Monday, February 1, 2016

Constitution day celebration - 1

This article is divided in three parts, this is first part

Last week we celebrated Constitution day. Every body was all praise for that document. We are executing our democratic obligations in accordance to the dictates given in that document. Many suggested that the document is all perfect and our present Prime Minister Mr. Modi said that his government shall keep that document as it is and that; it is the source of inspiration to all Indians(!). A lot of praise was bestowed on that and they all accepted that the document is very unique and no better document can be prepared for our country.

If my readers remember I had written about our constitution and in that I had quoted that our constitution is a document primarily prepared originally by the British imperial office in London in early twentieth century and it was supposed to help the ruler class to control the masses the way empire builders do. Eventually, that same document was adopted by our committee which was prepare to give our new country a fresh constitution that may be able to guide the governments in future management of the government. I am reminding my readers about it because in this post I want to elaborate on the aspect of our constitution that helps ruler class more than the ordinary people of this country. Since it helps more the ruler class and not the voter class they (the ruler class means bureaucrats, politicians and Judiciary) are obviously all praise for that document!

What is presumed while preparing this document is important to note. This document presumes that the elected people are sincere to the voters, honest with the country, they are patriotic, they are in every way competent, intelligent and also that they are thorough gentlemen. These presumptions were made, I believe from the way then political workers with the then National Congress were found to be.

Similarly the constitution seems to be presuming that the bureaucrats are sincere to the commitments they have to make during their service, they are patriotic, they are intelligent to do the task entrusted to them, they are gentle with the people with whom they have to deal during their duties, they are utmost efficient in performing the task given to them. They will not give excuses to cover up for their shortcomings, they will not indulge in corrupt practices under any circumstance. And finally that they are patriotic in their dealing with the affairs of the country.

The constitution also seems to have taken for granted that the Judiciary is competent in understanding the problems of the people brought to them for scrutiny and they will be sincere to the basics of human well being to which every law is supposed to manage. They are honest with the principle of justice and in that capable to construe the law so that human justice is given out to the concerned parties without any iniquity. They are superbly intelligent and fully aware for their duties to the nation and human justice. Generally all laws are primarily prepared to help common man and so all laws should first of all see that it helps the end man. Our law nowhere mentions to protect whom they are designed? I mean we want constitution to give the definition of word gentlemen. On the contrary, laws are designed to give lease to defaulters under many objectionable excuses. Some times one may feel that laws are designed to cover defaulters and not protect plaintiff.

Our constitution does not take into consideration, if these three principle pillars of the government are not as per above given expectation what should be done? The failure of our democracy lies in this presupposition that every thing is OK. While actually every thing is not OK!

In our last almost sixty years of experience we have enough evidence to say that these presumptions of our constitution writer were not correct. Therefore, our constitution has actually failed us in attaining the real democracy in our country. I wonder if such a failing document deserves any celebration at all.

What it should have incorporated in it as per my thinking I want to give here for my readers so that they may give me further improvement in them if they need. We are supposed to discuss our problems due to a wrongly written document, since it is based on wrong presuppositions, such as our constitution.

As for elected people the constitution does not consider in it the formation of any political party. It had presumed that each member of the House will be elected as an independent but today we find that most elected members belong to some or the other party. We should introduce a new chapter in our constitution and in that it will give guideline to how a political party should be and what are the expectations thereof by the people of India. If that guideline is fixed in the constitution itself, it may help us in controlling behavior of these political parties. The scope of such political party and its limitations, behavior of the controlling members, what is called high commands, of these parties should also be controlled by different provisions in that chapter in the constitution. If these limits are fixed we can control the misbehavior of many such political parties when they behave as if they own the country when they get elected. Particularly behavior of many persons as high Command is difficult to control with present provisions in the constitution. Today we do not have any such control on the high command of these parties who work more like remote control element where constitution has no control on them. Therefore, they continue to misbehave with the people and that is one of the problems we face when working with these political parties. A type of dictatorship gets into the system of what we see when we study behavior of many parties as if they are family run companies. We have to put an end to it by such provisions introduced in the constitution itself. Today we see political parties in power often take many freedoms of citizens lightly and often make violation on it. Actually many basis freedoms of citizens such as food, clothes, traditions cannot be jeopardized by others just because they are elected by majority. Present constitution does not protect people on these topics. We need a constitution that will not allow majority elected government to interfere with these freedoms by passing compelling laws those can marginalize these freedoms.

We noted during our long experience that our elected members are not as the constitution had envisaged while preparing this document. They are dishonest with the voters, they are not sincere to the job they are entrusted with, they are mostly incompetent in delivering the results while they are mostly corrupt in their ways. Voters do not feel safe with them, they have many criminal records and in most cases they are convicted also in criminal as well as civic law suits. Many are not enlightened enough to understand their duties as a member of the House. Family members of many of them take disadvantage of their position and create problem for the rival parties, using their special position to impress upon police and such controlling agencies to harass their opponents; this shows that they do not deserves to be members of the House. Their honesty with people and the nation and also patriotism are all doubtful. Most are illiterate and from doubtful background or upbringing. A provision in our constitution may be brought about to eliminate such members. Many are far from being gentlemen. We see a criminal can contest an election and by that wrong element enters the House that is supposed to have the best of the talent in the country. I was told that there are some provision in the law of contesting for election prepared by our election commission but that is an indirect attempt to control these bad elements from entering the Houses; I do not think that is right way to bring discipline in these people (politicians). If constitution covers this very important topic in its main text it will make a big difference. We see that all presumptions while preparing this document have been wrong and so we need amend this document or prepare a totally new paper to replace it.

This topic continues in next post.

You may contact me on my Email ID given below,

You are invited to visit my other blogs
Ashok Kothare, http://ashokkotharesblog.blogspot.com/ for stories
I reckon, http://kotharesviews.blogspot.com/ for philosophy
You may visit blog, Ideas and tips on any subject, http://kotharay.blogspot.in/ for intelligent discussions.
Freedom of Expression, http://Blogs.siliconindia.com/kothare for intelligent discussions.

My New Marathi Blog, http://kothare-marathi.blogspot.in/ ला असे वाटते  

No comments:

Post a Comment