Denying democracy

• Bhishma on a bed of arrows, screams The Telegraph.
• Shishya coup screams  TOI
• Pro Modi- Pro Advani warriors calls The Hindu

The media having a ball, Arnab Goswami hitting hysteric heights, I don’t dare  turn on whatever channel BakBak Dutt is on.

For the past year International Centre Goa has been having debates and interactive lectures on good governance. I have heard people from Querishi, to Dr.JP Narayan.

What normally came out of this discussion was very interesting.

• We have a sound constitution though may not necessarily meet our needs. As it is based on the British system where the challenges were different.
• We have a sound legal system

So where did we go wrong ?

Each one of these people who have contributed in areas like bureaucracy, judiciary, politics sometimes combination. There were defence personal too .

The common denominator seems strangly same.

CENTRALIZATION OF POWER. This all of them pointed out, worked in every field. Once power gets decentralized, we would automatically land up with local body strengthening .

Strengthening of the local body would mean we address the local needs. This would include education, primary health, local development. Incidentally this is what we pay taxes for and not for Pratibha Patil’s world tour or Sonia Gandhi’s security.

one major area that should be worked on for this to work is citizen’s responsibility. We as citizens insist on participating in our local governance. Maybe we can walk down and look at our Panchayat office, well, the first step would be to find where we have one. That is not the purpose of this blog.

Another major area that came about was the internal party democracy.

This is precisely what BJP did in its conclave at Goa, an internal party democracy.

The corporate goals would normally look at what is the goal that I want to achieve, what is the best team that I would put together to achieve this.

The strengths and weakness of Modi apart, his party believes he can deliver. They have elected him.

Through Arnab Goswami’s whatever debate there was a man I don’t remember his name kept talking about how senior members should take a decision and the rest should follow. Any expression of view or something that is different from what the senior says is perceived as rebellion. In such a structure how can democracy work?

Does the media find grass root democracy so not  digestible that it screams rebellion?

well Arnab and your tribe, if democracy at micro level is not digestible, then democracy at macro level is disaster.

Interestingly this man is not a BJP person. So what I am talking about is a cultural ethos, we are so much into the age hierarchy democracy is something that is alien to our very thinking.