What part we play in our democracy!

 

What part we play in our democracy!

Shrutasree Chattopadhyay

The biggest festival of our country is knocking on our door, the election is here, we the people of our free democratic country can use our supreme power of vote to select representatives for our own administration, we are going to choose the people who can have all the power and responsibility, and then for next five years we are going to relax and enjoy our that particular choice in peace. Is it not an agreeable idea? It is really, we choose few people, they rule over us, and we live a secure, healthy, fruitful life, there is nothing negative about this system. But is it a reality? I don’t know, we vote for the candidates that the different political parties choose for us. We have a list of people who we can vote for, do the political parties asks us who to select as there candidate or who to select to represent us? No they don’t because they don’t have to. We the people of this country have the supreme power of vote but not the power of choosing the right person or system for that.

Every institution has some rules and boundaries, we have too, and we live according to that. Nothing is wrong with that picture either. But we the common people of India the king makers, do we really feel that powerful? We can feel the rush of election, the festivities around us, the throwing stone of opposing parties to each other, we can enjoy a good teatime debate about which party is better or which candidate has more charisma, which one can save us from the corruption and from all the chaos. Then we sleep and forget all that and live the day to day normal life. But the election can change the life or fate of the winning party, they acquires all the power, and the power to control the  mass, by force or by rule, or by every single instrument there is for the security and protection of the common people, they can turn all that power against us. What are we during the election? The king makers, the power is in our hand, they beg they cry, they act they promise, the sing songs, entertain us, manipulates us, influences us. What we are after the election? We are the subjects, insecure, confuse, weak, without any power, many of us without food, education, health, money, we are nothing but a forgotten bunch of resources that have been used and will be used again after 5 years of merriment.

The question we sometimes ask to ourselves, why do we need politicians for? They are here to represent us, represent the common people, they are selected members of our communities to discuss our problems in a big stage and find some solutions, they can help to run our country as a well-oiled machine and all of us can move forward along with our country to a bright future.  As an idea all of it is quite brilliant, that is why democracy is a common way to run a country now, we don’t believe in monarchy, or dictatorship, we know better that a power so much as the supreme of a country is very dangerous in one hand. Like a family, in which every member is very important, in a country also every single citizen is extremely significant, so why we need an intermediate class to rule the country behalf of us? Why can’t all of us rule? That is impossible, we are millions in number and that many people can only achieve chaos, who is going to listen and who is going to work?  There are already people who work, government officers, IAS, IPS officers, are already there, there are institution for every aspect of our country to handle, there are people who work every day as police, doctor, nurse, teacher, administrators and in every single sector.

What we need for the progress in education? What kind of people can lead us to the new age of growth and progress? Social scientists, scientists, researchers, scholars, academicians people who are connected with education, so why we put a politician with no such background or qualification above that entire creative and intelligent bunch? Can they really lead us to the growth and spread of education? I sincerely doubt that, people doubt that. Who should be in charge of health of this nation? A politician with no such knowledge or a council of doctors, biomedical scientists, researchers of   disease, diagnostician, and people who are involve and connected with medicine and health care. Who to put in charge of the forests of this country? A person who don’t have any idea about forest’s ecology the relevance of the forest in common life, or about the resources we can find in the forests, we need people who can understand the ecology, the connection of  forest with life cycle. Like that in every sector in every matter we need working people who understands the problem, deals with that in real life and work on that. Not an oblivious person that knows nothing about the subject but just a part of a huge power play.

Intermediary class are everywhere, the inbetweeners,  who works in the middle, the biggest of all middle men there is our politicians, they are standing in between of our country and us, the common people, why do we need them for, actually? They don’t represent us, not really! do they know how a worker live on the edge unsure of the future, if he can provide food for his children that day or not, or can they feel the agony of a poor youth who wants to study but don’t have any means for it. They don’t belong with the common people, they rule, they fight the opposing party, they insult each other and we enjoy the spectacle. Then they acquire the power and that changes their life, in the loss of power they become less fortunate in the gain of power they earn more, but nothing changes for us, not really, not ever.

We need people in our institutions, people with brain people with moral values, people with the means for doing the job that is needed to be done. We don’t need people in-between. We evolved from divine monarchy, from enlightened monarchy, from dictatorship, now standing in democracy, we need to evolve more, we need to decentralize the power to the masses, we need a model which can run a country with the power and resource from a country from geographical materialistic resource to the human resource, we don’t need an intermediary class, we don’t need some group of people to rob us blind. The people with power never want to give that up that is the universal truth. By quoting a line from, Spider man “great power comes with great responsibility” they have power but they don’t care about responsibility. We have a power too, we are the kingmakers, the people of India, millions of us, we need a transparent logical active institution to run our country do we really need some middle men? It’s a question we should ask ourselves, and then it will be really hard to fall asleep.