Election Campaign in India
November 21st, 2008Election campaigns in India.
Dalip Singh Wasan, Advocate.
The latest election in Uttar Pradesh in India have shown that we can go down to such an extent from where we can come back with false excuses only. We have got no targets with us nor we have got something to place before the voters on the basis of which we are wanting votes from them. Therefore, we have got only one method with us and that method has been repeatedly utilized in India. The leaders in the election campaigns of ten start speaking against the other party which they think shall win. In the present election campaign in the state of Uttar Pradesh, both Congress and the BJP parties started leveling allegations against each other and they are not coming forward to tell the people that if they are given power, they shall do this and that for the people of the state.
The people of India must admit that they are not getting their own people as leaders in the political parties established here. Some people with money and some people from some families join together and they are forming political parties like establishing cooperative societies in India. They distribute the offices amongst themselves and then they stand in elections with the help of rich people in the country. The rich people give them money and with this money they win in elections and then they work for the benefit of those rich people who had helped them in the elections. That is the reason, the rich people had been growing more and more rich and the poor people are being reduced to more and more poverty. It must be accepted that the rich people do not cast their votes because they do not like to stand in lines where people from the lower economic groups are standing. Therefore, we have established here in India a strange type of democracy where the voters are poor people and the governments established with their votes are virtually representatives of rich people and that is the reason, the people of India are not counting themselves as democrats. They are still living like slaves in India because they earn and create wealth in the country and all the wealth is snatched away by the rich and the powerful and the people of India are still illiterate, unemployed, poor, houseless, living in mud houses and in huts, are ill, weak, are starving, are wearing on rags, are beggars and the like and it seems they shall die without tasting the fruit of independence and of democracy. They are just voters and with this power in their hand, they could write of family rule from India, individual dictatorship and then party dictatorship.
Time has come when the political parties in India should draw their economic agendas as per internationally recognized principles and they must work on scientific methods and should not mislead the people just of false and artificial slogans. Winning in election is one thing and doing something for the people is the real thing and we could not achieve this real thing because here in India there is no qualifications for the people who are coming to the houses. They are not bound to have such qualifications even if they are expiring for the post of a minister. Here in India an illiterate person can become minister of finance, home, education or the like and here in India an illiterate person can have command over highly qualified people. We do not understand as to how these higher educated and higher qualified people are obeying the orders of those who have got no qualification with them. We can say that the people who are working in this democracy are virtually from the side of the bureaucracy and they pass orders which are signed by the elected people. That is the reason, we are still carrying on some laws which had been framed by imperialists when they were ruling over us and our people could not have the courage to change those laws.
We are still playing with the principles of democracy and we are not electing right people to the right job. That is the reason, the political parties and the people in the political parties are still working with false and empty slogans and they are running the administration just in a routine method. We are still to identify our natural resources hidden here and we are still to exploit those hidden natural resources. Till we forward qualified people to the houses, all these dreams shall not be realized or achieved.
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