A FIVE POINT AGENDA ( IN LIGHTER VEIN)

Silly Point
A Five Point Agenda
(in lighter vein )
What political parties should do before the elections
Bharatiya Janata Party
 One month before the elections, it should drop Narendar Modi and nominate L.K.Advani or Sushma Swaraj as the Prime Ministerial candidate.
 If Modi is to be retained, he should express regret in public for having neglected his Rajdharma in 2002. The apology should be tendered in the benign presence of Atal Behari Vajpayee.
 Modi should dump the likes of Amit Shah. He should release  the jailed IAS and IPS officers and reinstate the ones under suspension.
 Modi should express his views on the Mukesh Ambani affair.
 Modi should agree to exclusive interviews with Arnab Goswami and Rajat Sharma and not walk out of the studio whatever be the provocation.
Congress
• Congress should nominate Sonia Gandhi as its Prime Ministerial candidate, with Rahul as the Minister for Clean Politics, Dynastic Affairs, Youth Affairs and Sports.
• The Jana Lokpal Bill and other anti-corruption measures should be brought in as Ordinances. Arvind Kejriwal may be inducted into the party as  Informal Chief Adviser (Anti-corruption Movement).
• All candidates named in the various scams should be denied tickets. Tickets may instead be given to their wives or mistresses.
• Some prominent scamsters may be jailed, through the CBI or in spite of the CBI.
• Pre-poll alliances with tainted politicians and their parties may be avoided. Such alliances can be better managed after the elections.
Third Front
 The Front should evolve a consensus on who will be Prime Minister,  Co- Prime Minister,Deputy Prime Minister, Assistant Prime Minister etc. in case the Front wins.
 The parties constituting the Front should not enter into post-poll alliance with its competitors, howsoever attractive the offer.
 The Front should accept a Common Minimum  ( or Uncommon Maximum) Programme before the polls.
 In case there are members with giant-sized egos, they should be arranged in diminishing order of size and the person with the largest size nominated as the Leader.
 The Right and the Left should practise marching with the Centre for at least one hour, morning and evening.
Aam Aadmi Party
 Arvind Kajriwal should stop saying that he is an aam aam aadmi. He should lay claim to being a khaas aam aadmi.
 Yogendra Yadav should give up psephology and concentrate on politics. In particular, he may take lessons on governance in six month easy  instalments from Ashok Khemka.
 The AAP should declare its intention not to accept the prime minister’s chair, except after a nationwide referendum.
 Arvind Kejriwal should make his peace with Anna Hazare by conferring the title of Mahatma on him. He should mollify Kiran Bedi by promising her the Home Ministry in case he wins.
 Aam Aadmi Party should not accept outside , inside, upside or downside support to form the Government in Delhi, if they do not get a majority on their own.

You and Me
  Let us keep our cool and not get excited over the competing factions. Their apparent fights are like the wrestling matches of WWF, mock-staged for our benefit
  Let us all vote. If no candidate is suitable in a constituency, let us all vote, “None of the above”. Alternatively, we may vote, “All of the above”.
  Let us refuse to accept freebies, howsoever attractive or expensive
  Let us elect ladies, howsoever unattractive or expensive.
  Let us give our support to the best candidate irrespective of his  or her party  label. Inside, they are all the same. They only appear to be different.
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THE SECOND COMING OF ARVIND KEJRIWAL

The Second Coming of Arvind Kejriwal

          In a piece entitled “The Rise and Fall of Team Anna” in G-files soon after the Lok Pal Bill was not passed by the Rajya Sabha about two years back,, I had asked a rhetorical question: Will there be a Second Coming for Team Anna? I noted that the Christians had been waiting in vain for the second coming of Jesus Christ for the last two thousand years. The Buddhists similarly believed that Gautama the Buddha will come again as Lord Maitreya . The Theosophists led by Anne Besant even projected Jiddu Krishnamurti as Lord Maitreya, but the anointed apostle threw off the yoke, disbanded the Order of the Star and declared that he was not the Messiah.

          Would there be a Second coming for Team Anna, I asked. My answer was: “I doubt it. They had their chance and they missed it.”

          I was wrong. Kejriwal has bounced back.

             Today, Arvind Kejriwal is a phenomenon. He has suddenly burst on the national scene like an unlikely comet, leaving old stalwarts open mouthed in dismay. He pontificates on political issues with the confidence of an old campaigner, and enunciates the elements of a new utopia with messianic fervour.

               Having heard him define the New Polity in driblets, I wanted to see whether there was a document which contained the detailed contours  of his proposal. I discovered a slim 151 page book called Swaraj published by Harper Collins in August 2012. It is priced at a modest Rs. 150, as Arvind has forgone his royalty.

               It is curious that Arvind should have called his manifesto “Swaraj”, just like Mahatma Gandhi. I have often felt that Gandhi is the unstated inspiration for Arvind, with a broad similarity of perceptions with regard to the primacy of the village, non-violent non-cooperation, peaceful agitation, fast unto death, involvement of millions of common people, taking up issues with high emotive appeal, hating the sin and not the sinner, simplicity in personal life and so on. Like Gandhi, he has a soft exterior, but inside he is as tenacious as steel. The list is virtually endless.

               The book has a Foreword by Anna Hazare, who calls it the manifesto of the India of tomorrow. Those were happier days before the two stalwarts of the “India against Corruption” movement drifted apart. The reasons for the split have now come out into the open. Arvind wanted to launch a new political party. Anna felt that politics was like mud; they would be sullied by the contact. Arvind argued that if politics was mud, they would need to get into the mire and clean it up. This conflict of perception is reminiscent of the differences that cropped up between Gandhi and Nehru on many issues like the acceptance of partition, appeasement of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the disbandment of the Congress Party after the achievement of freedom, to give only a few examples.

