The great American Democracy

SANJOG MAHESHWARI,

C1A-42 B M.I.G.FLATS, JANAKPURI,

NEW DELHI-110058

WE ALSO WANT CHANGE

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI

Kudos to the American democratic processes, systems and institutions which, once again, unfailingly reinvented themselves by electing the best man, Barack Obama, till recently an unknown name and face, to the most powerful position in the world, eschewing all extraneous considerations, for effectively answering the need of the times and to meet the “pressing urgency of now in the best interests of America”,

While we may pay rich tributes to Obama’s elocutionary skills: his passionate ‘we can’ victory speech, his sincerity, courage of conviction and the way he made the clarion call for ‘change’, the real credit belongs to the great American democracy due to which the miracle happened in spite of the obvious disadvantages: being a black man, a half- Muslim with Hussein as a middle name, rumours of his early days addiction to drugs and association with grotty characters; a political minnow who apparently had no chance, even in the primaries, against Hillary Clinton.

Political analysts have celebrated this historic event of global significance by writing millions of words eulogizing America for its capacity to shake off the dark past for which Abraham Lincoln had made the supreme sacrifice. The Indian constituency of the admirers of the American model of democratic governance, marveling over the Obama’s stupendous victory, can not help but crave for an early end of this dark period of insipid, spineless, thoroughly rotten, uninspiring and corrupt political leadership in its own country, yielding place to the inspiring and committed leadership.

Is it possible to user in the much coveted ‘change’ to ‘meet the pressing urgency of now in the best interests of India’ under the shadow of our grossly debased variety of Westminster type of Parliamentary democracy which was adopted in unseemly haste? The answer is an emphatic “NO”. For that to happen, we will have to switch over to the American-model of Presidential democracy. Nothing short of this is going to help. The sooner we adopted it, the better it would be for our all round good and well-being. We will then have our own Lincolns and Obamas who are conspicuous by their absence in the present day India.

Even before more than 90% of our populace could know what was this all about “We The People of India” were made to adopt, enact and give to ourselves a Constitution, the good-intentioned provisions of which, when put to practice delivered just the opposite. For example, it was hoped that Executive would be de-linked from the Legislature to ensure clean and vibrant administration. Instead, the Executive has been reduced to the position of a handmaid of the Legislature. Sporadic attempts are made to make even the Judiciary subservient to Legislature by compromising its independence. We not only need a fiercely independent judiciary but also an independent Executive and Media.

Our system of elections and electioneering contributed substantially to the criminalization of the politics. It created the politics of vote-bank which in turn helped demagogues with criminal background, long on rhetoric and short on everything else, to ascend to powerful positions in the government by playing religion, caste and region card and pursuing quota-reservation policies with dogged determination to woo, cultivate and consolidate caste and minority vote-banks. Our corruption-ridden democratic system of governance and institutions are totally incapable of producing an Indian Obama. While we always want the best man to win an election, he simply dreads to run. No wonder, democracy in our country has degenerated into highly criminalized and corrupt ‘mobocracy’.

-SANJOG MAHESHWARI

C1A-42 B M.I.G.FLATS,

JANAPURI, NEW DELHI-110058