VOX POPULI
by
S Kamat
as
Aam Admi
Issue: 187
Date: 06.02.2017
Contents:
1. Elections & Democracy
2. Dog Menace & Swachh Bharat
3. Appointing Politicians As Independent
Directors In PSU's
4. Railways Focus On Capital Costs Rather Than
Increasing Employment
5. IT Dept. Looking At Appointing Private
Auditors To Assess Large Deposits Post-Demonetisation
Elections &
Democracy
We are approaching
elections in UP & some of the other States which will determine the future
of democracy in India. Goa's D-Day for the polls was 4th
Feb 2017 which passed with a record turnout of 81%. In the run-up to
this day we have had our fill of promised alliances, broken commitments,
unwound gathbandhans and manifestos that are being released at
the last minute to avoid being closely questioned on the contents. In this
atmosphere we have also the candidates some 250 in all contesting for the 40
seats release their asset declarations. There are very few among the candidates
who are not crorepatis and among the incumbent bunch of MLA's almost all are
crorepatis. In India the sure fire away of becoming a multi-millionaire or
crorepati is to enter politics and become a MLA or MP. The results of the
elections will be known in the middle of March - The Ides of March - as they
are known which will portend the future of democracy in our country.
Thus in this present
context you will find it very amusing as to how and why the electorate plays
dumb and gullible. It faithfully swallows all the promises made by these
politicians and their parties and one would imagine based on these
considerations would decide in a large part to vote for one or the other
candidate. No matter that some of the promises would have been the same that
they had made five years ago at the time of the last elections or that many of
the promises made in the last elections have not been fulfilled yet. The
generosity that the electorate shows to these politicians is many order greater
than that the voter would show to his family, friends and/or business
associates. Is there a connection there or a chord that is touched between the
voter and the candidate that the first decides to be gracious and the second
maybe deserves that graciousness, otherwise how would the connect remain
durable and undying time after time and year after year. And why would more and
more candidates and parties jump into the fray of elections as we have seen in
Goa this year where there are more parties and candidates fighting the
elections than in previous years.
Then we come to the
electoral process by which we choose the candidate to represent our
constituency. With many parties vying for votes, there will be at least four or
more candidates in each constituency, thus at the most the winning candidate
gets much less than half the votes polled. In a democracy is it not necessary
for you to win by a majority of the votes polled to be a true representation of
the expression of the people's will. In our elections this never happens. Like
in the case of the last general elections the BJP just got 34% of the votes
polled and obtained the whopping absolute majority in the Lok Sabha. Almost
more than half the voters did not want the BJP to come to power! The situation
in the State elections including Goa it is similar where the candidate and the
party by polling just about 30% of the votes comes into power. Thus there is
something wrong somewhere with our electoral process where a candidate polling
a minority of the votes is declared elected just because he has got more votes
than the others, which is definitely not reflective of the will of all the
people. A candidate if he gets more than 50% of the eligible votes in the
constituency can be considered to have been elected in a truly democratic
manner. This can be done by what is called proportionate representation which
method of elections is being used in some of the progressive democracies like
France. Here in a series of elections which eliminates other candidates in each
round, the winning candidate is declared elected only after he has polled more
than 50% of the votes in the final round where he has only one opponent. In our
Indian context this multiple election process would have been considered
tedious and costly given the fact that we tended to use ballot papers. But in
today's context where the EVM's have come to stay in our elections, the cost of
the electoral process, being now electronic, is drastically reduced hence
proportionate representation method of elections can be considered feasible to
be held in India. However, the existing political parties in the principle of -
Everyone Resists Change - will oppose this system since firstly they are
unfamiliar with it and it makes their life much more difficult to ensure that they
reach the mark of more than 50% of the votes polled. The other thing that we
have to do in this system is to make voting compulsory, in which event true
democracy would function in India.
Now let us look at the
actual work involved in holding elections. We have in India the Election
Commission whose charter is to conduct the elections in a free and fair manner.
