Elections In India Quotes

So long as the Constitution is not amended beyond recognition, so long as elections are held regularly and fairly and the ethos of secularism broadly prevails, so long as citizens can speak and write in the language of their choosing, so long as there is an integrated market and a moderately efficient civil service and army, and — lest I forget — so long as Hindi films are watched and their songs sung, India will survive

Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate. One doesn't need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt. On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime.

It is interesting to note that an overwhelming majority of citizens in the world's three largest democracies have different religions: India (81 percent Hindu), the United States (76 percent Christian), and Indonesia (87 percent Muslim). Two of them have elected women as leaders of their government.

Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence … they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and a free press. … a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have

To prosper, a zoo needs parliamentary government, democratic elections, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, rule of law and everything else enshrined in India's Constitution. Impossible to enjoy the animals otherwise. Long-term, bad politics is bad for business.

1. Bangladesh.... In 1971 ... Kissinger overrode all advice in order to support the Pakistani generals in both their civilian massacre policy in East Bengal and their armed attack on India from West Pakistan.... This led to a moral and political catastrophe the effects of which are still sorely felt. Kissinger’s undisclosed reason for the ‘tilt’ was the supposed but never materialised ‘brokerage’ offered by the dictator Yahya Khan in the course of secret diplomacy between Nixon and China.... Of the new state of Bangladesh, Kissinger remarked coldly that it was ‘a basket case’ before turning his unsolicited expertise elsewhere. 2. Chile.... Kissinger had direct personal knowledge of the CIA’s plan to kidnap and murder General René Schneider, the head of the Chilean Armed Forces ... who refused to countenance military intervention in politics. In his hatred for the Allende Government, Kissinger even outdid Richard Helms ... who warned him that a coup in such a stable democracy would be hard to procure. The murder of Schneider nonetheless went ahead, at Kissinger’s urging and with American financing, just between Allende’s election and his confirmation.... This was one of the relatively few times that Mr Kissinger (his success in getting people to call him ‘Doctor’ is greater than that of most PhDs) involved himself in the assassination of a single named individual rather than the slaughter of anonymous thousands. His jocular remark on this occasion—‘I don’t see why we have to let a country go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible’—suggests he may have been having the best of times.... 3. Cyprus.... Kissinger approved of the preparations by Greek Cypriot fascists for the murder of President Makarios, and sanctioned the coup which tried to extend the rule of the Athens junta (a favoured client of his) to the island. When despite great waste of life this coup failed in its objective, which was also Kissinger’s, of enforced partition, Kissinger promiscuously switched sides to support an even bloodier intervention by Turkey. Thomas Boyatt ... went to Kissinger in advance of the anti-Makarios putsch and warned him that it could lead to a civil war. ‘Spare me the civics lecture,’ replied Kissinger, who as you can readily see had an aphorism for all occasions. 4. Kurdistan. Having endorsed the covert policy of supporting a Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq between 1974 and 1975, with ‘deniable’ assistance also provided by Israel and the Shah of Iran, Kissinger made it plain to his subordinates that the Kurds were not to be allowed to win, but were to be employed for their nuisance value alone. They were not to be told that this was the case, but soon found out when the Shah and Saddam Hussein composed their differences, and American aid to Kurdistan was cut off. Hardened CIA hands went to Kissinger ... for an aid programme for the many thousands of Kurdish refugees who were thus abruptly created.... The apercu of the day was: ‘foreign policy should not he confused with missionary work.’ Saddam Hussein heartily concurred. 5. East Timor. The day after Kissinger left Djakarta in 1975, the Armed Forces of Indonesia employed American weapons to invade and subjugate the independent former Portuguese colony of East Timor. Isaacson gives a figure of 100,000 deaths resulting from the occupation, or one-seventh of the population, and there are good judges who put this estimate on the low side. Kissinger was furious when news of his own collusion was leaked, because as well as breaking international law the Indonesians were also violating an agreement with the United States.... Monroe Leigh ... pointed out this awkward latter fact. Kissinger snapped: ‘The Israelis when they go into Lebanon—when was the last time we protested that?’ A good question, even if it did not and does not lie especially well in his mouth. It goes on and on and on until one cannot eat enough to vomit enough.

In 1951 Dec 20th, Nehru, while campaigning for the first democratic elections in India, took a short break to address a UNESCO symposium in Delhi. Although he believed democracy was the best form of governance, while speaking at the symposium he wondered loud... the quality of men who are selected by these modern democratic methods of adult franchise gradually deteriorates because of lack of thinking and the noise of propaganda....He[the voter] reacts to sound and to the din, he reacts to repetition and he produces either a dictator or a dumb politician who is insensitive. Such a politician can stand all the din in the world and still remain standing on his two feet and, therefore, he gets selected in the end because the others have collapsed because of the din. -Quoted from India After Gandhi, page 157.

