Mahesh Chander Sudan
We, the people of Indian, have witnessed the growth of Indian Democracy since her infancy and rendered active participation in feeding our republic through electoral process that is enshrined in our constitution. We not only learnt to enjoy our fundamental rights but also showed devotion towards our duties as responsible and conscious citizens of India. We stood united against any challenge posed to our socialist and secular democracy whether from within or from any outside adversaries. The national interest remained supreme for each and every member of our colorful social fabric despite the fact that our national integrity and unity was challenged many a time by vested interest of our adversaries but none of them gained ground due to firm brotherhood of Indian Nationals across the length and breadth of the country. A tolerant Indian society proved its firmness and solidarity beyond doubt, and would remain so in the times to come. However, we may introspect and attempt to pin point as to how we have reached the present stalemate where nation confronts social, political and economic issues of disturbing magnitude.
We are passing through a very delicate period of national life where our social fabric is appearing fragile, and genesis of present challenge has its roots in the near past when our politicians started raising the charges of corruption against ruling dispensation of UPA-II under the patronage of living Gandhian Shri Anna Hazare, Baba Ramdev a practicing Yoga Guru then and few other public figures and ultimately converted it into mass movement to attain their political aim. This movement though had political maneuvers, but so camouflaged to conceal the real objective for seeking active leadership of living Gandhian to gain public support in their favor and swim across to reach their goal post. A new political identity in the shape of Aam Admi Party emerged out of it to take over the reins of Delhi Government besides enabling Bhartity Janta Party to win elections of 2014 and form Government headed by Narendra Modi. Here lies the turning point for our well knitted secular social fabric. The leading political party convinced the majority community and raised their sentiments against so called appeasement policy of then ruling political dispensation towards minority community based on theological identity.
These recent political uprisings are ego centric, and could open platform for politicians of befitting culture to manage public mandate replacing veterans of their own party. They could successfully thrust ideological change by slaughtering the image of their opponent at the altar of alleged corruption and created a false sense of helplessness in the mind of innocent voters and became the only political alternative. No doubt it could lead them to success but at the cost of age old multi party political system. We do realize that democracy flourishes more in multiparty system that provides wide vibrant political culture laden with different political ideologies. Another associated advantage of multi-party system is to create competition to help system to become robust rather than raising a personality centric culture that hinders the growth of democracy, and it may attract authoritarian regime. More so, healthy democracy functions with check and balances so created in the system and absence of strong opposition to ensure these check and balances kills the spirit of democracy. A fully functional democracy provides for multi layered power structure involving ground level participation in each and every decision of the government whereas authoritarian regime functions otherwise. We are presently suffering deficit of public participation, discussion and deliberations in our day to day functioning of the government due to large mandate exercised in favor of present day political dispensation that immunized them against any criticism.
A close scrutiny of government functioning for last five years explicitly indicate a clear transition of focus from free and fair governance to authoritarian style of governance where minority voice is unheard, least respected and not given due consideration even while legislating laws for welfare of the state. There are around 165 schemes launched by NDA-I and II during last 64 months and most of them lacked implementation either due to technical wherewithal or inherent deficiencies of the schemes. Let us examine a few of them like Jan Dhan Yojna where people at large were asked to open bank account to facilitate direct transfer of benefit to avoid enroute pilferage that could not yield desired results in helping people living below poverty line. Likewise few other schemes meant to share benefit of inclusive growth of the economy remained restricted to Government offices only.
However, the state of economy during the period under study as compared to UPA I and II remained uncertain throughout and never met targets. Today, we are at the lowest rate of GDP growth of 5% despite the fact that we had saved enough money in purchase of crude oil from international market at much cheaper rate, and public in general have no clue where this surplus has melted away. This appears more accurate when we look at the balance sheets of oil marketing PSUs who would have otherwise made huge profits and created surplus in their balances. Another issue of concern is ever increasing Non Performing Assets that has increased three times during last five years and affected the health of banking sector to an extent that Life Insurance Corporation has recently been directed to spare widow’s fund to the tune of 27 thousand crores to help IDBI correct its balance sheet.
We are pained to accept that our favorite government has also withdrawn 1.75 lakh crores from emergency funds created with RBI without concrete plan for utilization. Market is presently suffering lack of demand and as such it affected industrial production to an extent of closure for many of them, moved the wheel of vicious circle to create highest rate of Unemployment for last almost 40 years that ultimately resulted in lower purchasing power. Flagship programs like Make in India, Skill India and such other initiatives could not produce skilled manpower to compete in the Labor Market locally and internationally.
At this critical juncture when governance provided is not fair, free and people friendly, the democratic journey of our Country is at cross road.
The author is Wg Cdr (Retd)
feedbackexcelsior@gmail.com
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