DEMOCRACRY FOR THE RICH AND INFLUENTIAL

Is India being reduced to a democracy for the rich and influential?

You can mount an attack on the highest democratic institution of the country, The Parliament House, caught in the process, tried and convicted by a court of law and still get away with, you can mow down the people sleeping in the pavement with your luxury car and escape conviction, you can poach, at will, an endangered specie like Chinkara or a black buck and hush up the case, you can pass through the green channel at the airport on your return from an international trip with dutiable items and plead ignorance when caught and scot free, you can shoot a bar attendant point blank and still get a bail if you have the right connections, you can import an aircraft under the guise of commercial use and keep it for personal use and evade import duty until some news channel blows the whistle, you can be involved in any number of bomb blasts killing innocent people and be a free man if you have political patronage, you can be an MP with murder charges against you and your party leaders will back you up, you, as a minister, can be prosecuted by CBI for financial scandal after a long awaited Governor’s permission, who, in turn, gets threatening calls from abroad for doing his duty and so on and so on. The list is endless.

The police are unwilling to register if you lodge a complaint and, if registered, the complainant is treated as the accused. You are unwilling to render help to the hapless bleeding victim of a road accident, even if you are a medical professional, because you are afraid of the consequences of your involvement. The judges are influenced and the poor victim who was gang raped is made to witness the sad spectacle of her assailants being set free for want of evidence adding new threats to her personal security, leave alone the inconvenient questions hurled at her by the so called “defense” lawyers. The employers, if they belong to a multinational, flex their muscle and financial power to ensure that the legal proceedings don’t tarnish their local image regardless of the anguish and trauma inflicted upon the victim and her family. These have become routine and even the intelligentsia have learned to live with it resigning to their fate.

Are we fast emerging as the largest, but the most irresponsible democracy of the 21st century where the powerful, wealthy and influential can hijack the whole system to suit their personal agenda? The British, no doubt, looted the country, but they had something in place to protect the interest of the law abiding citizen. This is the sad irony of Mr. Bharat that has completed 60 glorious years after independence. The politicians plunder the country’s wealth and the multinationals join the bandwagon in that our elected representatives and ministers have become salable commodities who can be bought and sold in the open market to make policies and enact laws to increase the bottom line of industrial giants and power houses. Factories are being put up in agricultural lands affecting the livelihood of scores of farmers because the small car is more important to the nation than the basic subsistence of the peasant. Soft drink manufacturers are locating their factories in rural areas draining the ground water resources creating artificial scarcity of drinking water and when the villagers resist, police force are sent to silence them and booked under discriminatory laws. Even in the extreme cases where the rural population is relocated for a right cause, the promised compensation does not reach them and is eaten away by the babus en route.

If this is the independent India’s state of affairs today, what have we in store for the future generations? In the last sixty years, we have not managed to produce a single leader with commitment to a national agenda. On the contrary, our system has produced more dealers than leaders. Enacting a law that imposes life ban for tainted men from holding public office will alone revamp our democratic values.