Siding with any political party or politician on social media is the best and fastest way to become a victim of hatred.

where a Michael Bloomberg could be the CEO of a large company one day and get elected as New York’s mayor the next.

It’s worth taking the comparison with America a bit further. In the United States, slavery was a 300-year-old institution. After abolition, it took another century of struggle for equality to secure full civil rights for black Americans. A half-century later, the struggle is hardly over. In India, caste has, over several millennia, woven itself into the fabric of society, infused itself as a climate of mind. Was it ever conceivable that one remarkable individual, a bracing, brave Constitution, and a few dozen free elections would blow it away?

Over the years, the British had strategically pitted the Muslims against the Hindus, supporting the All India Muslim League and encouraging the notion that the Muslims were a distinct political community. Throughout British India, separate electorates had been offered to Muslims, underscoring their separateness from Hindus and sowing the seeds of communalism. Teh Morley-Minto reforms in 1908 had allowed direct election for seats and separate or communal representation for Muslims. This was the harbinger for the formation of the Muslim League in 1906. In 1940, the Muslim League, representing one-fifth of the total population of India, became a unifying force. They were resentful that they were not sufficiently represented in Congress and feared for the safety of Islam.

State first, subject second, statesman last.

Making a nation awesome takes more than just Twitter outrage, street protests and a toppling of governments in elections. It asks for a fundamental shift in societal values, culture and habits.

This historic general election, which showed that the British are well able to distinguish between patriotism and Toryism, brought Clement Attlee to the prime ministership. In the succeeding five years, Labor inaugurated the National Health Service, the first and boldest experiment in socialized medicine. It took into public ownership all the vital (and bankrupted) utilities of the coal, gas, electricity and railway industries. It even nibbled at the fiefdoms and baronies of private steel, air transport and trucking. It negotiated the long overdue independence of India. It did all this, in a country bled white by the World War and subject to all manner of unpopular rationing and controls, without losing a single midterm by-election (a standard not equaled by any government of any party since). And it was returned to office at the end of a crowded term.

What about the election?" "What about it? I did my part, now I just have to trust the universe to do the rest." He wiped her tears. "What if you lose?" she asked. He tucked her hair behind her ear. "I've already won. Because I have you.

News channels have worked tirelessly to kill India's democratic ideals, with the result that vast numbers of the Indian people follow channels that ask no questions of the government. These channels have trained their viewers to watch only a particular kind of TV where nothing is demanded of them, except a willing and complete suspension of belief. And absolute amorality. Elected representatives can garland killers, ministers can lie, news anchors can read out government press releases as news. It bothers no one enough.

Kashmir is India’s greatest moral and political failure. It is here that even the most civilised amongst us begin to make excuses for repression, brutality and violence. It is here that we subsume all that we otherwise celebrate under the demands of freedom, progress, liberalism, liberty and secular ideals. Since 1947, the Indian state has responded to the political aspirations and the social and the legal demands in Kashmir through militarisation, repression, and indiscriminate violence, including, at various times, the denial of democratic rights, the manipulation of elections, and the murder and imprisonment of its political leaders.

India’s primordial nationalisms—whether expressed in language, religion, caste, or even commensality—would have pulled the country apart, as happened in several other postcolonial states, had it not been for the fact that India consciously gave itself a constitutional order that incorporated universal franchise and the rule of law; guaranteed individual rights and a federal system that promulgated separation of powers at the center and limits on the central government’s authority over the states; and established recurring elections that tested the strength of contending political parties and endowed them with the privilege of rule for limited periods of time. By adopting such a framework, India enshrined the twin components that mark all real democracies: contestation, or the peaceful struggle for power through an orderly process that confirms the preferences of the polity, and participation, or the right of all adult citizens, irrespective of wealth, gender, religion, or ethnicity, to vote for a government of their choice.

Where else could the most famous female dacoit, Phoolan Devi, surrender to police with ten thousand onlookers cheering as she placed her rifle down before a picture of Gandhi? (After serving her prison sentence, the “Bandit Queen of India” was elected to Parliament, only to be gunned down in front of her house in New Delhi before she turned forty.

