manner. These are the values that have made ‘democracy’ one of the favorite and convenient systems of rule, which gained huge vogue among the social camaraderie!

India, the land of mahatma, stays one of the prime most democracies in the present day world. It sets a parliamentary system of Government where the elected reps stay acme in decision making. They seek public acceptance each time in every 5 years and may be, that’s the only time we could see them in their constituency. A leader could not act like a dictator, here. Though it’s because of nothing else than the fear for next election, we could proudly say that “we, the people governs”. Okay friends, let me put a full-stop, or rather a semi-colon with the theory portions here.. Just like we do while solving mathematics, let’s put this as “eqn no. 1”. :-)

Here starts the second half.. Let me start from facebook, the modern democratic street where the views and aspects of the public is shared. May be it’s astonishing; still it’s a fact that we could find a cross section of the society in the facebook. The social networks have proved themselves, their credentials by invigorating public movements to their zillionth power, including the wallstreet revolution. In fact, this post of mine is inspired from such a status in fb. One of my routine fb hours made me curious, going through the ‘political statuses’ by some of my friends. Apart from the standard “I hate politics”, “Not interested”, or “Party Name” status, I found youngsters having broader thoughts and vision on our nation’s tomorrow.. Let me take Daksha as a common rep as her status matches with the vast majority concept among youngsters. It says, “politics is rubbish as long as the era of corrupt and aged politicians continue..” It can’t be blamed as it’s nothing else than most familiar fact for us. The concept of democracy stays futile in Our parliamentary system. What happens in practice is far beyond the beautiful theoretical democracy we’ve discussed in “eqn no. 1”. Here the people choose who should govern them, that’s it. What happens is, the one who seems cheating less is elected. The role of people is nothing more than choosing who should cheat them. It has made the youth fed-up and hardly interested in what’s happening around, outside Google. The fb status which made me think this much is that of Hrishikesh, hopefully a nice future pal of mine. He says,

“I blv in no party politics.. Politics must b ONLY for d welfare of d nation.. Ts people.. As said by Vivekananda “manava seva madhavaseva” for each nd every bill 2 b passd in parliament, der should b an election directly.. d law should b made by commn people.. especially such bills which may affect dem directly (low cost election techniqs like sms voting.. etc can b adopted)..”

(I’m sure, U guys won’t go crazy with the spellings, as U are all SMS Maniacs. ) ;-)

Hrishi has a great point with him. The concept of ‘by the people’ would come true only when people get their part in legislations and the Government’s policy-making. As he said, before each important bill is passed, the public opinion has to be considered. Bills against majority opinion must not get assented in the houses. The main constraint in such an approach is the impracticability of conducting elections each time for passing a bill. We can’t expect the Govt. to ask public to come to polling booths once in a month. For that too, hrishi suggests a solution. But, SMS voting is hardly a reliable solution, where the things would go even cheaper than a Reality Show final. Also, the one with 30 SIM Cards would gat 30 votes. These were not Overnight thoughts of mine. I used to think on this in my leisure times, intervals etc. Please don’t book a bed for me at Kuthiravattom, these thoughts just came in random, that’s it, okay? :-)

At last, I’ve got a solution of my own. The funny thing was, I got it when I was getting out from ‘Hotel Krishna’, after my lunch. When I saw a State Bank ATM just beside the hotel, I felt like “Manassil mattoru Laddu potti!! 8-)” Why can’t we use ATM’s for the purpose?? The thing Govt. has to do is nothing more than providing each citizen an electronic ID card, just similar to an ATM Card. Each such card should be made available with a confidential password. This task won’t be that difficult as the process of Adhar registration is in progress. Each time, an important bill is to be passed, it has to be presented before the public. M.P’s may take their part in elucidating the merits and demerits of the same to the common man. And, for each poll, a last date has to be published before which the entire citizen could vote either in favour or against the bill in their nearby ATMs. It’s a simple task for the Govt. to create an option of voting in this core-banking era. The majority decision must be the last voice on the matter. According to me, through this way, we could ensure a cost efficient as well as ‘DEMOCRATIC’ system of decision making. Hope this idea would be a spark which could bring about a new meaning to Our democracy. Also, Cheers Hrishi for this awesome thought! Jai Hind!! :-)