The document discusses the state of democracy in India and argues that true power has been usurped from the people. It criticizes the legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress party for sustaining power after independence and destroying democratic institutions. While things are starting to improve with movements for accountability and transparency, the document says real change requires action from the people as democracy cannot survive with a passive public. It ends on an optimistic note that India cannot suffer poor governance indefinitely due to its natural blessings and that citizens must work to improve the system.

1. Whither Democracy
A Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces is dismissed because he ‘defied civilian
authority’. A bureaucrat is transferred within a week of his earlier controversial transfer
because he ‘defied the cabinet’. A Chief Minister is asked to step down one fine morning
for reasons he himself doesn’t know till date! So who is the one who is wielding the
ultimate power in this democracy? Everyone is aware but no one knows. But one thing
everyone knows but nobody seems to be bothered about is that the people of this country,
its real masters as per the Constitution, have no powers! Not only have they been denied
the powers conferred to them by the Constitution, but also they have been condemned to
suffer those who have managed to usurp these powers totally. A pity, considering that
this is one country that has been thrice blessed by the Creator himself! He has given it the
best of natural resources, the best quality manpower and the most diversified and
congenial environmental conditions for their utilization and growth. So where have things
gone wrong?
To begin with, when the country shed off its colonial yoke the powers were
usurped by a single family. So much halo has been attached to the Nehru family that one
dare not criticize them even while evaluating their contribution to the national cause, in
perspective, after 50 years of so called ‘freedom’. Yes, Jawaharlal Nehru did go to prison
during the freedom struggle. He need not have. He was born with a silver spoon in his
mouth. He had his education in England. He had many friends even among the colonisers
themselves. So what? For all that, he was a slave of the colonial masters, wasn’t he? And
for all that, he could not have thrown off the yoke himself, could he? Yes, the truth is that
somehow he managed to be the blue eyed boy of Mahatma Gandhi and thus was able to
share a lot of the lime light himself. But apart from that what exactly was his
contribution? His letters to his daughter and a few other books he had written expressing
his profound love for this country? They may be among the good works of literature but
they certainly aren’t the best in their genre? Well, suffice to say that much of the halo has
been attached to the Dynasty simply because they inherited the powers in a newly
independent country and managed to sustain it for a long time thereafter. Unfortunately
for the country, for sufficiently long enough to destroy the very foundations of its
sacrosanct institutions; the institutions that characterize any healthy democracy.
Today, whenever there is a pandemonium in the legislatures, old timers start wailing how
the decorum that existed in Nehruvian times have been thrown to the winds. But people
forget that Mr.Nehru himself was a short tempered man and there is even a photograph
which shows him almost throwing a bolster at a member of the party at one of its
meetings. And lacking everything, except charisma (I don’t know what it means except
that it has got something to do with our awe for white skin) he could only continue with
the British’s policy of divide and rule. Am I afflicted with Nehruphobia? Certainly not!
Born in a free India and spared of the burden of idolising our leaders, late and living, I am
sure I have it in me to look at events in perspective, sincerely and objectively, to come to
rational conclusions which any other rational human being would find impossible to
repudiate.
Let us recapitulate certain historical facts.
Firstly, who was the one responsible for the partitioning the subcontinent? How
many of us realize the price we have paid, and continue to pay, for not having accepted
the Mahatma’s proposal to make Mr. Jinnah the Prime Minister of the new democracy
and avoid the bifurcation?
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Did not Mahatma Gandhi also suggest that the pre-independence Congress party
should be disbanded? With the whole nation having participated in the freedom struggle
and the whole people having divided into different parties after independence what right
did Nehru’s party have in claiming the whole heritage for themselves? Thus, while
Mahatmaji was justified in his fears that the good name of the pre-independence
Congress party would be misused in the post-independence period and wanted to avoid it,
Mr.Nehru was shrewd enough to subvert the proposal because he knew that without the
halo of the pre-independence Congress party and the Mahatma to support him, his own
very existence would have been in jeopardy. And pray, tell me why did he have to change
the name of his Parsi son-in-law from Feroze Gandhey to Gandhi? Wasn’t it another
shrewd move? Today how many educated Indians know that Mrs Indira Gandhi is no
more related to Mahatma Gandhi than, say, I am?
The international statesman, the visionary, as most of his followers would have us
believe- what was his legacy? If anything, even our relations with our neighbors have
started improving only in recent times, particularly after the Congress has been shunted to
the opposition benches in New Delhi.
And what was the great visionary’s idea in accepting/granting special status to a
border state like Kashmir while he felt all the need to annex Nizam’s Hyderabad and Goa
through police/army actions? And at what cost?
