Once again general election is coming. Voters will be exercising their electoral franchise. How far this democratic exercise is going to help the welfare of the masses? It is important to recover the nation from the clutches of few vested interests and make it helpful for all citizens.
V.R. Krishna Iyer writes in The Hindu, 9.3.2009
The Indian nation’s future will be shaped by the ballot of a billion-plus voters in a process that should be over within a couple of months under the broad framework of the Constitution. This country needs a stable government, for which are needed stable parties with basically common manifestoes that conform to national norms under the parameters of the Constitution. For India is a People’s Democratic Republic.
Jawaharlal Nehru explained this in the Constituent Assembly thus: “I must frankly confess that I am a socialist and a republican, and am no believer in kings or princes or in the order which produces the modern kings of industry, who have greater power over the lives and fortunes of men than even the kings of old, and whose methods are as predatory as those of the old feudal aristocracy. I recognise, however, that it may not be possible for a body constituted as is this National Congress, to adopt a full socialistic programme. But we must realise that the philosophy of socialism has gradually permeated the entire structure of society the world over and almost the only points in dispute are the pace and the methods of advance to its full realisation. India will have to go that way, too, if she seeks to end her poverty and inequality, though she may evolve her own methods and may adapt the ideal to the genius of her race.”
In short, in the vision of the country’s first Prime Minister, India was a socialist, casteless community with a dynamic amity amid theological pluralism, but at the base it is bound by a manifestation of universal divinity in every human being. This wonder of oneness must inform our cultural community life in cosmic humanism, illuminate and animate all religions, even the atheists. This free patriotic fraternity, this celestial spiritual thought, this theological comity and global political vision, are a sine qua non for the survival of the large have-not Indian humanity.
The current situation is deplorable, indeed a horror. The Food and Agriculture Organisation has stated that 27 per cent of the poor of the world live in India, as are the richest 4 per cent. No less than 40 per cent of the women suffer under-development and masculine domination in social and political power. An end to food scarcity is not in sight. This is sad and pathetic. The seemingly hidden agenda of the ruling brand of economics is contradicting our cultural and constitutional values.
The governing class is oath-bound to uphold a Socialist-Secular-Democratic Republic, under the trinity of instrumentalities. But they betray it by means of mafia propaganda and class-conscious casteism, using a treacherous trinity of mantras: globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation. This dollar dependency syndrome comes from the U.S., with exotic and native brands in collusion.
Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. Our task is to transform it, said Karl Marx. The pity of it is that even the Marxists, mentally conditioned as they occasionally are by industrial glamour, have jettisoned Marx.
We still behave colonially in our imperial judicial jurisprudence of economic classes in our state’s bureaucratic structure and micro-molar political pluralism and theological rivalry. This comes as a part of communal-casteist pathology and vote-bank strategy to seize power. In such a situation, socialist-secular egalitarian democracy is an illusion and religious unity mere moonshine. The managers of state power are buried deep in the disguised dimension of development.
India lives in its villages, which has had panchayati democracy for decades. But centralisation, the craze for industrialisation and the cult of money-over-human-beings have vulgarised our culture. Even the gods, it would seem, are today after huge money. Godmen-swindlers are often lost in their own internecine conflicts. They ignore the development of agriculture and fall victim to fossil, feudal, corrupt, colonial communal competitive divisiveness and polluting nature. To them, the hard-won swaraj is but a fancy five-star mirage.
This colonial fraud must change and the village must become vibrant and progressive in the agrarian sphere. It must not capitulate to capitalist industrialisation creating poorly paid wage-earners. The root cause of class and the hallowed creamy layers are luxurious lifestyles, servitude and feudal, colonial pathology that are projected as five-star development.
A new synthesis achieved through a harmony of the haves and the have-nots through happy universal humanism is the socialist vision and mass-oriented mission of our Constitution. Achieving that state will be our authentic swaraj — poorna swaraj.
Leftists, you stand by the people lest the people leave you. You are the salt of the Indian earth and if the salt loses its savour, wherewith shall they be salted? We, the People of India united in a fine fraternity — that is “Bharat Mahan,” with panchayati raj as the basic democratic unit.
The coming elections will electrify the nation into a meaningful militant activism, integrity and fraternity, and spell hara-kiri for a number of politicians across the spectrum. The manifesto of the billion humans is luminously spelt out in the suprema lex as a socialist, democratic, secular republic. But every party, every group or caste, the proletariat to the proprietariat, is fragmented. They have jettisoned statesmanship, national vision and united radical passion and abandoned the ideology of the Constitution in favour of ministership, communalism, corruption and terrorism. This must change. Yes, We can.
Voters, do not sell your soul but fight for the Constitution. “The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.” (The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, Page 26).
Patriotism shall not be the last refuge of a scoundrel. The non-negotiable Indo-Pakistan friendship and the SAARC fraternity are fundamental if international laws of peace and human rights should not become the vanishing point of jurisprudence. But even cricket is an opportunity for sermons and political accusations with Goebbelsian audacity and absurdity. Let the people of India and Pakistan come together. The world is sinking; let us arrest this through honest swadeshi as the essence of development — which is not of things but of man.
Today ghostly gods are big business and godmen are the new mafia. The common masses vs the millionaires and the mafia: that is India’s new grand tryst in these powerful national elections. In India today the slumdog has to sleep hungry in terrible conditions while the millionaire remains in luminous palaces. Swaraj India has betrayed Gandhi and Nehru and Indira Gandhi. You the people shall arise, awake and build a great India and implement the Preamble, Part II, IV and IV A of the Constitution as a fundamental of our great country.
Without adequate sincerity of purpose and work among the public representatives it is difficult to save the country from the control of few business people and political highhandedness. This year’s election and the coalition compulsions should make the governance better.
