Let a hundred flowers bloom*
The dark clouds may be parting…
In the last few days, I came across two more movements for political reform, at least one of which I was unaware of.
The first was LokSatta, which I had briefly mentioned before and which appears to be getting more active now; the second is Professionals Party of India (Thanks, Sundeep).
LokSatta appears to have a good base of volunteers, one of whom stumbled on my blog and sent me an email with this information (Thanks, Dnyanesh; emphasis mine):
“…We are a group of professionals in the age group of 35/55 working together under leadership of our National Cordinator,Dr. Jaiprakash Narayan ex IAS (who resigned from services at the age of 38 years in 1996 ) & who leads the movement.
…Most of the solutions that we have so far offered are in the nature of administrative reforms & according to us while they are necessary they are not sufficient. It has been found that the route cause of problems in India are due to the Political System (First Past The Post System) that we have adopted Every other reform will flow from a good political governance be it Administrative , Judicial , Educational or Economical. It has been found in our research that among others, Criminalisation, the level of poverty & corruption are symptoms of lack of political governance arising out of FPTP system..
Our style of operation is collaborative, non partisan and non adversarial. We believe in working as allies with all stakeholders to generate solutions.
…Other details about movement & other reforms that we are working on can be accessed at website www.loksatta.org
We share a common goal to make India a superpower & the best place to live on earth…We need to attain good governance through a peaceful political process rather than wait for a bloody revolution to take place.”
Professionals Party of India believes that the solution to the problems that we face is “A democratic paradigm shift” involving…”the 200 million or so professional Indians to roll up their sleeves and dirty their hands…set up a political party, win elections and form a government….that is perhaps the only way the unrelenting morass of ineptitude, incompetence and corruption our country is sinking into can be arrested.”
Their challenge of course is to get middle-class Indians, professionals involved in this process…define what they should stand for and capture public imagination. The party is habving its second convention this Saturday (16th Feb) in Pune…If you are in Pune, or know someone from Pune who may be interested, email sundeepg AT gmail.com�to find out more.
For the record, here is a quick list of various groups that I am aware of (in no particular order and with only an indicative list of people involved):
LokSatta (Dr Jaiprakash Narayan and others)
Lok Paritran (Chandrashekhar, Tanmay Raj Purohit and others)
Bharat Uday Mission (Santosh Nargund, Aditya and others)
Bharat Punarnirman Dal (Ajit Shukla, Ravi Kishore and others)
Professionals Party of India (RV Krishnan, Sundeep Gupta and others)
Freedom Team of India (Sanjeev Sabhlok & others)
There are many other movements that aim to reform governance and eradicate corruption. What makes the groups mentioned above stand apart is that they are all willing to contest elections to change things.
As I have noted elsewhere, this is essential because it is only through political power, that one will be able to implement the kind of reform(s) that we all wish for…Civil initiatives, NGOs and think-tanks do a great job but there are natural limits to their effectiveness.
I will end this with a humble request to all readers: Please consider at least some kind of participation in one or more of these groups…we need all the strength and support we can get. In case I have missed someone, please let me know and I will happily make amends.
My ambition is to help craft a basic common agenda that could be shared/supported by all these groups…Unfortunately I am in “hibernation”, snowed under work and unable to do much at present…but someday I hope to make it happen.
Together, we can make it happen.
Jai Hind.
* Courtesy Chairman Mao; Image courtesy: Wikipedia
Hi Shantanu
Thanks for featuring this on your blog!
Sundeep
Bharat Punarnirman Dal’s new website is – http://www.bpd.org.in
*** Comment by Moderator ***
Thanks Geeta, I have made the change
I think it is not fair to have Freedom Team in this list of reformers. Invariably all the other organizations are against bad governance and aim to make india a developed power. This Freedom Team seems to have started with a vision to oppose RSS and BJP under the cover of nationalism.
Looks like the Babri Masjit incident was the sole trigger and reason for the creation of this Team, that has impacted these folks so much for some reason.
I couldn’t find anyting in their entire website other than anti-bjp articles, it doesn’t even address the current challenges in India, like reservation, corruption, terrorism, illegal migration, improportionate growth in different communities, globalization etc.
This is a crap organization and doesn’t deserve to be in the same list as others mentioned above.
One of the latest ones: Revolt India.
I hope to speak to Talvinder and/or Praveen soon.