While independent India had been founded by high-born, well-educated men, by the twenty-first century few such types stood for elections, or voted in them, since the wealthy had extra-democratic means of securing their social and economic interests. Across India, poor people were the ones who took the vote seriously. It was the only real power they had. Another

The gathering of information to control people is fundamental to any ruling power. As resistance to land acquisition and the new economic policies spreads across India, in the shadow of outright war in Central India, as a containment technique, India’s government has embarked on a massive biometrics program, perhaps one of the most ambitious and expensive information gathering projects in the world—the Unique Identification Number (UID). People don’t have clean drinking water, or toilets, or food, or money, but they will have election cards and UID numbers. Is it a coincidence that the UID project run by Nandan Nilekani, former CEO of Infosys, ostensibly meant to “deliver services to the poor,” will inject massive amounts of money into a slightly beleaguered IT industry?50 To digitize a country with such a large population of the illegitimate and “illegible”—people who are for the most part slum dwellers, hawkers, Adivasis without land records—will criminalize them, turning them from illegitimate to illegal. The idea is to pull off a digital version of the Enclosure of the Commons and put huge powers into the hands of an increasingly hardening police state. Nilekani’s technocratic obsession with gathering data is consistent with Bill Gates’s obsession with digital databases, numerical targets, and “scorecards of progress” as though it were a lack of information that is the cause of world hunger, and not colonialism, debt, and skewed profit-oriented corporate policy.51

India is a land where contradictions will continue to abound, because there are many Indias that are being transformed, with different levels of intensity, by different forces of globalization. Each of these Indias is responding to them in different ways. Consider these coexisting examples of progress and status quo: India is a nuclear-capable state that still cannot build roads that will survive their first monsoon. It has eradicated smallpox through the length and breadth of the country, but cannot stop female foeticide and infanticide. It is a country that managed to bring about what it called the ‘green revolution’, which heralded food grain self-sufficiency for a nation that relied on external food aid and yet, it easily has the most archaic land and agricultural laws in the world, with no sign of anyone wanting to reform them any time soon. It has hundreds of millions of people who subsist on less that a dollar a day, but who vote astutely and punish political parties ruthlessly. It has an independent judiciary that once set aside even Indira Gandhi’s election to parliament and yet, many members of parliament have criminal records and still contest and win elections from prison. India is a significant exporter of intellectual capital to the rest of the world—that capital being spawned in a handful of world class institutions of engineering, science and management. Yet it is a country with primary schools of pathetic quality and where retaining children in school is a challenge. India truly is an equal opportunity employer of women leaders in politics, but it took over fifty years to recognize that domestic violence is a crime and almost as long to get tough with bride burning. It is the IT powerhouse of the world, the harbinger of the offshore services revolution that is changing the business paradigms of the developed world. But regrettably, it is also the place where there is a yawning digital divide.

British journalist Don Taylor. Writing in 1969, by which time India had stayed united for two decades and gone through four general elections, Taylor yet thought that the key question remains: can India remain in one piece – or will it fragment? . . . When one looks at this vast country and its 524 million people, the 15 major languages in use, the conflicting religions, the many races, it seems incredible that one nation could ever emerge. It is difficult to even encompass this country in the mind – the great Himalaya, the wide Indo-Gangetic plain burnt by the sun and savaged by the fierce monsoon rains, the green flooded delta of the east, the great cities like Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. It does not, often, seem like one country. And yet there is a resilience about India which seems an assurance of survival. There is something which can only be described as an Indian spirit. I believe it no exaggeration to say that the fate of Asia hangs on its survival.

The assumption on the part of most Indian political parties that overt friendship with Israel would cost its advocates dearly at the Indian ballot box remains a strong factor, especially when elections loom in states with a significant number of Muslim voters. It did not help that pro-Israeli stances were, in the early years, advocated only by the communally minded Hindu chauvinist party the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, which used support for Israel mainly as an additional stick to beat the Muslims with.

Sonia Gandhi and her son play an important part in all of this. Their job is to run the Department of Compassion and Charisma and to win elections. They are allowed to make (and also to take credit for) decisions which appear progressive but are actually tactical and symbolic, meant to take the edge off popular anger and allow the big ship to keep on rolling. (The best example of this is the rally that was organised for Rahul Gandhi to claim victory for the cancellation of Vedanta’s permission to mine Niyamgiri for bauxite—a battle that the Dongria Kondh tribe and a coalition of activists, local as well as international, have been fighting for years. At the rally, Rahul Gandhi announced that he was “a soldier for the tribal people”. He didn’t mention that the economic policies of his party are predicated on the mass displacement of tribal people. Or that every other bauxite “giri”—hill—in the neighbourhood was having the hell mined out of it, while this “soldier for the tribal people” looked away. Rahul Gandhi may be a decent man. But for him to go around talking about the two Indias—the “Rich India” and the “Poor India”—as though the party he represents has nothing to do with it, is an insult to everybody’s intelligence, including his own.) The division of labour between politicians who have a mass base and win elections, and those who actually run the country but either do not need to (judges and bureaucrats) or have been freed of the constraint of winning elections (like the prime minister) is a brilliant subversion of democratic practice. To imagine that Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are in charge of the government would be a mistake. The real power has passed into the hands of a coven of oligarchs—judges, bureaucrats and politicians. They in turn are run like prize race-horses by the few corporations who more or less own everything in the country. They may belong to different political parties and put up a great show of being political rivals, but that’s just subterfuge for public consumption. The only real rivalry is the business rivalry between corporations.

