Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
India is now a plutocracy.
Our democracy is discarded under the carpet of the rich; it is now run by the agents of the rich, for the benefit of the rich.
Democracy is a system that belongs to the people, run by the people for the benefit of the people. When people have no role except accepting whatever decision is clamped on them from above, how can democracy survive?
All the political parties in India are controlled and run by coteries, not by collective wisdom of their cadres.
When in Congress a single person Sonia rules the roost, BJP is remote-controlled by the RSS.
Except the left parties, all the rest of the political parties are in fact personal outfits of aggressively ambitious and often unscrupulous autocrats.
And the left parties, in the guise of democratic centralism, have become so much Secretary-centric that initiative of individual members as well as base level branches no more attracts attention.
When the scenario in party level is so bleak, the Parliament has also been dragged down from the position of the rampart of sovereignty to a position of acquiescence to Government actions. Prime Minister Man Mohan Singhs treat of Parliament as a mere approver of his action, howsoever anti-nation be it, as in the case of nuke deal, is a pointer.
When our democracy has thus crumbled, our mind goes to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, whose words ignored, this deterioration has occurred.
On October 23, 1938, in National Front, Vol.1, No.36, he had said, If the individual members (he had said of Congress which meant the peoples political organization) lack initiative, the committees which they will form will also lack dynamism. In that event, democracy may prove to be a failure.
Emphasizing on dynamism of organizational committees of political parties in the base level for success of democracy, he said, If the initiative has to come from the top and not from the bottom, democracy may be well nigh reduced to totalitarianism.
How correct was he!
If you want your democracy back on track, hear him even now.