tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8561209253464577539.post1164654503943951752..comments2024-03-28T15:39:27.271+05:30Comments on View from [Greater] Kailash: ARE WE AN OLIGARCHY MASQUERADING AS A DEMOCRACY ?Avay Shuklahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02928879917197239026noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8561209253464577539.post-16246800711302094492015-07-02T11:43:25.079+05:302015-07-02T11:43:25.079+05:30Important points all , MMA, and I would generally ...Important points all , MMA, and I would generally agree. But I have my doubts on two assertions made by you. One, I would not condemn the bureaucracy outright as being a willing part of the oligarchic system, though I am the first to lampoon them at times! Our bureaucracy is incompetent, unresponsive and at times even corrupt, but it also has within its ranks many fine, upright, thinking officers intent on doing the right thing. If this country still functions at all its because of them. Their problem is that they work under a rotten and diseased system- this has to be changed from the outside, not from within. I firmly believe Patel was absolutely right- and the first three decades of our existence is testimony to this.<br />Second, your argument about the " baby steps" would be valid if things were improving and we were on an upward curve. But if we look at the last thirty years or so we cannot but notice that the political environment has only deteriorated- there are more criminals in politics, the use of money and muscle power has gone up, appeals to caste and religion have become more strident ( and effective !), civilised discourse has become impossible, intolerance is increasing by the day, Parliament hardly functions for the purpose it was created, society is becoming ever more polarised under the influence of divisive politics, institutions are being deliberately undermined and subverted. Its a plummeting, not a rising, curve and that is a cause of worry.<br />I would also refer you to the views of Nodnat, Amarjot and the undersigned on a parallel discussion being conducted on HILLPOST on this same issue.Avay Shuklahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02928879917197239026noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8561209253464577539.post-2277624090517162962015-07-01T12:08:15.794+05:302015-07-01T12:08:15.794+05:30Last thing first – talking of pigs, Winston Church...Last thing first – talking of pigs, Winston Churchill wrote once, “I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us equals”. <br />When we gleefully call Pakistan a failed nation, we remain oblivious of the fact that we are a nation where democracy is subverted successfully. As opposed to the putative Indian notion that holding free and fair elections is the ultimate end of democracy, we have never understood (and probably will not in near future) that it actually is the beginning of democracy. <br />Let me also touch upon another important set of players of netocracy which you either forgot to include or omitted it deliberately for whatever reason and that is the whole lot of new ‘darbaris’ – the bureaucracy. They may be getting into the service on ‘merit’ but what they really practice is seldom on merit. Governance is run the wheels of official machinery, which also takes its share of the booty and plays to the tune. <br />Sardar Patel may have won the debate with Nehru on keeping the official machinery politically neutral and retained the British style bureaucracy but in the long run Nehru is proved right every day. When today bureaucracy/official machinery is doing all the bidding of the political masters from lowest functionary to the highest and collects its rewards, then, why not have politically appointed bureaucracy (anyway it is already happening but covertly) right from district level to Cabinet Secretary? It will at least be loyal to the party it would come from and would be open to some sort of public scrutiny! <br />What we need is meritocracy, where things are done on merit and merit alone and nothing else matters like what is generally observed in the West. But let us scratch our souls a bit. When we were in the “seat or close to the power” did we follow it? If not, we lost the moral right to ask the question, now. <br />I have begun to doubt that if democracy is the best form of governance for us. We have been used to monarchies of all kinds through centuries that it must have embedded in our genes by now and our so called modern education seems neither adequate nor well oriented to this aspect of life and living. <br />Democracy in other developed countries has evolved through a long and painful process and it has seen much worse things than what we are witnessing so far in our country, whereas in India it has been transplanted from the West by the education few at the time of our independence and thus missing the baby-steps so necessary for every player to understand the democracy in true sense. And, by the way, who were these education Indians? These were elite of the society then and came from either royal families or from wealthy ones. <br />If we want the democracy in our country to mature and bloom, we may continue to ask questions but must also have patience to bear with the evolutionary steps. There will be many failures; it will take many Hazares, Modis (both Narendra and Lalit variety) and Kejriwals before we actually reach the stage of true and representative democracy. Let the game continue to be played. I am not exasperated; I enjoy each bout and each round. Maha Moorkh Atmahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03832460457043012648noreply@blogger.com