Even the Congress today talks about the politicisation of the armed forces. Lest
they forget, one of the reasons for the 1962 debacle with China would be the then Prime
Minister’s direct dealings with a fellow Kashmiri General, bypassing even the Defence
Minister and the Chief of Army Staff! But so long as they were in power it suited them to
present the armed forces as a holy cow to the rest of the country, until of course, Bofors
blew the lid on their face. Is it possible that a lady like Mrs.Indira Gandhi who demanded
and even prevailed to get a ‘committed’ judiciary would not have interfered in the affairs
of the armed forces whimsically? I shall believe it the day I see the sun rising in the west!
What of the politician-bureaucrat-underworld nexus? Is it any new phenomena? A
bureaucrat who had quit the IAS after serving for just 10 years, is on record, saying
‘helping political bosses circumvent the law is not an administrator’s job’. Just imagine
the extent to which things have fallen. And, certainly, not overnight! And that brings me
to another fact-that need to be highlighted. What is the relevance of an Official Secrets
Act in a democratic setup? Under the colonial masters, yes. A lot of their misdeeds
needed to be covered up and the officials were to act as the slaves they really were. But in
a democracy, where the people are the masters? Apart from defence operational plans is
there anything that should be kept under wraps? In fact there is a definite need for total
transparency in the affairs of the government. It is unfortunate that systems have been
subverted to such an extent that even Joint Parliamentary Committees have not been able
to bring out the facts, as in the case of the Bofors scandal!
Today the judiciary, which claims that ‘howsoever high you may be the law is
above you’, is in such a mess that even judges of the Supreme Court have started making
noises in public about the need to provide justice to victims! One of the main reasons for
this is the delay involved in the dispensation of justice. And the honourable judges claim
that this is due to the non-availability of judges in the lower courts. While the Cabinets
can be expanded to accommodate everybody that the party in power deems necessary to
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sustain itself in power, the key area of dispensation of justice is made to suffer for
whatever reasons best known to those responsible for it, themselves! And who is
responsible for all these politicians and administrators considering themselves to be a law
unto themselves? Isn’t it a paradox that even the law has been interpreted to absolve
elected representatives from charges of accepting graft? And what are those privileges for
the members of the Houses? Is the right to misbehave one of them?
An ex-Cabinet Minister of the Union was arrested when tons of unaccounted
money was recovered from his house. He claimed it was planted and went on to win an
election from jail and became the Deputy Chief Minister of a State! What a mockery of
democracy! And who is responsible? Can the party, which had been in power for most of
the fifty years, absolve itself of its responsibilities? Surprisingly, and quite unabashedly,
they are.
What would one do to an individual who passed off military operational secrets to
the enemy? Hang him as a traitor! Why? Because he is guilty of compromising the
security of the country and the life of its personnel, whether they be the men in uniform
or not. So what should one do to somebody, who, being in a position of authority,
provided arms to those very militants, on foreign soil, against whom the army of his own
country was waging a war? Natural justice demands that he should be stoned to death.
(A clue: ask the troops who fought in Op Pawan!)
Well, suffice to say that the affairs of this country has been brought to this sorry
pass by the through and through misrule of all those people who have been at the helm of
its affairs. But the majority of the people who have remained mute witnesses to the events
as they unfolded are also guilty because they should be considered accomplices after the
fact. Because, isn’t it said that the only thing necessary for the success of evil is for good
men to do nothing? And if they are suffering now shouldn’t it be considered as another
manifestation of natural justice itself?
Fortunately things are beginning to change for the better. Though Mr.Ram
Jethmalami’s efforts to make the affairs of his ministry transparent was sabotaged by
vested interests in the bureaucracy it sure should be considered a temporary set back.
Elsewhere a Chief Minister has been earning accolades for being a CEO! Politics,
Mr.Chandrababu Naidu is reported to have said, is for election times only. After that it is
administration. Mr Naidu has also set the precedence of elected representatives declaring
their assets and liabilities in the Assembly. Accountability is slowly becoming a mantra
for survival. In Thane the public reacted sharply to an obvious act of indiscretion on the
part of those wielding power and managed to get their way through. In Pune too such a
movement gained momentum, though fleetingly. These instances, like little lamps,
provide that glimmer of hope for the future. This country, thrice blessed by the Creator,
cannot suffer like this for long. But the creator is not going to come down and do things
for us. The people themselves must learn to put their shoulders to the wheel. For isn’t it
said that God helps those who help themselves? And for those who already have their
shoulders against the wheel, but beginning to feel exasperated, take comfort in the
message from the Lord of the Universe himself, as revealed through the Bhagavad
Geetha –Do your best and leave the rest to him!
PM
Ravindran
2/18, ‘Aathira’

4. Kalpathy-678003