This body is staffed at various levels by senior people who have at one time or
the other been in government service and when elections are to held in a State
or constituency, the Election Commission depends on the local government to
provide it additional staff and officials. Thus you will see that most
officials come with a background of government service. The election times are
the only time that the writ of the Election Commission and its officials down
the line, is unquestioned. Everyone has to listen to them from the ministers,
politicians, government agencies and local bodies. It is like a limited
duration dictatorship that is imposed in each State that is going to the polls.
There is no doubt that the Election Commission and its officials enjoy this
power and revel in it. So you have the implementation of a democracy through a
limited duration dictatorship. And in the instructions issued by the Election
Commission you see the tinges of these tendencies like remove banners, cover
hoardings, do not talk like this, such statements are not acceptable and then
indulging in incongruous things like going to the extent of having processions
in the streets to educate voters and to woo first time voters with gifts! The
Election Code of Conduct is also another thing enforced jealously by the
Election Commission which sometimes is a serious impediment to development work
and normal functioning of the government when it is in force. Such kind of
strictures have replaced the earlier fun time that people had during elections
akin to a fair or a fiesta with buntings, banners, loudspeakers blaring songs
and people getting gifts apart from the 'usual' cash. All this was stopped by T
N Seshan, one of the past Chief Election Commissioners, who took out the fun
part of elections and sanitised them to the present way of holding elections.
To a certain extent he was right since street side walls tended to get defaced
with graffiti of political parties which would not get removed once elections
were over leading to a surreal environment where the expectations of imminent
next elections would sustain. The elections convey today an appearance of
serious business but the Election Commission gets taken away sometimes like
conducting flag marches in some parts of Goa with paramilitary forces just
before elections which one would feel is completely unnecessary. Similar
situations would persist in other parts of the country during election times
maybe with minor variations. Thus you have a jealous body like the Election
Commission overseeing elections with a dictatorial manner to bring in
democracy.
Then you have our
democratic leaders actively seeking Z security around them to protect
themselves from citizens. When sessions of the Assembly or Parliament are held
it is mostly behind multiple barricades and with Sec 144 imposed in the
surroundings which is ostensibly to 'protect' these institutions and the
legislators from the citizens who elected them in the first place. Such is the
conduct of democracy in our country. Even if one or the other party is elected,
it is the same corruption, it is the same vacuous policies we hear of, it is
the same emphasis of 'development' which fills their pockets, it is the same
denuding and destruction of the environment around us, then why do this tamasha
of democracy when there was no intention of ever putting it properly into
force.
Dog Menace &
Swachh Bharat
Just last week an actress was mauled by dogs in the heart of
Goregaon, Mumbai. This incident follows similar attacks by canines in Bengaluru
where small children were pounced upon and grievously hurt and in Kerala where
elders were attacked and killed by dogs. These mongrels are seen in the
vicinity of garbage dumps which have become synonymous
with India particularly in urban areas. Thus if you want a Swachh
Bharat the first thing to do is to get rid of garbage and then remove dogs from
near these dumps. This will not only get you clean
surroundings but rid yourself of the menace of stray dogs. Again stray dogs are
one of the major polluters of our streets and surroundings with their poop
(excreta) dotting the surfaces all over. Unless we tackle the
stray dog issue we will never have a Swachh Bharat.
Appointing Politicians
As Independent Directors In PSU's
The
BJP government has been appointing their party politicians to the boards of
PSU's as independent directors including the engineering companies. This is
going against the grain of appointing such directors who were supposed to bring
in expertise apart from sharing their experience with the company's top
management to better run these enterprises. There is obviously no technical and
management expertise that these politicians can bring to these PSU's. The
loaves of office syndrome in which the ruling party unable to accommodate these
politicians in ministerial and other positions is placing them in PSU Cos. so
that they can claim perquisites and benefits is at play here. It is time that
such practices are stopped since majority of the PSU's have already been run to
the ground and the BJP will ensure that the few performing PSU's meet the same
fate.
