I may not have done justice to the title of the earlier post by mocking at the Great Indian democracy; but here I am to provide the some facts to back my claim. (I am really sorry for the torturous lengthy posts; but ideally you wouldn’t even be reading upto this point of apology if were actually bored)
India may be the Largest Democratic Nation; however we are surely not quite a successful democratic nation; The Economist based on the Democracy Index has published a list democratic nations ranking India at 35 of 167 others; and also has classified India as “Flawed Democracy” which might be a slap on the face of the Political & Judicial Systems in India; however I am sure that it would not come as a surprise to an average Indian. Infact most of us would be wondering why haven’t we been ranked lower than 35; We may not be that good; but we are not definitely that bad either; You can read more about the Democracy Index here..
While the whole of India is glued on to outcome of the 15th LokSabha results; I am more concerned about the improving election reforms in this nation, about the Importance of Voting, the Innovative campaigns, exposing candidates, their assets & criminal background; For the first time ever I got the EC Voter ID cards enrolled online for my entire family and got them delivered at my doorstep;
The 2004 General Elections (when I voted for the first time ever) and the results are fresh in my mind when for the 3rd time in 2 decades the Assembly Elections have coincided with the LokSabha elections in the state of Andhra Pradesh; The massive pro-congress wave almost swept of the longest serving chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Nara Chandrababu Naidu and his party;
But there are somethings that haven’t changed; Inspite of the various campaigns that tried to emphasize the importance of youth; I could only notice youngsters in colorful tees and banners with the bustling enthusiasm to Vote; however I barely came across a few who really understood the nuisances of Indian Politics; Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha, Legislative Counsel, Legislative Assembly were really aliened words; Polls, National Parties, Regional Parties, Alliances, Manifestos, didn’t really matter to them most of them would have gone by their parents choice, someone of them didn’t even knew which constituency they belonged to, some of them didn’t knew they had 2 votes to poll (Lok Sabha & Assembly). Nobody bothered to know about the candidates and their background, All they knew was “HAND”, “LOTUS”,“CYCLE”, “CAR”….
I realize that I had personally gone through a similar exercise of helping out all the people around me find their names in voters list identify their constituencies and spoon-feed them about the various alliances that parties have; inspite of which people ended up casting votes to candidates whom they didn’t want to; Some ended up criss-crossing between MP Candidates & MLA Candidates; to my utter disbelief nothing has changed even after 5 long years.
As we continue to crib about the Political system the politicians and the “The Great Indian Democracy” I continue to wonder if most of us even have the right to even utter something about all this.
I could go on and on and on…..however; dwelling too much on the problem leaves you no time to find a solution. So I bring an abrupt end to this topic right here…
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