Monday, April 7, 2014

Clean Independent candidates is the road ahead for our nation

Are we really the largest democracy in the world?

I am wondering after the sting operation by a news channel "Aaj Tak" do the political parties and the politicians really care & understand what democracy means. The nexus of politicians and the builders is an open secret and can be a plausible reason for the enormous increase in the prices of realty sector. The amount of black money that is circulated in the realty sector must be the highest among all the other sectors. The sting operation by the news channel revealed how politicians combine with the election officers to create fake IDs so that the polls can be rigged. Literally every vote is being sold at Rs 2000. The disappointing thing about the sting operation was an executive of a company producing chemicals mentioned the names of national parties purchasing chemicals from them so that the ink applied on the finger can be erased and the voter can vote again. How can such candidates frame laws for the general public? It is a mockery of the entire political system and a shame to democracy. This is one of the incidents which got known to the common people. The sting operation only reiterates that such practices must be prevailing in all elections in past and even prevails in the entire country. All these incidents are demotivating for the voters. It is simple if you play an unfair the chances of losing the game is highly probable & hence discouraging.

Why does poll rigging take place?

The polls are rigged to gain an unfair advantage and ultimately to win the elections. The political parties are quite a strong structure and are capable of rigging the polls. It is extremely difficult for independent candidates to manipulate the results due to lack of contacts, money power, muscle power. Even if an individual tries to manipulate the polls people are more likely to stand against the individual than a political party & its candidate. I have a belief that it is the political party framework which gives the courage to the politicians to do such shameful acts.

What can be the solution?

There should be an encouragement to promote candidates who are nationalist with proven record at the local level with a clean image. The political parties are forced to give tickets to individuals not necessary on their ability to improve the constituency but based on their ability to garner votes & raise funds for the party. The choice of candidate is not driven by performance but based on caste, religion & other factors which should not be the case for selection. Even Anna Hazare encourages clean independent candidates to contest elections and wants more independents to get selected in the Lok Sabha & Vidhan Sabha. Mahatma Gandhi had advised the dissolution of Indian National Congress after independence & advocated decentralization of power. Gandhiji's foresightedness might have expected that stronger political parties might threaten the structure of democracy.

http://news.oneindia.in/india/revealed-how-bogus-votes-can-change-the-lok-sabha-2014-poll-results-1423494.html
http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/2014-lok-sabha-polls-fake-voter-ids-booth-level-officers-delhi/1/352386.html

3 comments:

Disha Tekchandani said...

I'm afraid finding clean independent candidates will take us a lifetime... I agree that's how it should be in the long run but to solve the matters at hand, we need a strong government.
Besides that, we have booth capturing which again results in manipulation of votes. We need a govt that can bring in e-governance so that there's no scope for such bottlenecks.

Some links I want to share-
http://www.mediacrooks.com/

http://www.niticentral.com/2014/04/07/watch-ashwini-upadhyay-founder-member-aap-expose-partys-corruption-208655.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqLxboccoU8

This is going to be my first Lok Sabha vote and am going to make an informed decision. I am collecting as much info as possible. Please help me gain knowledge about the elections, candidates and parties.

Vikram Suryawanshi said...

very well written............

akash said...

I does not entirely agree with the statement.
Everyone is clean before he gets into power. Power corrupts. So we want a candidate who can stay clean even after coming to power. How's that possible? We need candidate with High moral standing rather than clean bank account and Income tax return. Moral is a difficult concept and many times subject to religion. So lets not talk about that.
Independent. Now why independent? An independent candidate will in turn be totally dependent on his constitutional voters. just like Party-dependent, voter (in)dependent will not have any kind of freedom. He will be forced to take populist measures to please his voters. Isn't that happening today too? Today people are disappointed by all the parties. So they lost trust that anyone can do us any good. But in this darkest hour we should not loose our hope. We should not refrain from painting everyone with same colour. Abraham Lincoln said "Believing everybody is dangerous, but believing nobody is more dangerous". The Independent candidates today poses a greater threat to our democracy than any Naxalite blowing a voting booth in a remote village. We should not fall pray to such anarchy. It is time show courage and strength on our part. It is time to revive belief in our political system and to vote for majority.