ALTHOUGH THE CONSTITUTION OF India has endowed the fundamental right of electoral franchise upon all citizens and paeans of praise are heaped upon the Election Commission of India (ECI) for conducting 16 general elections in the world’s most populous democracy, exercising this fundamental right at ground zero level on the appointed day is dicey proposition. Especially in the state of Karnataka which is burdened with the country’s most indolent, venal and unaccountable bureaucracy.
Despite your correspondent having been issued a voter’s identity card in July 2011, when the voters’ lists were issued by the Election Commission’s Bangalore office in March, the name was missing from the revised list. After considerable running around, threats and warnings, it was included as a special favour. Nevertheless, come voting day on April 17, while the spouse’s name was present and correct, your correspondent’s name was not on the polling station officer’s list. Only with the assistance of a Congress party volunteers’ help desk was my mangled name discovered on the voters list (age 18) by matching with my voter’s card ID on the strength of which your harassed editor was able to exercise his franchise.
According to P.G. Bhat, a Bangalore-based ‘voter enrolment analyst’, the state of Karnataka has the worst electoral roll management system in 13 states and Union territories surveyed by him, with only 48 percent of those registered being legally eligible voters. “The electoral rolls have lakhs of fake entries, while genuine voters are deleted regularly,” writes Bhat (Times of India, April 19).
Reports from Mumbai where names of over 200,000 citizens are missing from electoral rolls, indicate that this is a national malaise. If even heads of registered political parties (Children First Party of India) are obliged to suffer such trials and tribulations, one shudders to contemplate the fate of illiterate and poor voters in India’s flawed democracy.
Mysterious alchemy
THE ELECTION COMMISSION OF India has done the lay citizenry a signal favour by requiring all candidates running for electoral office to declare their criminal records (if any), and disclose their moveable and immoveable assets at the time of filing their nomination papers. Moreover, the Delhi-based NGO, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR, estb. 1999) has done the citizenry an even greater service by providing details of criminal records, and assets of candidates contesting parliamentary and assembly elections.
The association’s plethora of data-rich and neatly classified reports on its website (adrindia.org) detail how assiduously our representatives in the Lok Sabha have multiplied their personal wealth while delivering indifferent service to the people. In the current Lok Sabha, 146 of the 206 Congress, and 59 of 116 BJP MPs are crorepatis (and 14 of 23 Samajwadi and 13 of 21 BSP MPs). The richest MPs in the 15th Lok Sabha as per self-declared assets in 2009 are Nama Nageswara Rao of the Telugu Desam Party (assets: Rs.171 crore) followed by Congress’ Naveen Jindal (Rs.131 crore). Among other HNIs (high net worth individuals) are Kapil Sibal (Rs.30 crore); P. Chidambaram (Rs.27.3 crore); Maneka Gandhi (Rs.17.6 crore); Kamal Nath (14.1 crore) and Mani Shankar Aiyar (7.2 crore). The latter, a self-styled socialist, has increased his net worth from Rs.1.9 crore in 2004 to Rs.7.2 crore in 2009 and reportedly to Rs. 16 crore according to his latest (2014) declaration.
Admittedly, there’s more than a tinge of envy in noting that these worthies have the brilliance, or have discovered a mysterious alchemy, to enhance their net worth by so many multiples, while your correspondent languishes in embarrassing relative poverty despite treading a ‘successful’ career path for almost four decades. Yet undoubtedly, there’s a cruel irony in the world’s poorest electorate in which over two-thirds of the population eke out abject lives on less than $2 per day being “represented” by millionaire businessmen-MPs skilled in the art of personal — but not public — wealth management.
Badge of tribe
MAVENS AND MESSENGERS OF the media who have been exercising their fundamental right to free speech to the full during the past decade under the Congress-led UPA-I and II governments, are battening down the hatches and preparing for a coming storm. According to well-known columnist Aakar Patel, who has experienced the heavy hand of prime ministerial front runner Narendra Modi in Gujarat while plying his trade as a journalist in Ahmedabad in the aftermath of the bloody 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom under Modi’s watch, the PM in-waiting has an elephantine memory and neither forgets nor forgives. “Expect no quarter and no mercy,” writes Patel in Mint Lounge (April 19).
Unfortunately, intolerance of criticism is the badge of the politicians’ tribe cutting across all parties. Way back in 1991, when Dr. Manmohan Singh was being acclaimed as the great liberaliser following his presentation of the Union budget of 1991, your correspondent had publicly expressed scepticism about this architect of licence-permit-quota raj for over 40 years, being fully committed to liberalisation of the economy. Singh obviously took this scepticism to heart because at a function in Calcutta when your editor was master of ceremonies and he was the chief guest, he refused to acknowledge or speak to me, despite several efforts. Moreover, during the past ten years Singh has ex-officio been receiving a complimentary copy of EducationWorld which he hasn’t once acknowledged. Nor has he or any HRD minister of the UPA-I or UPA-II governments ever given your editor an interview despite numerous appeals.
In 1991, Singh heeded your correspondent’s advice repeatedly delivered through Business India and Businessworld — the first champions of liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy. During the past decade, he disregarded my repeated advice to give top priority to QEFA (quality education for all). Now he has slunk into the shadows of obscurity as perhaps the most disgraced prime minister in the history of post-independence India, and none so poor to do him reverence.