DailyPost 1851
PARTYLESS DEMOCRACY?
As we understand the world over, democratic process and then governance is dominated by political parties. Political parties are the well-established mechanisms by which the game of politics is played. From the two party system to the completely fragmented Indian political scenario, in whichever manner, they will rule the roost. Whatever come may, it will be difficult to find a reasonably big party, which has never tasted political power. How many of us can differentiate between the Democrats and Republicans and how much of the world can differentiate different countries on the nature of political dispensations? Parties are known for the negative aberrations they create, the disquiet they can manage in the democratic equilibrium.
How much of a difference can the democratic space provide for you? Are the constitution, laws, agencies and mechanisms not fully hard coded to provide any space for a change, until and unless you get into a non-democratic process. Omission can only be your strategy and political choices finally means who all do you support and how to provide the best benefits to them. When everybody owes his existence to the constitution of this country and every political executive takes the oath of the constitution, what kaleidoscope of democracy can they put on display. The only thing is to favor beyond rules, whom they want to help and worse still, manipulate the rules for that purpose till they are caught. And the best is the empty rhetoric which democracies have been known, the world over.
What is a political party? Or what was it supposed to be? There are rules about the national and regional parties, the qualifications, but the burning question still remains; What is a political party? You can know the syllabus and pass the exam, but why you study remains an issue. A political party is the coming together of people of the same ideology, openly professed, practiced by its leader / leaders in a most conspicuous manner, documented for the people, and party is ready to bring to reality that ideology, for whatever it takes. The party cadres are trained and groomed into that. That becomes their political DNA. They cannot operate differently. Can you find any party of this type?
Even in the names nobody can make a head or tail out of it today. What do you make out of the political alliances; United Progressive Alliance or the National Democratic Alliance. The parties in their fold themselves don’t know what they are in for. There is a free flow of parties coming in and out of these alliances. What is the ideology? Worst still, is the issue based support and the bigger tragedy of the situation is the Common Minimum Program, then who will do the maximum work? J&K PDP and National Conference have been getting big brothers in Delhi. Communists but for the name of the party itself, we have to look for the spirit of Karl Marx. Maharashtra is another example of the dissipation of the heart, mind and soul of political parties, power play is the only game. Socialist, Janata and Congress as words adorn most of the parties. Democracy also peeps in. We live in a party less democracy, names are tickets to power, through one of its kind elections.
POWER WITH DIFFERENT NAMES AND NO CHANGE IN SUBSTANCE, IS PARTYLESS DEMOCRACY.
Sanjay Sahay