How shining is our democratic politics?

Strikes- students, professors, nurses, doctors, lawyers, workers, teachers, and even anganwadi (children’s nursery) staff. But pregnant mothers of India, pandits and pujaris, spiritual gurus, jihadis, mullahas, and violent agitators, and mushrooming politicians had never went on strike.

Railways had been burned, buses in our major towns and cities had been burned. Many libraries had been burned. Some time even schools and colleges had been damaged. Innocent citizens had been burned inside cinema halls in the capital city of India. But no black marketers, had been burned. NO corrupt officer had been burned.

Our legislators and members of parliament have been sanctioned good perks and privileges. But seldom they have performed democratically conducting the parliamentary debates in dignified manner. Most often than not, our legislators have been caught disrupting the house proceedings and walking out of the House. All this they do after signing their presence in the house in order to secure their daily allowances, and without conducting the legislative affairs, walk out to do the outside business….

Once I pleaded with a most decent political being, Manohar Shyam Joshi.
He was during NDA years elected Speaker of the Lok Sabha. Discussing the roudism prevailing in the Samsad, I asked him “ why don’t you suspend a few trouble makers..? All others would behave.” I pleaded with Joshiji.

He replied: “ I wish I could do so..but whom shall I name or suspend? Which party is clean and disciplined? No party, no MP wants me to take disciplinary action against any MP. They are elected representatives of the people – and the people are supreme in Democracy. If the people protest and condemn, their MP would not misbehave..”

How right was the Speaker. But the people who stood up to the British Empire, unarmed, have now been so manipulated by the oversized and corrupt and self-indulgent leaders that we fail to tame the politicians.

In 2004, I convened a Forum for the Democratic Norms and with 5,000 signatures submitted a Memorandum to all the major political parties with copies to the President of India, the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Parliament, and the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. The Memorandum read: (Add the text).