India is the largest democracy in the world with long six decades of existence: Governments, corporations and individual citizens in the country are bound by laws and regulations which require them to follow practices that make them accountable for performance and transparency with lot of disclosures. India is also a country that takes justified pride in the use and development of information technology, especially software, mobile and the Internet. Her politicians are also technology savvy and media savvy. The use of SMS, e-mail, websites, blogs and mobiles is widespread among politicians. Many politicians enjoy participating in TV programs telecasting live or recorded debates, discussion and interviews on political, social and economic issues – local, national and international.
Yet, when we come to the individual political partie supposed to be pillars of democracy, the standards of content, up-dating, visitor-friendliness and transparency in web sites are extremely poor, though some are much better than others. I have observed the following:
1. Some even do not have contact us or feedback buttons for visitors.
2. Those which have feedback or contact us buttons may not bother to respond to comments or queries from visitors.
3. The content lacks any specific articulation of macro-economic management or economic activity structure (presumably, the parties do not have any such economy vision or do not have adequate knowledge of economics beyond some out-dated or fashionable economic terms.
4. There is no overall or indicator specific performance report of the party over decades and years: the party websites do not give performance targets in respect of the coming year/s.
5. There are no disclosures on compliance with laws and regulations.
6. There is no data on number of members of different categories: district-level/ local level secretaries of functionaries and their contact numbers or addresses.
7. There is absolutely no information on income, expenditure and assets / liabilities. No audited accounts are posted.
8. The highest level governing bodies of some parties with elected representatives mostly from one or two states have more members from States with zero elected representative seats in the Parliament. For example, in CPM Politburo the Bengali leaders with roots in West Bengal or Tripura, where the party has the overwhelmingly dominant support of the people and contribute to dominating share in the Party’s seats in the Parliament, are in absolute minority.
9. There is no information on women representation, minorities reservation, OBC Reservation in the party’s official hierarchy.
10. There is no information on the academic qualifications and experience of the party functionaries or the salaries, allowances and other benefits.
11. There is no information on inter-related party transactions.
12. For months there is no new posting on some of the party websites.
How do future citizens or even the current citizens, especially the senior citizens choose among parties? What are the accountability of the party’s and their managers? What quality of democracy can a country enjoy and be proud of in the 21st century of high technology, transparency, governance and accountability for performance and resource use even so many things are missing?
Some people interested in democracy, governance and civil society must find out the facts and the Truth before they comment on the political parties activities based merely on media reports and sporadic, impressionistic personal visit surveys in some pockets here and there.
Sep 30, 2009
No Quality Pre-requisite for Democratic Rulers
Monarchies are the most despised form of political rule. The reason is nothing but primarily that the chances of a Monarch being good is very very low. Yet even in the zeroth millennium, or say in the Ramayana / Mahabharata days of the 3000-5000 BC, the intellectuals had developed various criteria for a Good Monarch from the point of view of the citizens/ society/ nation or mankind. Rama was called an ideal king because he satisfied the properties desired of a king. His kingdom was called Ram Rajya which means a kingdom that is the most sought by the citizens. The intention here is not to discuss the ideal properties or Ram's great characteristic as a ruling monarch. The point is that the common people knew what the desirable properties of an ideal king were and these were developed by intellectuals of those days 5,000-7,000 years ago. And the concept was applied to judge the monarchs. That is why Emperor Ashok was called a great monarch after the end of his war against the king og Kalinga. Even Emperor Akbar was called a Great king.
Rama, Ashok (transformed after Kalinga War) and Akbar offered honest, fair. non-corrupt and non-oppressive governance and administration.
Yet, after such great advances of civilization over the last three centuries, the great philosophers who have developed the concept of modern democracy has failed to develop any criteria of ideal democratic government. The euphoria over the idea of rulers being elected by the citizens had so obsessed the minds that no one thinks that democracy by itself does not yield good, non-oppressive, fair and honest governance. That is why not a single government in any of the World's democracies have earned the position of ideal or close to the ideal in the last three centuries. Even today if we look around so many democracies in the world, we would not find a government which satisfies most of the properties desired from an ideal ruler. Democracy, republic and communism seems to be desirable in themselves because monarch's are not there: even if democracies, republics and Communist governments are oppressive and corrupt, they seem to be still desirable. Monarch's could not fool people: people knew which monarch is good or bad. But citizens of democracies, republics and communism are forced to accept that any government that rules under these set-ups is ideal. There are indices/ ranking of countries in terms of GDP per person, quality of human life, economic freedom, political freedom, corruption, cricketing countries, tennis players, boxing champions and so on. But no ranking of Governments. There is extreme poverty of intellectual activity in this regard. Governments are like Gods - Almighty's that can be praised only.
: they are far above independent evaluation and ranking by experts.
Rama, Ashok (transformed after Kalinga War) and Akbar offered honest, fair. non-corrupt and non-oppressive governance and administration.
Yet, after such great advances of civilization over the last three centuries, the great philosophers who have developed the concept of modern democracy has failed to develop any criteria of ideal democratic government. The euphoria over the idea of rulers being elected by the citizens had so obsessed the minds that no one thinks that democracy by itself does not yield good, non-oppressive, fair and honest governance. That is why not a single government in any of the World's democracies have earned the position of ideal or close to the ideal in the last three centuries. Even today if we look around so many democracies in the world, we would not find a government which satisfies most of the properties desired from an ideal ruler. Democracy, republic and communism seems to be desirable in themselves because monarch's are not there: even if democracies, republics and Communist governments are oppressive and corrupt, they seem to be still desirable. Monarch's could not fool people: people knew which monarch is good or bad. But citizens of democracies, republics and communism are forced to accept that any government that rules under these set-ups is ideal. There are indices/ ranking of countries in terms of GDP per person, quality of human life, economic freedom, political freedom, corruption, cricketing countries, tennis players, boxing champions and so on. But no ranking of Governments. There is extreme poverty of intellectual activity in this regard. Governments are like Gods - Almighty's that can be praised only.
: they are far above independent evaluation and ranking by experts.
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