Changing the System


Shivam Shankar Singh’s book, How to Win an Indian Election, looks at attempts to change the political system. He cites the experience of Irom Sharmila, the human rights activist from Manipur who had fasted for 16 years against army atrocities:
“Seeing that her fast had failed to achieve anything other than international awards and media coverage, she decided to… contest the state elections.”
She got just 90 votes. Yes, just 90. Not a typo:
“It was disheartening to realize that people who had dedicated their lives to serving others did not even get votes from the people whom they directly helped.”
Ouch!

Perhaps it was Sharmila’s political inexperience that was the problem? Singh next looks at Prodyut Bora from Assam. He was a part of the BJP, but quit it to form a new party, LDP. He had been on the inside of how elections work, and tried to factor for it. How did he fare? The lack of money led to a crushing defeat:
“(It) was a case study in why new idealistic parties don’t work, even when politically experienced and capable individuals head them.”

Others, like Dr. JP in Andhra in 2006, had a depressing experience when they tried to turn popular movements into political parties:
“Some of the party’s supporters have expressed the belief that they achieved more in terms of actual reform… when they operated as a movement than… they operated as a political party.”
Why? Because as a party, they had so few seats that they were inconsequential. Whereas a popular movement that caught public attention can sometimes have disproportional impact on policy!

The exception to all this is, of course, Arvind Kejriwal and AAP. A party formed on top of the Anna Hazare led movement, the party got enough seats to form the government in Delhi. Initially, there were lots of missteps in figuring how to govern within the constraints of the system. There were power struggle upon winning leading to the ouster of leaders like Yogendar Yadav and Prashant Bhushan. Bit by bit though, AAP seems to have learnt things:
“Since 2015, the Delhi government has been able to enact reforms in health, education and service delivery to citizens.”
That’s why they got re-elected recently.

So yes, it will be an uphill struggle:
‘There will be parties who base their electoral strategies on pitting communities against one other… some would use religion, some would use caste, some would use language.”
And no, the nexus between parties and companies won’t go away. Those who benefit from the current system of often deliberate inefficiencies and favours are firmly entrenched. And yet, it is key to fight the good fight:
“It is extremely important for the nation that educated people who want to do something positive for the country enter politics, but it is also extremely important that they know what they are getting into.”
And one will need patience. Lots and lots of it:
“The conclusion that I’ve come to is that anyone who wants to do anything positive in politics has to be willing to stick with it for a long time without expecting results… It is only when the number of people who want widespread systemic change builds to a critical mass that positive change will happen.”

Because when that moment arrives, we need enough of “qualified, well-meaning people” to be in positions of influence.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more