We have a prolong debate over growing influence of dynasty in our democratic politics. There are many politicians who having the tag of dynasty, they regard it their valid right, so they defend this issue by saying in a very typical fashion that most of the professionals viz. doctor, engineer, sportsperson, actor, they all promote their dynasty in their own profession, then why murmuring over theirs son or daughters, if they enter into the politics and hold the legacy of their parent politicians?
In general, this reply sounds to be very logical, if being observed in a hereditary and technical terms. But when we go into the texture of reply, we feel this reply has great amount of cleverness which shows the opportunist and comfortable using of democratic norms for shier self interest. These sort of people forget this point or they knowingly ignore this fact that the way democracy have been erecting throughout the world after crushing the prolonged prevailing system of aristocracy, monarchy, burgeois and kulak system in the medieval period, which was based over inheritance only. But now even the present system of democracy, which was to be established after long span of struggle, continous reform and consistent experiments and injected with the great ideals and ethics, that is being engaged with new walls of dynasty and kulin system by promoting politicians' kith and kin.
First we come over the logic of terming politics, in the line of other professions. The question is how can we term politics as a profession? Politics has not been defined as profession under any provision of constitution. Not only this, our political ethics also do not allow to term it as a 'profession'. Under the constitution, no any public representative can hold the post and profession of profit. The election contesting candidates, while filling their nomination have to declare their profession, if they have profession of 'profit' under any govt. dept., they are not qualified for their candidature. So, on what ground dynasty seeking politician mention this 'politics' as their profession with that of other profession and regard the entry of their kith and kin valid in the politics.
Second logic is being given by them, that is their winnability in the election. Dynasty tagged politicians say that if their son or daughters have winning chance, how they can be deprived of their democratic rights! This logic also seems to be on logical line. But answers of this logic compel us to go deep into the whole context of democracy. They should know this fact that in India, the muscle men have the fairest chance to win election, which is electorally valid also, then why we talk about muscle, money and hooligan element to be omitted from the election. The answer is, we find these elements against the basic and required principle of democracy. In the same way if we promote dynasty in democracy, then what is the difference between medieval period of aristocracy and present day democracy?
Thirdly the 'equality of opportunity', one of the foundational and inherent principles of our democracy, which originated the idea of reservation on both administrative and political fronts. If we really want to follow the principle of equality of opportunity, they dynasty must be instantly negated from the democracy. Fourthly, in indirect democracy, people's participation in the governing process has to be enlarged and enhanced as much as possible. When we talk these two basic principles of democracy, then we must have no place of dynasty in it.
We must know this fact that democracy itself is not a full proof system which can be regarded as an ultimate system for ever. It is simply a better governing system than the monacrchy and aristocracy system which were full of war, fight, invasions, bloodshed and use of religious tyranny, whereas in the democracy, the key to power get decided by the mandate of people in peaceful and processful manner.
But it does not mean democracy is the system, where people directly govern the system. No, it's not. Most of the democracies in the world are the 'indirect democracy', means they are not run by the people rather by their representatives. We have only one direct democracy that is in Switzerland; otherwise we have representatocracy in all democracies of the world, which is in fact indirect democracy. In this sort of democracy, we have all tussles for becoming public representative first. Second the representative election is preceded by its selection on behalf of various political parties, it is not held directly from the groups or herds of the public. That is why this 'indirect' or 'representative' democracy is also called the 'party-democracy'. And these political parties in fact instrumentalize the function and operation of this internal and representative democracy. They automatically become important stake holder in this democracy. Therefore it is being said that the history of electioneering system is as old, as the histories of political parties.
It is also need to mention here that the running of the indirect democracy accompany with some basic established principles of democracy. On time to time these principles were getting changed or amended also. This is the reason democracy never have sort of waywardness on the part of elected representatives, rather the governance is accrued here through the 'rule of law', 'three tier of democratic governance', 'four pillars of democracy based on principles of separation of power', 'federal structure', 'constitution driven political system', 'check and balances' through the various organs of the democracy etc. Apart from these basic principles we always have process of reform in this.