One more: The New Republican Party of India
Hi Shantanu,
Thanks for the initiative. I came across this organisation(India Awakening)on a Linkedin group. They had formed an alliance after 26/11. Appreciate if you can have look at : http://www.india-awakening.com/
Regards
Amit
http://www.youthforequality.com/
http://www.youthforequality.com/about-us/milestones.aspx
Youth for Equality is another group, which includes electoral reforms within its agenda. They also contested municipal elections.
It came up as a student movement against 27% OBC reservation move by the Government in 2006. In those days, AIIMS in Delhi used to be the epicentre of the movement.
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Question : How to (quickly) estimate the scale, region of current activity of all these movements ? Perhaps they should be displayed on a hyperlinked map.
It is really wonderful that so many young people are coming together to form political parties geared to giving a better government. I just have one misgiving though. It seems that on average (judging by previous political parties–janata, BJP etc.) that it takes a minimum of ten to fifteen years to go from the realm of ideas to where one can actually win a significant number of seats in a national election. Knowing this, is it not better to join a national party that matches one’s own political ideology in large numbers and try to change these organizations for the better? Or are all the current political parties too vitiated by corruption.
Test comment – Pl. Ignore
Amit, Dipinder and Harapriya: Thanks for your comments…
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Amit: I will try and contact India Awakening
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Dipinder: A hyperlinked map is an excellent idea…Pl. email me if you are able to help with this (assuming it is reasonably straightforward to do)
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Harapriya: The question you have raised is at the heart of a debate we are currently having withing our political group here in London. I will respond with some thoughts on this later.
I do not know offhand how to do it Shantanu. But will look on the web. We can mark locations on Google maps ! Will get back to you if I figure this out. Give me sometime.
For scale, we can make a simple bar graph based on funding and number of active workers in the party ? We will need to collect this data and keep it updated. Wonder if the jaagore, ADR election-watch or similar websites maintain this info ? Will look around.
I fully share Harapriya’s perplexity. Maybe we need to do both … reform the existing big parties by external competition AND by insidius reform. Yin AND yang !
However, it may be extremely difficult to stay away from corruption once you join the system. It is possible that you keep going down the slope. Obligations after obligations(patron-client relationships !). Further, it may take lots of grassroots work in the party itself before getting a ticket (unless you bring in loads of money). However, they may offer a good training ground ? In other words, a strategy could be : get into a big party, try to remain least corrupt, get trained about winning elections on their expense, and then go full throttle on reform – either remaining within them, or by breaking out.
@ Harapriya (#8): What you have suggested may work – provided (i) the people who join are genuinely committed to systemic reforms and not just power for the sake of power and (ii) have enough influence/ following to be able to change the dyanmics of the organisation…
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@ Dipinder: You have rightly identified the issues and the challenges…It is not easy to reform from within…although it may be more practical (and realistic?)…especially what you have suggested in your last sentence…
By the way, I liked the Yin/Yang analogy!
First of all, I think that a minimum requirement to joining a political party is that you held down a job or were self-employed prior to joining. What we have in India are career politicians. When joining politics is the only way to pay the bills, there is perhaps more compulsion to be corrupt. It is very important for people who enter the political fray to be those who genuninely seek to do public service and don’t need the money.
This is the newest fatwa from the Darul Uloom Deoband.
“India is a democratic and secular country. Hence it is out of place to look at its politics in Islamic perspective and test the parties and political leaders on Islamic principles.”
I am used to fatwas against Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen, so the word fatwa had acquired a derogatory connotation for me. Aisa bhi hota hai!
The winds of change are blowing. Hopefully, religion is trying to play the role of illumination of the path/s, rather than prescription of the paths.
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/muslims-shouldnt-vote-on-basis-of-religion/432379/
This may be of interest too: Muslims in revolt http://indiatoday.intoday.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&issueid=95&id=30650&Itemid=1§ionid=90
*** COMMENT EDITED ***
@JayaGoebbels,
For Indians to trust the Wahhabi mullahs in Deoband to speak for secularism is as smart as a Lamb trusting the Wolf’s promises of non-violence.
*** NOTE by MODERATOR ***
@ BV: No personal insults please
Hi there I’ve written a post on corruption in India; see what you think of it.
Here is another one:
Bhartiya Rashtravadi Samanata Party
http://www.brsp.org
cheers!