In
the recent years, let’s face it – Dr. Manmohan Singh has pulled down the
standards. As a result of which scores
of people, both ordinary citizenry with extraordinary belief in self, and
extraordinary members of industry with ordinary acumen otherwise have begun their
evening stroll in the garden of Indian democracy. This is a dangerous signal
for the health of democracy, and I intend to discuss the pros and cons of it in
this article.
Firstly,
it is remarkable to appreciate the active involvement of the citizenry – given their
will and necessity, stemming from ever increasing inflation, and lack of
employment opportunities. They represent the ill-informed, but passionate
countrymen, filled with energy and are seeking a change, to sell their faith
and loyalties to. On the other side, we have (wo)men of repute in their
particular industries/lines of work – with stagnant career progression curves
and negligible connect with ground realities otherwise sensing an opportunity
to take the plunge, as a natural next step. There is an eminent danger that the
former set of population fall prey to the latter set because of their overt
packaging of selves. Ultimately, due to lack of innovation in terms of governance
– considering the latter set is devoid of such intellectual faculties, except
for transitioning into a new role on their career progression graphs; old set
of policy measures and governance methods are bound to continue.
Given the limited acumen but bloated egos of the
latter, national development that has sustained considerable damage in the
recent past, will broaden creating a great divide – pushing the country towards
civil war. International funds and investors (referred to in this articles as
funders) will re-align their priorities to tackle this broader divide, as
reflected in the 2008 - 2012 FDI Drain, pushing the economy further down.
It
must be remembered in that connection that equality and democracy are not
synonymous in spite of the fact that these two terms are frequently confounded
in "democracies" with an aristocratic-liberal historical background.
Numerical majorities are not necessarily keen to preserve equality in a
democracy; considering the demand for equality (and related privileges in terms
of treatment and subsidies) always arose from select minorities – leading to
appeasement schemes. Genuinely
"democratic" societies can be brutally cruel to those who dare to be
"different" in an unconventional way.
Our evaluation
and adaptation methodology needs to be updated to reflect more systematically
the broader inclusion, rather than pursuing a change of leadership – at least
without adequate political training. Enterprising in Public life has become the new
trend, and is exceeding enterprising innovation in private sector. This will
create continued pressure on treasury, with ill-informed choices and decisions –
putting the economy at further risk. This will culminate in failure of the Indian
democracy experiment.
- Abhijith Jayanthi
