Economist turned diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith first called India a functioning anarchy. Arundhati Roy says we are no democracy at all; merely voting in an election every few years doesn’t make us a democracy.
The columnist Tavleen Singh contends it is a feudal democracy, which is why something as horrible as the Bhopal gas tragedy should happen and justice not be done for a quarter of a century.
From her column in the Indian Express:
“Feudalism through the ballot box is similar to real feudalism in that as a system it relies on keeping the majority of the populace poor and illiterate. The good thing about poor and illiterate people is that they can be relied on not to protest even in the face of horrible injustice. Not because they like it that way but because they cannot afford to do anything else.
“More than 4,000 people were gassed to death by Union Carbide on December 3, 1984 and our political leaders have behaved as if it were just another industrial accident. Worse still, the victims have accepted this in virtual silence. Social activists led a few protest marches but these were sporadic since most victims were too poor to do more than get on with their lives.
“This would be unthinkable in a country that had real democracy and people who were literate enough to understand that their rights as citizens went beyond voting in elections….
“Today, the roots of democratic feudalism have spread so far and wide that most Indian political parties revolve around personalities and not ideas or ideology. Even apolitical observers cannot fail to notice that nearly every political party from Kashmir to Kanyakumari is the property of some family and always there is an heir waiting in the wings”
Read the full column: The price of democratic feudalism
Cartoons: courtesy Jayanto Banerjee (top), Shreyas Navare/ The Hindustan Times
Also read: Is Rahul Gandhi‘s ascension a foregone conclusion?
It is very clear that Rajiv Gandhi is instrumental in giving a free passage to Anderson. The truth will never come out ( as in Baffo) and a scape goat will be chosen from the Congress party for this, to take the blame. Check the wealth of the Indra Gandhi family. Nehru gave all his wealth to the country. So now there is no ancestral property. But Sonia and Rahul own huge property in Delhi, farm houses and all. Where did this all come from? Probably like Kanimohi of DMK, by writing Poetry!!
We might be the world’s largest democracy by mere numbers. But today, people have no real powers. PM & CM have become the two kings who have a lot of power, beyond that people have no power. The need of the hour is to empower local governments. In most of the great cities of the world, city mayors are people of utmost integrity and leadership. In India, unfortunately, third rated guys and rowdies usually control city corporations. Even when living in the other part of the world, we know the names of the mayors like Rudy Guiliani, Michael Bloomberg etc. but I don’t know the names of any of the mayors of Bangalore or Mysore because they don’t matter and their names are usually not even worth remembering. Not in absolute terms, but if you look at how local communities are empowered to take care of their own issues, apparently China fairs much better than India even without elections. People might not have the right to vote, but they have control over development of their cities and communities more than in India. Moreover, we have a system where first past the post wins an election.Thus, a few votes make a big difference, they become crucial for a victory, therefore politicians indulge in bribing voters with money, liquor, free TV, free rice etc. and make them beggars rather than making them aspire for a better life. Moreover, the people are scared to vote for the best candidate because they are afraid that they will not win. So, they always end up choosing the perceived second worst candidate in every election. These are some of the biggest problems of our democracy. By the way, these are not my original views but my summarization of the views of Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan of the Lok Satta party who is trying to change all this. But he has a monumental task and we should support such a noble cause. In my opinion BJP and Congress are the same in the sense that they might have somewhat different ideologies but they represent the same old way of thinking which has hindered India from realizing its full potential.
By the way, you can look at some of Jayaprakash’s inspiring vidoes here.
http://www.youtube.com/user/peopleforloksatta
I have never come across a politician in India who inspired me. Dr. Abdul Kalam also did it to some extent, but he was not a politician. Moreover, I always he felt he was a bit too idealistic. Dr JP seems to be exactly like Abdul Kalam but more realistic may be because of his experience as an IAS officer.
“The functioning anarchy” tag was invented by Daniel Moynihan.
Perhaps it is a good thing that after all these years some of these skeletons are tumbling out, even if they belong to our usurping multichromatic royal family.
Major crimes of a national magnitude generally go unpunished after years of protracted, expensive litigation in the name of national security and protecting the nation’s honor. This is on par with what happens in most cases in any nation, pace Nixon, Clinton, Musharraf, Idi Amin, Indira Gandhi, etc. As a Kannadiga whose state has been repeatedly humiliated by disgraced politians as governors, I wonder if an investigation in to l’affaire Anderson will somehow cause the current occupier of the Rajbhavan–sounds like the name of a restaurant–to be scrutinised for his role in the absolution of Quattroche with a gift of billions of rupees thrown in for good measure.
Of further interest to me is the question why this governor is allowed to run roughshod over us as if he were an absolute monarch. His predecessor was not much different. Or the one before him. (The current governor’s fulsome declaratioins of eternal love for Kannadaland would make anybody nauseous.) It is almost impossible for one to find something good to say about the ore Reddys, but I am glad that they have stood up to challenge Bharadwaj’s extra constitutional appropriation of powers, even if it has been done for purely selfish motives.
This matter is so serious that it is enough for Congress to loose an election!
What are they trying to say, when they try to justify Arjun Singh – “Law and order situation” being the reason for flying Anderson out of the country?
What is to stop them to use the same argument for Kasab and Afzal Guru and Fly them out on CM’s planes?