V.R. Krishna Iyer writes in The Hindu, 9.3.2009
The Indian nation’s future will be shaped by the ballot of a billion-plus voters in a process that should be over within a couple of months under the broad framework of the Constitution. This country needs a stable government, for which are needed stable parties with basically common manifestoes that conform to national norms under the parameters of the Constitution. For India is a People’s Democratic Republic.
Jawaharlal Nehru explained this in the Constituent Assembly thus: “I must frankly confess that I am a socialist and a republican, and am no believer in kings or princes or in the order which produces the modern kings of industry, who have greater power over the lives and fortunes of men than even the kings of old, and whose methods are as predatory as those of the old feudal aristocracy. I recognise, however, that it may not be possible for a body constituted as is this National Congress, to adopt a full socialistic programme. But we must realise that the philosophy of socialism has gradually permeated the entire structure of society the world over and almost the only points in dispute are the pace and the methods of advance to its full realisation. India will have to go that way, too, if she seeks to end her poverty and inequality, though she may evolve her own methods and may adapt the ideal to the genius of her race.”
In short, in the vision of the country’s first Prime Minister, India was a socialist, casteless community with a dynamic amity amid theological pluralism, but at the base it is bound by a manifestation of universal divinity in every human being. This wonder of oneness must inform our cultural community life in cosmic humanism, illuminate and animate all religions, even the atheists. This free patriotic fraternity, this celestial spiritual thought, this theological comity and global political vision, are a sine qua non for the survival of the large have-not Indian humanity.
The current situation is deplorable, indeed a horror. The Food and Agriculture Organisation has stated that 27 per cent of the poor of the world live in India, as are the richest 4 per cent. No less than 40 per cent of the women suffer under-development and masculine domination in social and political power. An end to food scarcity is not in sight. This is sad and pathetic. The seemingly hidden agenda of the ruling brand of economics is contradicting our cultural and constitutional values.
The governing class is oath-bound to uphold a Socialist-Secular-Democratic Republic, under the trinity of instrumentalities. But they betray it by means of mafia propaganda and class-conscious casteism, using a treacherous trinity of mantras: globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation. This dollar dependency syndrome comes from the U.S., with exotic and native brands in collusion.
Philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. Our task is to transform it, said Karl Marx. The pity of it is that even the Marxists, mentally conditioned as they occasionally are by industrial glamour, have jettisoned Marx.
We still behave colonially in our imperial judicial jurisprudence of economic classes in our state’s bureaucratic structure and micro-molar political pluralism and theological rivalry. This comes as a part of communal-casteist pathology and vote-bank strategy to seize power. In such a situation, socialist-secular egalitarian democracy is an illusion and religious unity mere moonshine. The managers of state power are buried deep in the disguised dimension of development.
India lives in its villages, which has had panchayati democracy for decades. But centralisation, the craze for industrialisation and the cult of money-over-human-beings have vulgarised our culture. Even the gods, it would seem, are today after huge money. Godmen-swindlers are often lost in their own internecine conflicts. They ignore the development of agriculture and fall victim to fossil, feudal, corrupt, colonial communal competitive divisiveness and polluting nature. To them, the hard-won swaraj is but a fancy five-star mirage.
This colonial fraud must change and the village must become vibrant and progressive in the agrarian sphere. It must not capitulate to capitalist industrialisation creating poorly paid wage-earners. The root cause of class and the hallowed creamy layers are luxurious lifestyles, servitude and feudal, colonial pathology that are projected as five-star development.
A new synthesis achieved through a harmony of the haves and the have-nots through happy universal humanism is the socialist vision and mass-oriented mission of our Constitution. Achieving that state will be our authentic swaraj — poorna swaraj.
Leftists, you stand by the people lest the people leave you. You are the salt of the Indian earth and if the salt loses its savour, wherewith shall they be salted? We, the People of India united in a fine fraternity — that is “Bharat Mahan,” with panchayati raj as the basic democratic unit.
The coming elections will electrify the nation into a meaningful militant activism, integrity and fraternity, and spell hara-kiri for a number of politicians across the spectrum. The manifesto of the billion humans is luminously spelt out in the suprema lex as a socialist, democratic, secular republic. But every party, every group or caste, the proletariat to the proprietariat, is fragmented. They have jettisoned statesmanship, national vision and united radical passion and abandoned the ideology of the Constitution in favour of ministership, communalism, corruption and terrorism. This must change. Yes, We can.
Voters, do not sell your soul but fight for the Constitution. “The service of India means the service of the millions who suffer. It means the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity. The ambition of the greatest man of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but as long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.” (The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, Page 26).
Patriotism shall not be the last refuge of a scoundrel. The non-negotiable Indo-Pakistan friendship and the SAARC fraternity are fundamental if international laws of peace and human rights should not become the vanishing point of jurisprudence. But even cricket is an opportunity for sermons and political accusations with Goebbelsian audacity and absurdity. Let the people of India and Pakistan come together. The world is sinking; let us arrest this through honest swadeshi as the essence of development — which is not of things but of man.
Today ghostly gods are big business and godmen are the new mafia. The common masses vs the millionaires and the mafia: that is India’s new grand tryst in these powerful national elections. In India today the slumdog has to sleep hungry in terrible conditions while the millionaire remains in luminous palaces. Swaraj India has betrayed Gandhi and Nehru and Indira Gandhi. You the people shall arise, awake and build a great India and implement the Preamble, Part II, IV and IV A of the Constitution as a fundamental of our great country.
Without adequate sincerity of purpose and work among the public representatives it is difficult to save the country from the control of few business people and political highhandedness. This year’s election and the coalition compulsions should make the governance better.
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