Reverse Democracy!

The Prime Minister gave a keynote address at a meeting of the National Development Council in New Delhi on Saturday. It was rare occasion where he made some controversial statements (instead of his usual verbose, vague and threadbare commentary on developmental economics) thereby fuelling widespread and acerbic attacks from the opposition on the substance of the speech. Various leaders from BJP have assailed his speech on the ground that his statement on plans for minorities reeked of "communalism" and gave "undue benefits to minorities". Some have even termed it "gross violation of Constitution"

The controversial lines from the speech are reproduced below:

'I believe our collective priorities are clear: agriculture, irrigation and water resources, health, education, critical investment in rural infrastructure, and the essential public investment needs of general infrastructure, along with programmes for the upliftment of SC/STs -, Other Backward Classes -, minorities and women and children.

'The component plans for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes will need to be revitalized. We will have to devise innovative plans to ensure that minorities, particularly the Muslim minority, are empowered to share equitably in the fruits of development. They must have the first claim on resources. The centre has a myriad other responsibilities whose demands will have to be fitted within the over-all resource availability.'

The bone of contention is in the emboldened letters. It is very difficult to comprehend what the PM intends to convey through these paradoxical statements. It is obvious that no person, whether a majority or a minority community member can share the fruits of economic development "equitably" and "lay first claim on the resources" at the same time!

It is quite understandable that the speech was carefully constructed to meet political ends but was sadly not as discreetly executed! The fact that our PM is not a established "politician" only adds to the woe.

We pride ourself on our strong foundation of democracy. The rule of majority comes with a responsibility to protect the interests of minority. But only in this glorious country we see that a few so called torch bearers of minority communities hold the country's economy at ransom with the politicians dancing to their tune. 5 decades after independence we have no clear statistical data on the minority population in the country. It is not far when a "brahmin" or "jain" will plead for minority status going by sheer percentage of population!

Years of reservation have yeielded no visible results in terms of improvement in literacy or standard of living as the benefit of such regressive policies have been taken by the same families, which are now referred as creamy layer. For that matter the "trickle down" effect of social/human resources expenditure have never reached the desired sector - the poor /farmer! Poverty, Bondage and agriculture have no religion. Child labour and Female infanticide have no religion and so does Battery of women.

Eradication of these social evils do not require any communalistic approach to policies. It needs a total relook at our existing systems with will and committment from politicians & bureaucrats to work for something other than votebanks or bank balances! In fact, every developmental policy must define the target audience in terms of economic background/ age/gender/occupation.

It is quite possible that in a few years from now we will be a democracy only on paper.The creamy layer will be the "Mafia" controlling politics, power & people and the country will be suffering from a state of reverse democracy!