               In his Preface, Arvind says that we fought for independence from the British because we wanted swaraj or self-rule. But this did not happen. The British went away but their system remained in place. What Indians want is swaraj or self-rule. We do not want leaders and officers sitting in Delhi to formulate development schemes for the people.

               Self-rule means that Government should function according to the wishes of the people. Laws, rules and regulations should be formulated with the consent and participation of the people. The people should decide all momentous issues in a scientific , systematic manner, so that our resources like land, water, coal, iron ore etc. are not taken away by foreign governments and investors, domestic business houses, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats for a pittance.

               In the present system of governance, the people have only one right: the right to vote for their representatives in the Parliament, vidhan sabha, and self-governing institutions like Panchayati Raj bodies and municipal committees and corporations. This power is exercised only once in five years. The politicians woo the voters for a little while during the electoral process and promptly forget them for the next five years.

               The people have no control over the Govt. employees who are supposed to serve them. Even if the teacher does not attend the school, the doctor does not give medicines or the constable does not record their FIR, they have no remedy except to complain to their superiors with little effect. The Gram Sabha cannot summon these employees for an explanation, stop their salaries or punish them.

               The people have no control over the govt. funds. Whenever the people demand something to be done, they are told that there are no funds. On the other hand, there are plenty of funds for schemes like old age pensions, widow pensions, NREGA,ration etc. formulated on all India basis by planners sitting in Delhi and state capitals.

               The people are not consulted while formulating laws, rules and schemes. Nobody asks them when their land is acquired for the benefit of foreign and indigenous companies. Natural resources are allotted to large business houses, charging them a tiny fraction of what they earn from their disposal. The forests which used to serve the needs of tribals living in or near them and were not interfered with even by the mighty British were taken over by the Forest departments after independence and massive deforestation took place.

               In many cities, water is being distributed by companies. Whole rivers are being gobbled up in the wake of dam construction.

               Kejriwal poses the question of why India is up for sale and why the people are unable to do anything to stave off the challenge.

               His answer: There is no democracy in India. The people have understood the game. They do not find the politics of voting once in five years as acceptable. “We, the people” want a direct participation in power. In Kejriwal’s utopia, the people shall take decisions, and politicians and officials will have to implement them.

               It might be argued that a decentralized democracy exists in India, but the Panchayati Raj system suffers from several infirmities. The panchayats have very limited powers. And whatever limited powers they have vest in the Sarpanch and not in the Gram Sabha. The people have no power to take action against a corrupt Sarpanch. All the powers vest in the district collector and the state government. What is required is a shift of powers from the State govts, district collectors and sarpanches to the gram sabhas.

                Arvind has cited the examples from other countries to demonstrate that he is not suggesting something unique or eccentric. In the US, a small municipality in the state of Oregon disallowed a proposal of Walmart to open a store in their town. Their decision was final. In Brazil, a budget for slum areas was prepared on the streets in consultation with the beneficiaries and even the World Bank had to concede that there was consequently tremendous development. In Switzerland, if 50,000 persons sign a petition and ask for a law, it has to be presented as an act in the parliament.

               Thus there is direct participation in governance in many countries of the world.

               So what actually needs to be done? Arvind says that the gram sabhas which consist of all the residents of a village should be vested with all powers. They should appoint the local officials and have the power to summon anyone to the meeting of the sabha. They should have the power to punish and to stop the salary.

               No schematic funds should be spent in a village. It would be better to allot an untied fund to the sabha, which they can spend as they wish. They could give a house to a homeless family or support some indigent with food grains or grant a loan to a person for starting a business or set up factories or grain banks. Thus they could ensure that no one in the village died of hunger or was forced to take a loan from a moneylender at an exorbitant rate of interest or committed suicide due to frustration

               Towards the end, Kejriwal anticipates the various misgivings people have about the proposed reforms package. He pooh-poohs the suggestion that vesting of powers in the Gram Sabhas will inexorably lead to corruption, favouritism, groupism, repression of Dalits, strengthening of outdated     institutions like khap panchayats, perpetuation of traditional social evils and so on.

               He goes on to suggest that there should be mohalla sabhas in towns too and all the suggestions made for empowering gram sabhas should be applied to urban areas too.

               Swaraj: A Critical Appraisal

               There is no doubt in my mind that Arvind Kejriwal has hit upon a fundamental truth about the system of governance in this country. It is that we have over centralised the entire structure of economic planning. On the one hand we wish to remove controls and empower the private sector, but on the other hand we have not dismantled the planning apparatus, a reminder of the balmy days of the socialistic pattern of society and the Mahalnobis model and development of the commanding heights of the economy.

               Many of us have balked at the distinction made in the various budgets between plan and non-plan expenditure, a distinction that has harmed the system of governance more than any other factor. In our topsy turvey system we get unlimited amounts of money to build new assets, schemes and projects, but we are starved to death in respect of maintenance of assets and infrastructure already in existence.

               The media has been playing the usual games. After the AAP’s surprise win in December 2013, they raised Arvind to the skies and catapulted him to the pedestal of a possible winner of the plum position of PM. The latest opinion polls have predicted just 7 to 12 seats to AAP in the elections to the Lok Sabha . The political parties and their supporters in big business and the media are attacking Arvind and his chief lieutenants like sharks on non-issues like a poem written six years ago, a dharna against police inaction and a foiled attempt to persuade the police to raid a suspect premises.

               They fail to recognize a paradigm shift in the political dialogue of this country. It is immaterial whether Arvind Kejriwal and the AAP survive. Politics in India will never be the same again.

               Arvind Kejriwal has had his Second Coming. Whether he is the messiah we have all been waiting for, only time will tell!

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