But the Congress also played an insidious role in creating the circumstances that led to the demolition of the mosque. Though Rahul Gandhi once grandly claimed that the mosque would never have been brought down had a member of the Nehru-Gandhi family been at the helm of government, it was his father, Rajiv Gandhi, who on the request of the VHP first ordered the locks on the Ram Janmabhoomi–Babri Masjid complex to be opened in 1985. And in 1989, with one eye on the elections, it was Rajiv who sent his home minister, Buta Singh, to participate in the ‘shilanyas’, or the symbolic temple foundation laying ceremony, at a site near the Babri Masjid but outside of what he understood to be the disputed site. After his assassination in 1991 it became the responsibility of Narasimha Rao to safeguard the mosque from demolition. The Liberhan Report said Prime Minister Rao and his government were ‘day-dreaming’; his own party colleagues and those who met him in the days leading up to 6 December say his inaction was deliberate. Veteran journalist Kuldip Nayar even went so far as to suggest in his memoirs that Rao ‘sat at a puja when the kar sevaks began pulling down the mosque and rose only when the last stone had been removed’.

India had a very long independence movement. It started in 1886, [with] the first generation of Western-educated Indians. They were all liberals. They followed the Liberal Party in Britain, and they were very proud of their knowledge of parliamentary systems, parliamentary manners. They were big debaters. They [had], as it were, a long apprenticeship in training for being in power. Even when Gandhi made it a mass movement, the idea of elective representatives, elected working committees, elected leadership, all that stayed because basically Indians wanted to impress the British that they were going to be as good as the British were at running a parliamentary democracy. And that helped quite a lot.

Today Hindu revivalists, pious Muslims, Japanese nationalists and Chinese communists may declare their adherence to very different values and goals, but they have all come to believe that economic growth is the key to realising their disparate goals. Thus in 2014 the devout Hindu Narendra Modi was elected prime minister of India thanks largely to his success in boosting economic growth in his home state of Gujarat, and to the widely held view that only he could reinvigorate the sluggish national economy. Analogous views have kept the Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in power in Turkey since 2003. The name of his party – the Justice and Development Party – highlights its commitment to economic development, and the Erdoğan government has indeed managed to maintain impressive growth rates for more than a decade.

It isn't a coincidence that the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat happened after September 11. Gujarat is also one place where the toxic waste of the World Trade Center is being dumped right now. This waste is being dumped in Gujarat, and then taken of to Ludhiana and places like that to be recycled. I think it's quite a metaphor. The demonization of Muslims has also been given legitimacy by the world's superpower, by the emperor himself. We are at a stage where democracy - this corrupted, scandalous version of democracy - is the problem. So much of what politicians do is with an eye on elections. Wars are fought as election campaigns. In India, Muslims are killed as part of election campaigns. In 1984, after the massacre of Sikhs in Delhi, the Congress Party won, hands down. We must ask ourselves very serious questions about this particular brand of democracy.

Today Hindu revivalists, pious Muslims, Japanese nationalists and Chinese communists may declare their adherence to very different values and goals, but they have all come to believe that economic growth is the key to realising their disparate goals. Thus in 2014 the devout Hindu Narendra Modi was elected prime minister of India thanks largely to his success in boosting economic growth in his home state of Gujarat, and to the widely held view that only he could reinvigorate the sluggish national economy. Analogous views have kept the Islamist Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in power in Turkey since 2003. The name of his party – the Justice and Development Party – highlights its commitment to economic development, and the Erdoğan government has indeed managed to maintain impressive growth rates for more than a decade. Japan’s prime minister, the nationalist Shinzō Abe, came to office in 2012 pledging to jolt the Japanese economy out of two decades of stagnation. His aggressive and somewhat unusual measures to achieve this have been nicknamed Abenomics. Meanwhile in neighbouring China the Communist Party still pays lip service to traditional Marxist–Leninist ideals, but in practice is guided by Deng Xiaoping’s famous maxims that ‘development is the only hard truth’ and that ‘it doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice’. Which means, in plain language: do whatever it takes to promote economic growth, even if Marx and Lenin wouldn’t have been happy with it. In Singapore, as befits that no-nonsense city-state, they pursue this line of thinking even further, and peg ministerial salaries to the national GDP. When the Singaporean economy grows, government ministers get a raise, as if that is what their jobs are all about.2

