INDIA IS a country of multiple religions, castes, tribes, languages and so on. Its nationalism is a sum total of all these ingredients, each one of these is capable of inflicting severe injury to its well being. Vast majority of population, particularly in hinterland, is illiterate, underfed and debt ridden. They are generally in gripe of local chieftain or mafia and are forced to follow his dictum.
Illiteracy and ignorance renders individuals incapable to comprehend issues, whereas hunger and poverty forces them to go for easy money in exchange of the right for independent decision. They have no guilt feeling particularly when he sees state of corruption all round at grass root level. Steady growth of communalism, counter productive to country’s cherished ideal of secularism is another dangerous signal degenerating political system. Country has been already divided once on communal lines but with the rise of caste quotient it may be lost for ever in political squabbles.
There are 800 plus registered political parties and many more unregistered ones. Majority of these come to life only at election time with aim to bargain support of its local area if influence in exchange of some considerations, otherwise contribute nothing to political system. These are the ones, who inject all types of “isms” and harm peace and tranquillity of nation. Immediate corrective measures, within the frame work of Constitution, have to be initiated to curb menace of these fly by night political mafias.
Constitution provides democratic governance based on adult franchise. Nation can throw up better leaders and public representatives by slight amendment to election laws by holding election in two phases. In first it should be held on party basis where all registered parties, if they so desire can participate and all voters are entitled to vote. It meets the requirement of adult franchise.
For the second phase it should be restricted to parties, whose combined votes exceed 51% and have secured minimum of 5% of votes in 25% of states/ central administrative areas. To illustrate this, a glance at 2009 election will indicate only Indian National Congress, Bhartiya Janta Party and Bahujan Samaj Party with (28.55+18.80+6.17) 53.52% of votes will, under this prescription, be entitled to go for second phase.
In the second round parties will put up their candidates whose standard of education and morality should be laid down in constitution. Voting rights should be extended to only those who have minimum qualification of matriculation. It will be interesting to note that that even Nehru suggested this standard of education for primary membership of the Congress party. In the initial stages, this advocacy will have serious lacuna.
In some of the areas none of these parties or one or two may not have any presence. Tamil Nadu for example is the fiefdom of two regional Tamil parties DMK and AIDMK. Both these parties exist only in the state and have no show outside. In Kerala BJP and BSP hardly have any presence. It may lead to political vacuum for some time but politicians will join one party or other, power being the primary aim of politicians.
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