View: Deepen democracy in this Republic

Electoral merit -- in other words, the ability to win by hook or crook -- has to cease to be a yardstick for handpicking men and women to stand for elections, writes Mahesh Vijapurkar

It is good that the exhortation that the country should proactively deal with the need to contain the influence of money and muscle power from politics has come from the country's most influential politician, Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

What she says normally becomes the received wisdom for the party and its cadres, and her speech at the diamond jubilee of the Election Commission of India expectedly would be taken seriously.

She also spoke up in favour of building a consensus on preventing individuals with criminal records being barred from elections. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and BJP's Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj too voiced similar sentiments, which indicate that a consensus is possible if the political parties walk the talk of their leaders.

The point is that they are not lofty unattainable targets, but quite the necessity that the people are hungering for.

It is time, especially since the Indian Republic is 60 and the occasion was used appropriately to voice concerns about the aspects, which has made the Republic less of a democracy. It has been a democracy in the sense that people go and vote, but the democracy is not people-centric. The democracy is quite hollow and in a sense, beginning to whither. That should not be allowed to happen.

If moneyed people get elected, if muscle is a criteria then the people's aspirations mean nothing to them and those who seek elected posts do so to further themselves, not the country and its people. Elections are meant, to them, to further their personal empires and anything goes to subserve that plan. People are mere tools and they mechanically vote, hoping something would turn things around. This optimism, now, appears misplaced because the class that gets elected is perpetuating itself.

By no means is the argument intended to seek that people disenfranchise themselves by not voting for that would be a great folly. Once even the nominal democracy that we have where people routinely vote despite the lack of real choices ceases to be, then it would be as good as buried. It needs to be actually enlivened, more meaning and purpose invested in it and that would be possible only if those who lead us do not lead us.

That, of course, is easier said than done.

However, if the leadership that spoke up at the diamond jubilee of the ECI on January 25, 2010 thinks that they had delivered their rhetoric and then go their normal ways of power politics, as distinct from politics for development, then it would be a disservice to the country. After the first ever general elections conducted in a country where symbols had to be devised to encourage even the illiterate to vote, the country has seen a steady decline in the quality of its leadership.

Considerations that drive the power elite include power itself, power to indulge in self-aggrandisement, the rent-seeking, influence-peddling, setting up dynasties virtually every parliamentary and legislative assembly constituency etc. would continue to do so. But the one glimmer of hope that arrived with the advent of Manmohan Singh has given some hopes.

At the same time, the emergence of Rahul Gandhi, him being where he is due only to dynastic reasons regardless of his disclaimers, has put paid to that dream of cleaner politics.

It would be wrong to assume that the ECI alone, or by itself, would be able to cleanse the electoral system. So far, it has been above reproach, has carried out the constitutional tasks responsibly and with imagination, delivered on free and fair elections. But the responsibility on fielding only clean, public-spirited men, not lobbyists and power-hungry devolves on the political parties and their leadership.

Electoral merit -- in other words, the ability to win by hook or crook -- has to cease to be a yardstick for handpicking men and women to stand for elections.

That 'electoral merit' -- what an oxymoron given the way choices are made -- has put in Parliament has seen one in three MPs with criminal cases against them, 74 of the 153 having serious charges including robbery and murder and that both Congress and BJP have the tainted men and women debating ostensibly our future and policies for us. These statistics were cited in reputed national English daily. That is no way to be ruled.

Sushma Swaraj said at the event marking the jubilee that 60 is the age for introspection. But I think it is time that we cease this pretence of introspection and get down fair and square to some action, especially making statutes devoid of loopholes so that the country has a clean set of people who command automatically respect for their zeal, competence and purpose of doing good to the country. Now any prevarication pretending that introspection was called for would be both tragic and laughable. What the malice is and its extent is known to all of us. You and Gandhi spoke about it. They need to do something about it without any delay.

In short, deepen the democracy in this Republic. Make haste, please.

Mahesh Vijapurkar is a Thane-based senior journalist and commentator