Awaiting our CHANGE

America has voted for a change. Not the red states and blue states but the United States of America has voted for a change. They have voted for one man, the same one man in Texas, NY, California and Wisconsin. The man they know knows about what’s good and bad about their country and trust him to change the bad to good. America is a Democracy.

India is another Democracy, where most people (not me) are very proud of their democracy which has lived for more than 60 years now. Here, people generally vote every 5 years, and the vote for someone who:

– belongs to the same caste as they are

– distributes money and liquor among people as a part of campaign

– will visit their constituency only when the next election is due

– will propagate wrongs of current government rather than proposing solutions

– arrange top security for him, while leaving the people naked to terrorists

– has criminal cases against him, but still is shameless enough to beg/demand for votes

– believes in changing parties and ideologies to remain in power

The mess in which our political system is is because for years most of India has been voting for above reasons. Today, our democracy has become a joke. It has become a playground for some shameless people, who over the years have mastered the art of winning elections in this country and are least bothered about needs of the nation (infrastructure, security, education, health, and energy).

Do I sound like a cynic?

Some of the ‘fans’ of our democratic system will come out advising, vote for a change, or better compete the election yourself. I am sure many young, enlightened individuals follow that advice; we are yet to see a change. These people are insignificant in front of the masters who have spent their lives practicing the art of Indian elections.

So the bottom-up approach to change won’t work, the change has to come at the top. The playing rules have to be changed in order to take the Sonia’s, Advani’s and Mayawati’s out of the system.

Here is an alternate game plan.

+ Anyone can apply to be the president, however the eligibility criteria has to be very tough (highly educated, experience of successfully managing people and resources, ideal candidate would be a someone at the helm of a big organization)

+ The election commission, consisting of elite leaders from all walks of society assesses all applications and selects the top 2 candidates

+ These 2 candidates are asked to create a team of people who would help them assess the current state of the country and draft a plan that would work for next 5 years

+ The election commission associates KRA’s to every section of the plan and these two candidates are allowed to campaign for two – three months so that they can explain their agenda to all sections of the society

+ The entire nation then votes for one of these two candidates and the one who wins, gets to implement his agenda

+ The President runs the country like the CEO of an organization, gets to select his management team and is answerable to Election commission, who assesses the performance of the government on set KRA’s every year

+ The election commission may ask the government to replace the non performers

+ The loosing candidate also gets to give a constructive feedback on the policies employed by the government, but there would be no confidence motion.

+ After 5 years, the presidential candidates remain same unless the current ones choose to retire or their teams decide upon a batter candidate.

In short, would like Ratan Tata, or Narayan Murthy or maybe someone ex- army, run our country like Tata or Infosys, than Advani or Sonia taking turns to exploit the age-old and poor constitution.

I would appreciate some wise reviews of the plan.

SUMIT