So the structure of our democracy is not the final one. Despite the presence of various principles and guide-lines, it has been going through many short cuts. Not to say the growing prevalence of dynasty is one of the major short cuts among those. Constitution of India, which is the principal guiding agent of our democracy, talks about several rights of its citizen. Other than the right to 'freedom', 'equality', 'justice', 'fraternity', it has provided equality of opportunity also. This is only because, in our established system, the cocas of vested interest is so strong and tough that it is very difficult to avail all kind of opportunities to the downtrodden in the country. So, we have provision of 26 percent reserve bogey for both political and administrative opportunities, which was latter on expanded to other backward castes in terms of 24 p.c reservation.
On the one side we arrange space for those who are beyond cocas of power and at the same time if we promote the dynasty of the established politicians and cocas of power, it would be just negation of the previous principle. We have to give opportunity to more and more people in this representatocracy, which require banning of dynasty in the politics. After deterring the factors like money, muscles, defection etc., now we need to deter factors like dynasty and identity both from the democratic politics. In place of these we need non dynasty and participatory, inclusive and quality leadership.
During last two decades our electioneering system has improved a lot. Up to great extent we have been able to ensure free and fair election in our democracy. But still we have a dominance of factors like 'identity' which is operational in terms of caste, class, region, religion, languages, etc. which has been not suppressed by our peoples representative act. Somehow we have been able to check expenses in pronounced terms but implicit expenditure is still high. Other than than this, the series of populist decisions at the huge expense of treasury before election, being committed by the ruling party and out of way promises made by the other election contesting parties, that has become order of today's politics. These both elements are ruining the basic concept of competitive multi party democracy.
As we earlier said democracy does not mean full and final system, rather a system always required to be reformed. Unfortunately we regard electioneering and election reform as the only agenda of our political reforms. We must rather include party reform as one of the major agenda of our political reform which will constitute the continuous reform process of democracy.
There must be broad guidelines for the party reforms, who act as major operating agents of indirect democracy. We must have thorough literature regarding the preamble of political parties, their structure, objectives, purpose, aims, functions, organizational outline, the hierarchy of volunteers and workers, the screening of candidates, think tank of parties, mode and method of governances, their socio economic policy and programs, social and ethnic policy, promotion and demotion of their political workers, training and research, policy making and various measures of good governance etc. Apart from all those non eligibility factors like keeping party from identity politics, emotive politics, populist politics, violence politics, money politics etc. and revealing all source of income and items of expenditures.
For last few years we have had some agendas which came in the public domain of political reforms. Among these agendas, bringing all political parties under right to information act is one of the major agenda, but very surprisingly political parties are not ready for this, saying they are not subject to public domain. The thing is that in democracy, there would be no any institution other than political parties, who better deserve as a public institution.
If political parties are not subject to public query, it would be termed as most undemocratic instance.
We all know in the absence of political reforms, our political parties, the major stake holder of our democracy have converted themselves just as a religious cloister. This cloister or matha is being run and controlled by its chief mathadhish. It applies with all political parties, whether big or small. Only difference is that in bigger political party, the chief mathadhish is accompanied with few dozen more mathadhish and in smaller party only person or family rules the whole preceding of the political party, otherwise every act of these political parties are just being done in fill in the blanks manner. These things ultimately easily open the vista of dynasty in the political parties.
As we earlier said that this democracy is not a direct governing mode of people, rather it is being run by their representative and these representatives come from the political parties and these political parties are being operated by few group of leader and these leaders have some vested interest who never desire to allow reforms in their clout. If we do not have democratic rule being imposed over political parties in relation with election, these organization would have still medieval shoes in their legs. Other than bringing political parties under RTI, as suggested by central information commission, the Supreme Court along with some high courts had made order for banning caste rallies, populist announcements before election period. Prior to this Supreme Court took a bold decision over disqualifying convicted public representatives from fighting elections for 6 years.