Antislavery insurgencies gravely threatened racial capitalism and forced the hand of Southern politicians. Southern elites viewed the preservation of slavery and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act to be nonnegotiable. The leading white women of Broward’s Neck, Florida, informed the Jacksonville Standard shortly after the election of 1858, “In our humble opinion the single issue is now presented to the Southern people, will they submit to all the degradation threatened by the North toward our slave property and be made to what England has made white people experience in the West India Islands—the negroes afforded a place on the same footing with their former owners, to be made legislators, to sit as Judges.” In the spring of 1860, Democrats in Jacksonville stated that regardless of who was nominated to run for president, “The amplest protection and security to slave property in the territories owned by the General Government” and “the surrender [of] fugitive slaves when legally demanded” were vital to Florida’s interests. If these terms were not met, they asserted, “then we are of the opinion that the rights of the citizens of Florida are no longer safe in the Union, and we think that she should raise the banner of secession and invite her Southern sisters to join her.”47 The following year, John C. McGehee, the president of the Florida Secession Convention, gave the most concise reason why the majority of his colleagues supported secession: “At the South, and with our People of course, slavery is the element of all value, and a destruction of that destroys all that is property.

Indian Express (Indian Express) - Clip This Article at Location 721 | Added on Sunday, 30 November 2014 20:28:42 Fifth column: Hope and audacity Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Tavleen Singh | 807 words At the end of six months of the Modi sarkar are we seeing signs that it is confusing efficiency with reform? I ask the question because so far there is no sign of real reform in any area of governance. And, because some of Narendra Modi’s most ardent supporters are now beginning to get worried. Last week I met a man who dedicated a whole year to helping Modi become Prime Minister and he seemed despondent. When I asked how he thought the government was doing, he said he would answer in the words of the management guru Peter Drucker, “There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.” We can certainly not fault this government on efficiency. Ministers, high officials, clerks and peons now report for duty on time and are no longer to be seen taking long lunch breaks to soak in winter sunshine in Delhi’s parks. The Prime Minister’s Office hums with more noise and activity than we have seen in a decade but, despite this, there are no signs of the policy changes that are vital if we are to see real reform. The Planning Commission has been abolished but there are many, many other leftovers from socialist times that must go. Do we need a Ministry of Information & Broadcasting in an age when the Internet has made propaganda futile? Do we need a meddlesome University Grants Commission? Do we need the government to continue wasting our money on a hopeless airline and badly run hotels? We do not. What we do need is for the government to make policies that will convince investors that India is a safe bet once more. We do not need a new government that simply implements more efficiently bad policies that it inherited from the last government. It was because of those policies that investors fled and the economy stopped growing. Unless this changes through better policies, the jobs that the Prime Minister promises young people at election rallies will not come. So far signals are so mixed that investors continue to shy away. The Finance Minister promises to end tax terrorism but in the next breath orders tax inspectors to go forth in search of black money. Vodafone has been given temporary relief by the courts but the retroactive tax remains valid. And, although we hear that the government has grandiose plans to improve the decrepit transport systems, power stations and ports it inherited, it continues to refuse to pay those who have to build them. The infrastructure industry is owed more than Rs 1.5 lakh continued... crore in government dues and this has crippled major companies. No amount of efficiency in announcing new projects will make a difference unless old dues are cleared. Reform is needed not just in economic matters but in every area of governance. Does the Prime Minister know how hard it is to get a passport? Does he know that a police check is required even if you just want to get a few pages added to your passport? Does he know how hard it is to do routine things like registering property? Does he know that no amount of efficiency will improve healthcare services that are broken? No amount of efficiency will improve educational services that have long been in terminal decline because of bad policies and interfering officials. At the same time, the licence raj that strangles private investment in schools and colleges remains in place. Modi’s popularity with ordinary people has increased since he became Prime Minister, as we saw from his rallies in Kashmir last week, but it will not la

In 1992, he took over as the Scientific Advisor to the Minister of Defence and secretary, Department of Research and Development, and continued till he was seventy. The country’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna, was conferred on him in 1997. A year later, in 1998, he led the team that conducted India’s second nuclear tests in Pokhran. Five nuclear tests were conducted consecutively and India became a nuclear power. In 1999, he was appointed principal scientific advisor to the government of India with the rank of a Cabinet minister. By 2001, he was enjoying a teacher’s life at Anna University in Chennai. Meant to lecture a class of sixty, most of his lectures ended up in an overflowing hall with about 200 students instead. In 2002, he was elected the eleventh President of India.