This needs MMS and Sonia Gandhi to explain where they stand on this issue? Are they going to condemn what happened or are they going to Condone it like Pranab Mukherji did today.
Next question is Why can’t Arjun Singh be booked for Aiding and Abetting the flight of a suspect. This is certainly a serious enough offense for him to be thrown in Jail.
Warren Anderson may or may not be guilty of the charges that he was facing. May be Supreme court was right in assuming (like justice ahmadi says) – You can’t arrest the owner of a car for an accident done by a driver. Atleast they’d have ruled on the basis of facts presented to them.
How about Arjun Singh? He aided the escape of a person facing charges in Indian courts, even before his case was examined by courts.
ARE WE GOING TO SEE THIS GUY BEHIND BARS?? HE CERTAINLY DESERVES IT.
IF MMS/SONIA GANDHI don’t act on this, they deserve to loose an election on this count.
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Moily seeks to blame Ahmadi!! Why doesn’t he turn the lights closer to his own party?
Ahmadi may be wrong in his judgement, but he is right in saying his judgement was based on the principle that the negligence of a top official is not obvious, just because there was lapse in functioning of lower level functionaries.
If a Police Inspector rapes a woman in custody, or a Army men masacre a group of people, the President of India can’t be thrown in Jail.
So, While people can debate Supreme Court decision to reduce the charges, they certainly can’t question the motive of Mr. Ahmadi! He’d have ruled on the basis of facts presented and prevalent laws.
Mr. Moily : What about Arjun Singh?? What have you to say about him? Why don’t you look closer home instead of blaming courts? What have your prosecutors done to present a right case?
Rajiv Gandhi presided over the massacre of 1984, and then did nothing after the Bhopal industrial disaster, facilitating the escape of Anderson.
It’s different things to different people.
Compare the relative success of the victims of the Ansal Theatre tragedy with the abject failure of the Bhopal Gas Victims. Note the socio-economic profiles of the two and draw the obvious conclusions.
kaangeya,
True. Rajiv Gandhi facilitated the escape of Anderson. And congress keeps on blaming BJP for releasing Masood Azhar.
If Vajpayee or Advani had facilitated the release of Anderson, churumuri would have ripped apart BJP with 20 posts all tagged Moditva.
Congress is cleverly making Arjun Singh the bad guy and protecting Rajiv Gandhi. According to Pranab Mukherjee, to avoid law and order problem, Anderson had to be given all maryada and allowed to fly out of India on a govt plane. So now BJP can also claim that to avoid law and order problem, terrorist was released.
If a statement comes from a Congressman, it is not Pranab or Singvi that is talking, it is their high command, they are mere messengers.
Ok it is agreed that Arjun Singh provided the state aircraft to Anderson from Bhopal to Delhi, for safe guarding law (sic) and order, while half of Bhopal was dead and remainings’ lungs were suffocated even to raise a voice, let alone shout slogans against Govt and its ward UCC.
But who allowed Andeson, against whom the Bhopal massacre case is already filed and pending, to board an international flight from Delhi to USA? Arjun Singh was not the law minister nor home minister or Minister for EA or PM. Nobody is asking this obvious question including our breaking ‘Noose’ media.
All the old timer coots in the congress party are getting disgraced one after another to save the first family of the congress. Natwar Singh, Arjun Singh, Arun Singh, …the list continues to grow..
Why can’t any of these descredited spill some beans on their party and get even. I guess they are scared of the sudden accident by death threat that is served on them, like what happened to Rajesh Pilot and Madhav Rao Sindhia
Here is a different view point. By no means, am I claiming that Anderson is innocent. However, when tragedies of this sort happens, it is very hard to fix the responsibilities. There are several people who are actually responsible directly or indirectly – from the lowest level of employees to the CEOs, from politicians to bureaucracy at many levels. Remember, India was still a socialist economy at that point. One had to obtain thousands of “license permits” to start any business in India. So, how did the state issue all the license permits without ensuring safety?
If we want to squarely put all the blame on Anderson, by the same argument, all Indian railway ministers (about 200 train accidents in India every year and it is not reducing), all Indian civil aviation ministers (because of whose negligence, short runways are built), all home ministers (who do not ensure security of Indians) and almost everyone in the government should be in jail too.
As I said, I am not saying Anderson is innocent by any means. He probably deserves to be in Jail. The point is, we simply accept theories put forward by media/politicians about certain things, whereas we apply a completely different logic in other cases.
Talveen Singh is ofcourse right.
We have a feudalistic system drilled into our voters. And she is also right in pointing out that this feudal system is the product of poor voting for personalities, rather than issues/ideas.
The question is how this will change? BJP has the very same feudals that congress has too. Yediyurappa is busy pushing his son, there are so many other sons rising (Varun gandhi included) within BJP too.
None of the parties (not Rahul Gandhi alone) has interest in changing the system. Way to change it is to educate a generation of voters, BJP in its 7 years didn’t do anything to improve our education system.
So, we’ll continue to be a feudal democracy. Our choice is limited to selecting between the rogues.
The real object of shame is that the court has delivered a verdict after 25 years. It may as well have buried the case forever. If the same verdict had come speedily in the mid-80s, the victims would have had some justice.
Seems like anarchy:
Cops parade deranged man as Maoist:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Cops-parade-deranged-man-as-Maoist/articleshow/6060704.cms