The Lok Satta Party is training its guns on the evil empire of MLAS as part of a four-month-long ‘Surajya’ campaign from March 31. The campaign seeks to educate and enlighten people on how ‘Swarajya’ has been distorted into a ‘swaharajya’ and galvanize them into action.
The party will be mobilizing nearly 25000 volunteers in April to spread the movement to every nook and corner of the State.
Lok Satta Party General Secretary D. V. V. S. Varma told a media meet here today that MLA Raj has become the kingpin of ‘legal plunder and constitutional brigandage’ in independent India.
“The Lok Satta Party acknowledges that several MLAs are personally clean and honest, and they are helpless victims of a vicious cycle. But the whole corrupt structure of government is symbolized by vote buying and multiple returns on investment, making politics big business and citizens, mere vote banks”.
Said Mr. Varma: “They splurge crores of rupees to buy voters outright or drown them in liquor or dangle other baits. Once in office, MLAs carve out a mini evil empire of their own in the constituency to recoup ten times their investment in the business of politics. Revenue offices, police stations and all Government departments become pawns in their hands. Without the MLA’s note or nod or recommendation, no file moves in offices or a work gets grounded. Projects, roads and buildings contracts, transfers and postings, police cases, houses, pensions and all schemes come in handy for milking people. In the MLA’s empire, panchayats, municipalities and zilla parishads all stand emasculated. The MLA is indeed the fulcrum of ‘swaharajya’. The Lok Satta is determined to expose the MLAs’ evil empire as a prelude to its ‘Surajya’ campaign from March 31”.
Exhibitions and cultural programs will be conducted throughout the State to expose the loot and plunder being indulged in by MLAs. The party plans to enlist 25000 volunteers for a fortnight from April 6 to spread the movement all over the State.
As part of the ‘Surajya’ campaign, the party will organize mega dharnas in front of Government offices between May 15 and 25 demanding curbs on liquor consumption which is playing havoc with people’. The Government itself should run liquor shops in limited numbers, instead of auctioning them with an eye on maximizing revenue.
The party will be conducting a survey on implementation of Government schemes by choosing one village in every district as a prelude to launching a direct action program in August.
Parliamentary Democracy : Is it suitable for issue based politics ?
ReplyDeleteA recurring question that often puzzles me is whether democracy is the best form of governance or not. I recall various discussions I had with my friends and family and the conclusion is always the same: It’s not the best but better than the rest. Seeing democracy in India morphing more or less into Kleptocracy , I began to wonder if the existing parliamentary democracy is indeed better than the rest. In the absence of any strong ideological differences, democracy in India does not differ much from temporary chiefdom where the elected head of the government decides on everything for the duration of his/her tenure. The problem I see in our political system is, it makes an underlying assumption that once a person is elected by a majority of the people all the decisions he makes have the mandate of the majority of the people. Though individual ministers are supposed to take decisions that reflect the ideology of the party they need not reflect the mandate of the people on a particular issue. In the present scheme of things there is no way for citizens to express their mandate on individual issues. Further, segregating the country/state based on constituencies and electing a representative for a constituency does not help if the majority of the issues are not related to constituency but related to policies. As envisioned with better decentralization of power, decisions that affect a locality should be made by local bodies. The ideal role of an MLA or an MP in a democracy is to make policy decisions. Why should representatives who make policy decisions be chosen based on a constituency when most of the decisions they make or not specific to a constituency. Most of the decisions taken by MLAs/MPS in state legislatures are on issues related to various ministries. The representatives of the people who are not ministers generally toe the line of the party they belong to and hence do not affect any decision making. The only decision makers are the council of ministers. In such a scenario why do we not directly elect the council of ministers ? By directly electing council of ministers, citizens are not forced to choose a single party. I will be able to vote for Dr. Manmohan Singh as finance minister and Jaswant singh as external affairs ministers. Wouldn’t this be a better form of governance than the existing one where the MLAs/MPs control everything that they ought not to and toe the party line for real issues and the citizens are not forced to choose a single party ?
Way to go LokSatta. Please post all programs on the net so that we can use another media to spread the word out.
ReplyDeleteare you going to announce the names of the MLAs?
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ReplyDelete