India, which became independent along with Pakistan in 1947, agreed on a constitution in 1949 and held its first general election in 1951. Pakistan’s first constitution was not promulgated until 1956, and within two years it was abrogated through a military coup d’état.

World religions like those of India and China were the religions of great cultures which regarded themselves as world civilizations; they had no rivals in their own worlds. But Israel was always conscious of its minority status - as one people among many nations, and as smaller and weaker than the historic empires that surrounded it from the beginning - Egypt and Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Macedonia, and Rome. For the Jews themselves and the Christians afterwards, this uniqueness was the result of a divine vocation and election. Israel was chosen from among the nations to be the witness to God and the bearer of divine revelation.

Here is a signal that heightened communalism is no longer a guarantee of positive election results.

elections held during the winter of 1945-46 accelerated polarization across India around the INC and the League,

Beginning with 1 August 1920, titles were returned, thousands of students across India left the Raj’s colleges, hundreds of lawyers turned their backs on the Raj’s courts and, in November, prominent politicians boycotted the elections to the new provincial councils.

Born in 1938, Ellen Sirleaf is the first elected female head of state in Africa, serving as the 24th President of Liberia from January 16, 2006, until January 22, 2018. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and received the Indira Gandhi Prize from Pranab Mukherjee, President of India. In 2014, she was listed as the 70th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes magazine.

India needs a progressive leader to represent her locally as well as internationally.She needs a dignified ,vociferous statesman , to represent her, talk for her, talk about her, talk to her and bring out the best out of her. I support a progressive, hate-free government for the future of my country. Every human deserves due respect and honour for being all that he or she is, however it cannot be denied an ounce of learning (with all humility) certainly aids in building a strong nation in every aspect. For eons India is known for her ideals, her diversity , and that she cherishes freedom and equality. Now any one who she calls her leader cannot be allowed to puncture the constitutional fabric and infringe on the privileges she has enjoyed for years ,especially after independence. Fellow citizens need to rise from sleep, that apathetic stupor, to realisation of the danger that she was plunged into in the recent past ,and the imminent danger posed to the constitutional fabric, the economy of India, and the image of India. India needs to rise above the constant bickering within her walls, as the wise saying goes, a house divided within herself cannot stand. The torch of peace that we light within our walls will help us glow and light the world. Awaiting results.

India needs a progressive leader to represent her locally as well as internationally.She needs a dignified ,vociferous statesman , to represent her, talk for her, talk about her, talk to her and bring out the best out of her. I support a progressive, hate-free government for the future of my country. Every human deserves due respect and honour for being all that he or she is, however it cannot be denied an ounce of learning (with all humility) certainly aids in building a strong nation in every aspect. For eons India is known for her ideals, her diversity , and that she cherishes freedom and equality. Now any one who she calls her leader cannot be allowed to puncture the constitutional fabric and infringe on the privileges she has enjoyed for years ,especially after independence. Fellow citizens need to rise from sleep, that apathetic stupor, to realisation of the danger that she was plunged into in the recent past ,and the imminent danger posed to the constitutional fabric, the economy of India, and the image of India. India needs to rise above the constant bickering within her walls, as the wise saying goes, a house divided within herself cannot stand. The torch of peace that we light within our walls will help us glow and light the world.

Author and political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot has pointed out that Rajiv’s keenness to appease both Hindu and Muslim extremists was lethal. ‘From the Shah Bano case to the opening up of the Masjid on VHP’s request to launching his election campaign from Faizabad calling it Ram’s land, he was playing Hindus against Muslims and vice-versa,’ he said. It played right into the hands of the BJP.

India had witnessed the destructive dances of its intelligence organisations during the Emergency regime and the regime that followed. Indian democracy can be as oppressive as the regime of Idi Amin. There is no dearth of evidence to support this statement. Rights of the citizen are more frequently violated even under normal circumstances. A shaky ruler can run amuck and rock the foundation of the country. The present system is not good enough to ensure free democracy and constitutional liberty. Mere government notifications are not good enough to give legal status to the prime intelligence organisations, which have evolved along with the political system of the country and democratic aspirations of the people. If the systemic evolution has made the administrative services and other spheres of national activities accountable to the elected representatives of the people why the most powerful tools of the state machinery should be kept under the wrap of secrecy and the hazards of informality that can be misused and manipulated by a few politicians?

