Election time and all political parties are busy once again releasing manifestos promising moon, sun and the Milky Way!! If we put all these promises together India certainly will be the heaven- why only on earth, but in the entire universe- and Sir Thomas Moore, would no more have to think of any fictional island- Utopia- to define the perfect socio- political - legal system. He simply would look east !
Since 1950 the Congress party has been promising ‘bijli’, ‘sadak’ and ‘paani’ to the ‘aam aadmi. Hoping for the realization of these fundamental needs, elections after elections Indians have been putting their faith on the Congress party. Sixty years later, 70per cent of our one billion populations are still living in six hundred thousand villages. 15 percent of these villagers do not have proper houses, 25 percent have no safe drinking water, 55 percent no electricity in their homes and 85 percent no sanitation facilities. Percentages and numbers may be for the statisticians but for the lay person-me- they have not been able to build a proper ‘Pedder Road’ in Mumbai, the so-called financial capital of India!!!
BJP, since 1984, before every election, has been telling people that they will make mandir if they are voted to power. Lord Ram (and Sita of course) blessed them to power in 1999 for a full term of 5 years!!! But Mrs. and Mr. Ram are a terribly disappointed lot today leading a nomadic life, moving from temple to temple without a proper dwelling at their rightful (?) place in Ayodhya. Can one blame the Rams for their disappointment? Five years, not enough to construct a ‘mandir’?? This is in an era when the innovations in construction technology is so dramatic that in China, I hear, a 100 storey building is completed in approximately same number of weeks!!!
Less said the better about the regional parties who in their manifestos have been promising color TV, fridge and foreign holidays to Bahamas to the hapless citizens who cannot afford even two square meals a day!!. …..Shows how apathetic and disconnected is our polity from the real issues of the country.
This poses a question if manifesto itself is irrelevant? Or is it going to remain a pre-poll twenty page booklet, release of which is a big social event to demonstrate who matters and how much both in the party and the fourth estate!! I for one do not think so. It is an important directional statement for any party to gauge its performance during the period of its governance. It is akin to the business plan of a publicly listed company. However the comparison ends there. Corporate often performs and Government doesn’t. Why?
A well managed company creates proper systems and processes to enable the implementation of the plan, lays down metrics and institute periodical audit to measure the efficacy of implementation. Despite, the corporate India too wasn’t any holier than thou and all that trustworthy till a few years back (some even today!!). Its performance was mostly cooked, camouflaged and investors were in complete darkness as far as what happened behind the 'corporate veil' until the 'investor activism' took control of corporate governance and the management was made more accountable. Meticulous dissection and constant quizzing and probing by the analysts forced corporate to accept the famous Abraham Lincoln quote that “you can fool some of the people………but you cannot fool all of the people all the time”. So bitterly, they started to reveal the reality and the holes. To avoid the embarrassment of the recurring investor/ analysts wrath they had no options but to take curative steps including changing/surrendering the management individually or collectively. Soon the system evolved to be more transparent and efficient and today most of our companies can compete in global arena. Consequence of a corporate 'spring cleaning'!!
Unfortunately, in Indian politics no such perestroika has happened!! There is no great public accountability yet and there is no organized investor (citizen) activism till the next election time and another set of manifestos have been prepared. Everything is so shrouded in secrecy. So parties could get away with anything…including murder.
It is time we created an apolitical citizen charter- a jury of sort- consisting of representatives of reputed NGOs, media representatives, prominent economists, thinkers and independent social activists who will be empowered constitutionally to publicly, systematically and periodically question each Government manager on the performance of the government and expose them when needed and eject them out of power before the proverbial ‘sh#t hits the roof’. Let us constitute a 'electronic media adalat'.
Else Ram and Sita will wait till eternity for a roof over their heads and all of us for our fundamental rights for roti, kapda aur makaan!!!
