Politics, considered to be a very wretched subject amongst the elite, is again in vogue in India owing to the oncoming elections for electing 15th lok sabha. Every politician, belonging to multifarious parties, is busy in creating his/her manifesto which can then further be accumulated in the party manifesto by removing the redundancy (which the whole manifesto is all about anyways, i.e, redundant).
Lets see how a government is elected. First of all each party presents their manifesto, their ideology in front of the public and they proclaim to bind by this manifesto, if they come into tenure. Then comes the role of media, to find out the most prominent (having some tangible benefits for their readers) proclamations from the huge list (manifesto) and apprise public with regards to the same. Public on its part weighs the options available with them and votes for the party which relates to their own ideology/provides greatest benefits. When any government nears the completion of its term, then it is analyzed that how many of those points in the manifesto are actually fulfilled by the government.
There is a very big loophole in the whole process. Which is that even though any government fulfilling all the promises made by it in the first place need not be a great/good government. Governments now-a-days are measured on the basis that how public friendly it is and not country friendly. Public friendly government is the one, which grants every demand made to it by the public. This government doesn’t looks into the long term growth of the country but concerns itself with the petty day-to-day issues of the society. And this leads to the government solving one problem and creating another.
What we need as a country is not the multiple manifestos endorsed by different governments, but a vision, which leads our country to the path of sustainable development. The vision should not be concentrated on the financial health of our country, but it should encompass, even the qualitative parameters like soft-power of our country, on the basis of number of countries we are trading with. The vision should lay proper emphasis on reducing CO2 emissions, water harvesting, reforestation, energy generation through renewable sources of energy.
The vision should also lay stress on reducing poverty, moving towards more equitable distribution of income, decreasing corruption, removing inefficiencies from bureaucracy. Also, the judiciary system of our country should be bolstered through concerted efforts. Towards financial health, our drive should be towards achieving self-reliability by reducing our fiscal deficits to nil. Improving medical facilities, and providing access of these facilities to a larger portion of population should also appear in the vision.
And when this vision is drafted, it should be made available as a common manifesto for all the parties and each government’s progress should then be measured against this vision at the completion of tenure, by some non-governmental agency. And then I guess we will be able to make a sound choice, instead of going by the stock market index/rate of inflation/last debacle/last good act during the tenure of any government.
A Tryst With Life 