The pioneers of the post-independence IB must be saluted for giving the country an efficient tool of national security in spite of the fact that the ruling class generally tried to use it for protecting and promoting their elite club. They never thought it fit to adopt a constitutionally validated Act to govern the IB and its sister organisations. The IB and the R&AW etc are the only organs of the government that are not accountable to any elected constitutional body of India and are not governed by any Act of the Parliament. They are subsidiary bureaus and departments.

The election campaign of 1951–2 was conducted through large public meetings, door-to-door canvassing, and the use of visual media. ‘At the height of election fever’, wrote a British observer, ‘posters and emblems were profuse everywhere – on walls, at street corners, even decorating the statues in New Delhi and defying the dignity of a former generation of Viceroys’. A novel method of advertising was on display in Calcutta, where stray cows had ‘Vote Congress’ written on their backs in Bengali.

The US is no longer sure whether its priorities lie across the Atlantic, on the other side of the Pacific or, following the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, at home rather than abroad. Indeed, President Trump confirmed as much in his January 2017 inauguration speech, stating that ‘From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first.’ Free markets have been found wanting, particularly following the global financial crisis. Support and respect for the international organizations that provided the foundations and set the ‘rules’ for post-war globalization – most obviously, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the United Nations Security Council (whose permanent members anachronistically include the UK and France, but not Germany, Japan, India or Indonesia) – are rapidly fading. Political narratives are becoming increasingly protectionist. It is easier, it seems, for politicians of both left and right to blame ‘the other’ – the immigrant, the foreigner, the stranger in their midst – for a nation’s problems. Voters, meanwhile, no longer fit into neat political boxes. Neglected by the mainstream left and right, many have opted instead to vote for populist and nativist politicians typically opposed to globalization. Isolationism is, once again, becoming a credible political alternative. Without it, there would have been no Brexit and no Trump.

Our neighbor, Hugo du Toit, was a very handsome Afrikaner, who, with his two sisters, was a close friend of Louis Botha, the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa, and also a close friend of General Jan Christiaan Smuts, the Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 until 1924. He became a South African military leader during World War II. Although some accuse Smuts of having started apartheid, he later stood against it and was a force behind the founding of the United Nations. He is still considered one of the most eminent Afrikaners ever…. At his expansive farm house, Hugo had autographed photos of both men on his study wall. Parties were frequently held at my grandparents’ home and the thought of roasted turkeys and potatoes which Cherie had prepared, brings back warm memories of a delightful era, now lost forever.” The Colonial History of South Africa For many years South Africa was occupied primarily by Dutch farmers known as Boers who had first arrived in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck established the Dutch East India Company and later by British settlers who arrived in the Cape colony after the Napoleonic wars in the 1820’s, on board the sailing ships the Nautilus and the Chapman. For the most part the two got along like oil and water. After 1806, some of the Dutch-speaking settlers left the Cape Colony and trekked into the interior where they established the Boer Republics. There were many skirmishes between them, as well as with the native tribes. In 1877 after the First Boer War between the Dutch speaking farmers and the English, the Transvaal Boer republic was seized by Britain. Hostilities continued until the Second Boer War erupted in October of 1899, costing the British 22,000 lives. The Dutch speaking farmers, now called Afrikaners, lost 7,000 men and having been overrun by the English acknowledged British sovereignty by signing the peace agreement, known as the “Treaty of Vereeniging,” on May 31, 1902. Although this thumbnail sketch of South African history leaves much unsaid, the colonial lifestyle continued on for the privileged white ruling class until the white, pro-apartheid National Party, was peacefully ousted when the African National Congress won a special national election. Nelson Mandela was elected as the first black president on May 9, 1994. On May 10, 1994, Mandela was inaugurated as The Republic of South Africa's new freely elected President with Thabo Mbeki and F.W. De Klerk as his vice-presidents.

F.S. Nariman rightly found some similarity between the decision of the ADM Jabalpur and that of Dred Scott, rendered more than a century ago in 1857 by a 6:2 majority of the American Supreme Court. The majority in Dred Scott held that a black person could never be a citizen of the US. A strong criticism of this view by Abraham Lincoln got national attention and ultimately helped him win the presidential election, which changed history. In both the cases, powerful dissenting opinions brought about far-reaching changes in these two democracies.

This was the first time that the Supreme Court equated the right to vote with the fundamental right of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution and further held that for a fair election in an open participatory democracy, proper information is a must for voters to make a meaningful choice.