Central election commission has been monitoring the ceiling of election expenses through the several round of expenditure audit while electioneering time. But over expenses, it would be necessary to say that even the legal limit of expense confiscated for all three tier of elections, is still very high and any representative would be compelled to recover this money after becoming representative. The legal income during the representative period is not enough to match this money spent over his election. So we need to lower down the expenses and all publicity must have uniform outlet.
If we do not have some bounding of fundamental principles over this democracy, the unethical elements have more say over this democracy. If we want to make democracy more qualitative, good governance oriented and scientific then we have to invite all those pending reforms in this democracy. The present day Supremo driven democracy, in a way repeating the medieval age aristocracy, feudalism, theocracy, monarchy by democratically repackaging them. And such type of politicians are validating the dynasty also and for saving their face they do give the instances of other professions.
All other professions have some academic course and some stipulated curriculums, but why it is not for the profession of politics. Though I always do believe one should stop the hypocrisy of terming politics as social service, it should be property rated as one's career, nothing wrong in stating this. But one should be very clear about this, it is career, but not like other career, because it is for public life, not for the sake of individual life, where only public interest have to be taken into account. Career of a public leader must have more than honest approach, having comprehensive knowledge of nation and society, full update over constitution and all prevailing laws and rule of governance, mass sensitivity towards community problems. It must have proper distance with that of personal livelihood, because this career is meant for not individual interest, rather for public interest. So in order to fulfill this principles, it is very necessary all established politicians belonging to various political parties, must have one chance for the becoming the representatives in their life, their kith and kin must be allowed only after the demise of public representatives. If it happens so, then it would be an ideal parameter in our democracy.
The people who give instance of dynasty system in other profession, they must realize this disqualification of dynasty in one generation will be accordance to the equality of opportunity. We do not have any professional eligibility test before entering politics; rather it is all about projection. After all, why we have no uniform pattern for both a simple worker and dynasty politician while getting election ticket. Why a worker have to wait even for life time even in getting a corporate election, whereas a dynasty person able to get election ticket, even minister ship, even Prime Ministership. In other profession the competition is immense, projection never benefit them. If it was so Rohan Gavaskar, son of legendary batsman Sunil, did not establish himself as a player, in spite of projection. But dynasty in politics hampers the equality of opportunity concept in politics as well as ruin the essence of representative cracy in indirect democracy which require to be vast participation of public.
Second thing if politics is really a social service and in principle, where honesty is extremely required in dealing with public problems, then why a person has yearning for dynasty. It is hypocrisy among the politicians, who never reveals their attitude that they want money, pride, respect, status and all traits of a modern elite person through their career of politics, so they want their dynasty also to follow the suit.
Then it is what kind of democracy? In our 70 years history of governing democracy simplicity among the leadership has been always talked about and some big politicians have followed it also, they were known for their simplicity, ability and for their social and national vision. They never misutilized their status in making asset or promoting dynasty in their own political life. Then why not we add this in our agenda of political reform and ever going democratic reforms so that we could disqualify factors like money, muscle, identity, emotion, populism, propaganda and as well as the dynasty from the mainstream of politics and make them such kind of a modern organization which can champion the cause of good governance and making of an ideal and ever improving democratic system.
Apart from it ensure the nurturing of nursery of quality public leadership is also necessary, where a public leader can lead their follower on the most appropriate line as well as prove himself as the ablest person as a leader who holds the quality of honesty, public commitment, great sensitivity towards masses problems and its solutions, an agent of good governance and always neglect his individual interest and promote public interest and must have top priority for social and national interest. The public leaderhip which has reflection of all basics of constitution in following secularism (neutral to every identiy), social justice (covering all facets of social empowerment), equality of opportunity. On these parameters when we polish our democracy and political system, then naturally it will have no place for dynasty along with other bad factors.
