Improving the quality of candidates for Election

The 2014 elections are getting closer and closer. Is India ready for them? Will they be any better than earlier elections? The point I make here is that we must act well in advance, to ensure as far as possible that only good candidates get to compete in the elections. Political parties must be convinced that choosing bad candidates would mean sure defeat!

There is little transparency in the way candidates are selected for tickets by parties. If non-performers, vested interests and those with a criminal background get tickets, it becomes difficult for the citizens to do anything about this later. How can the new media help improve the situation?

Reform minded parties and NGO’s such as the one running http://myneta.info/ should provide information about undesirable candidates likely to get tickets from some party or another in each constituency and highlight reasons as to why they are undesirable.

Concerned citizens should use facilities provided by organizations supporting the creation of petitions, such as http://www.change.org/en-IN to send petitions to parties requesting that they blacklist bad cases.

An important role has to be played by the TV channels who should focus on criminal elements and vested interests well in time. Video clips documenting instances of hate-speech, evidence of foot-in-the mouth disease, and sheer non-performance will give citizens valuable information. 

Media have become the major conscience-keepers of the nation. They should not let us down in 2014!

Srinivasan Ramani 

Post-Mortems Required for Governments Budgets

I have been searching for information on the Internet on what is actually spent by the Govt of India in comparison to budget provisions. While the 2012-2013 budget has received a lot of national attention, I could not find what was planned to be spent on education and on healthcare in 2011-2012, and what was actually spent. The website of the Controller and Auditor general, India
http://saiindia.gov.in/english/index.html does provide information. But I could not easily find an answer to the question I have raised above.
A mid-year Economic Analysis http://finmin.nic.in/reports/MYR201213English.pdf
gave some details, but again I did not find what I was looking for.

Government documents are not written for a common citizen to read to get an insight to what is going right and what is going wrong. The media have to do their work in providing that information clearly and simply, highlighting what matters most. Do you know of any website that gives us the information I am asking for? Please do tell us how to locate that site.

Srinivasan Ramani

Where do our Netas Stand?

The website http://myneta.info/ is a great resource for the Indian voter. Among other things, it gives information on criminal cases in which candidates for election have been involved. It also gives information on their personal wealth on the basis of legally required documents they have submitted. The movement that runs this website was initiated by a set of IIM Ahmedabad professors several years ago. My hats off to the professors!

What I would like to see next are biographic sketches describing their career, so we can see where all their wealth could have come from. The media is best fit to provide these biographic sketches. Another option is for social activists to ensure that there are Wikipedia articles on netas who need to have more light thrown on them. As it is, the Wikipedia has done “justice” to a few netas I have looked up occasionally. No, I didn’t say “I have looked up to” :=)

Now, let me come to my concern. While probity is promoted by increased transparency, what is there to promote greater understanding of a neta and what he or she means to the country? What is their political philosophy? What are their priorities? What reforms will they push for? What do they hate? Can the bulk of our netas write on these matters as well as the average graduate?  Otherwise, how are they going to manage the country? Media can play a role in encouraging potential policy makers to write on where they stand on policy issues. Those who can write well can be interviewed on television. Regional leaders can be interviewed on regional TV.

There have been few leaders who have written books in recent years. Dr Abdul Kalam is an exception, having authored ten books! Why can’t other netas follow in his footsteps, at least 10% of the way? For a list of other leaders who have written, visit http://sawaal.ibibo.com/exams-education-and-references/list-famous-books-written-indian-political-leaders-1505297.html This is not an exhaustive list; it does not list Advani’s book http://news.oneindia.in/2008/03/20/kalam-releases-advanis-magnum-opus-delhi.html, or Jaswant Singh’s books. I would love to read a book on what Sashi Tharoor thinks we should do in the educational field.

Let me conclude this post by recalling what I had read in a newspaper a long time ago. (This was written from memory and I was unable to locate the original publication). A veteran journalist had recalled his interview with a senior neta. He had tried to coax the neta to spell out his ideology. No luck! The neta had declared that ideologies should be avoided. The journalist tried a related question – which books had influenced the neta the most? But our neta was made of stern stuff! One should not allow books to influence oneself, he had said. I hope that our current netas are a bit better because of increasing literacy in the country!

Srinivasan Ramani