Railways Focus On
Capital Costs Rather Than Increasing Employment
It
is understood that the Railways are planning to build walls to segregate the
tracks between Mumbai and Delhi. Projects like these are what precisely show
the vacuousness in the planning process of the present government. It is
presumed that the walls are being built around the tracks to isolate them from
man and animal intrusion considering that on this trunk route fast trains are
likely to be introduced. With so much manpower in India and with the majority
of them being unemployed, this would be the ideal job of some of these jobs be
given to them as line inspectors to conduct surveillance of the tracks.
But instead of that the Railways are building walls which will cost a lot
of money which means kickbacks to the powers-that-be and though these projects
will provide jobs, it will be much less than the line inspectors as proposed
above. Even the high level committee appointed after the Kanpur derailment last
December has blamed the Railway employees for many of the accidents and has
recommended automation to avoid the lax working of the staff. This approach
screams of an avoidance syndrome wherein instead of tackling man-management
issues and improving working methods, effectiveness and productivity of
employees we emphasise on automation in our attempt to disregard them. The West
goes in for automation because they have less manpower and therefore tout the
reliability of these systems. In the same way should we not have shown the
world our management skills in handling people considering that we
have a huge manpower pool. The shining example of excellence and innovation we
have in these matters are the Dabbawalas of Mumbai who have
shown to the world their ability to deliver correctly and on time tiffin boxes
over an extensive geographical area. These Dabbawalas continue
to strive to improve their services and that is the reason why many of the
management schools in India and abroad use their work as case studies.
Unfortunately this example has not permeated into the Railways and for that
matter in other spheres of activity in India where taking the easy way out and
finding ways to fill one's pockets is becoming increasingly the hallmark of the
Indian way of life.
IT Dept. Looking At
Appointing Private Auditors To Assess Large Deposits Post-Demonetisation
It was
reported in the newspapers that the IT Dept. is looking at appointing
private auditors to assess large deposits at the banks post-demonetisation
which number of cases is now positioned at 18 lakh. With this the government seems to have finally woken up
to the reality of the enormity of the task before them to track the massive
deposits that have come into the banks after demonetisation. In the normal
course if all the cases were to be taken up by the
ITDept. it would have needed a new generation of officers to be born
to finish these since the present bunch of IT officials would have
long since retired until the last case was assessed. However, there is a matter
of legality here whether the IT Dept. can appoint private agencies for
this task since there is an aspect of confidentiality. Whatever information is
submitted to the tax authorities is assumed to be kept confidential
between the authority and the individual or at least that is the present
belief. Is a private entity legally entitled to handle this information? To put
it in plain and simple terms, we are in India and any such
information getting into the wrong hands will open individuals to
harassment and even blackmail. This matter therefore needs to be verified
before any step is taken to appoint such entities by the IT Dept. Postscript: The
actual number of cases thrown up by the data analytics used by the IT Dept. is
1 crore cases who between 10th Nov & 31st Dec
2016 have deposited more than Rs. 5 lakhs in their accounts and which is at variance
with their IT returns. From these the IT Dept. has sent sms & email notices
to just 18 Lakh which means another 82 Lakhs to go. What the Indian psyche does
which the IT Dept. is fully aware of is that it gambles in the good old ‘jugaad’
way that their file will never be picked up by the IT Dept. and more so in the
present context of a huge number of cases. In the unlikely event their file or
case gets picked then they will deal with it in an attitude of ‘dekha jayega’
or ‘we will cross that bridge when he come to it’ – hoping against hope that
the bridge never comes on their horizon. These 1 crore cases are supposed to
involve Rs. 10 Lakh crores which is rather close to the value of the
demonetised currency on Nov 8th, 2016. Thus with some conviction one
can say that maybe the IT Dept is barking up the wrong tree again, like when
all the demonetised currency came back to the banks by 31st Dec
2016, and they will find that most of these are legitimate deposits within the
existing framework of IT rules and end up blaming the data analytics tools
saying that is cahoots with the black money mafia conniving to make fools of
the IT Dept.
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