The parliamentary democracy we have adopted involves the British perversity of electing a legislature to form an executive: this has created a unique breed of legislator, largely unqualified to legislate, who has sought election only in order to wield (or influence) executive power. It has produced governments obliged to focus more on politics than on policy or performance. It has distorted the voting preferences of an electorate that knows which individuals it wants but not necessarily which policies. It has spawned parties that are shifting alliances of individual interests rather than the vehicles of coherent sets of ideas. It has forced governments to concentrate less on governing than on staying in office, and obliged them to cater to the lowest common denominator of their coalitions. It is time for a change.

He could not help but admire his posters every time he saw them---the son of a rickshaw puller, now the chief of a prominent political party in this town, who was expected to win by an unprecedented margin of votes in the coming elections. There were many people in the party who begrudged his presence, his power, but they could do nothing. The people of Amrapur loved him and his speeches. Some people called them inflammatory, divisive, and harmful to the peace and harmony of the town. A smile spread across his face every time he heard that word. Has anything ever been achieved by harmony? What would the leaders do with harmony? Why would people come to listen to his speeches in droves if they wanted harmony? Elections can never be won by harmony.

For example, the elective principle was first introduced by the British in the Indian Councils Act of 1892. The Congress and its nationalist precursors, and the Indian Press, had been demanding elections to the councils, elected majorities in them, and greater powers to the non-official members of councils for many years before that. Nationalist demands had already far exceeded what was granted in 1892.

Indian courts had long ruled that they were unable to intervene in the rights of non-state subjects because Article 370 of the Indian Constitution dictates that the state of Jammu and Kashmir govern all matters except those surrendered to the Union of India. Recently, however, in a case challenging the limitations of Indian federal guidlines as they relate to federal finance laws, the court asserted broadly (and against decades of legal precedent) that the constitution of Jammu and Kashmir did not supersede that of India: It is rather disturbing to note that various parts of the judgment speak of the absolute sovereign power of the State of Jammu & Kashmir. It is necessary to reiterate that Section 3 of the Constitution of Jammu & Kashmir, which was framed by a Constituent Assembly elected on the basis of universal adult franchise, makes a ringing declaration that the State of Jammu & Kashmir is and shall be an integral part of the Union of India.

But having won an election by attracting voters to these themes, he has given free rein to the most retrograde elements in Indian society, who are busy rewriting textbooks, extolling the virtues of ancient science over modern technology, advocating protectionism and self-reliance against free trade and foreign investment, and asserting that India’s identity must be purely Hindu. Mr Modi cannot be oblivious to this fundamental contradiction, but he can only resolve it by jettisoning the very forces that have helped ensure his electoral victory.

That, religion is the source of power is illustrated by the history of India where the priest holds a sway over the common man often greater than the magistrate and where everything, even such things as strikes and elections, so easily take a religious turn and can so easily be given a religious twist.

Seeking to unite a divided India, Nehru articulated an ideology that rested on four main pillars. First, there was democracy, the freedom to choose one’s friends and speak one’s mind (and in the language of one’s choice) – above all, the freedom to choose one’s leaders through regular elections based on universal adult franchise. Second, there was secularism, the neutrality of the state in matters of religion and its commitment to maintaining social peace. Third, there was socialism, the attempt to augment productivity while ensuring a more egalitarian distribution of income (and of social opportunity). Fourth, there was non-alignment, the placement of India beyond and above the rivalries of the Great Powers. Among the less compelling, but not necessarily less significant, elements of this worldview were the conscious cultivation of a multiparty system (notably through debate in Parliament), and a respect for the autonomy of the judiciary and the executive.

Five years ago, on August 5, 2019, the status of our state Jammu and Kashmir was unconstitutionally abolished and it was divided into two union territories. Article 370 of the Constitution of India, under which the relationship of the state with India was linked under certain conditions until the final resolution of the issue, which was considered by the common people and legal and constitutional experts as the basis of India-Kashmir relationship, was abolished. INTERNAL SOVEREIGNTY HAS BEEN ROBBED!!! The President of the Republic issued an Ordinance which also abolished Article 35A which guaranteed the protection of our government jobs and our trade and gave non-state residents the right to get government jobs and buy land here. went!!! Summary Our identity Our identity has been completely destroyed!!! The Assembly was also dissolved under the People's Representation Act!!! New assembly elections were not held Bureaucracy has been ruling us for 5 years now!!!

One very real danger is that in trying to hold on to fast growth, India (and other countries facing sharply slowing growth) will veer toward policies that hurt the poor now in the name of future growth. The need to be “business friendly” to preserve growth may be interpreted, as it was in the US and UK in the Reagan-Thatcher era, as open season for all kinds of anti-poor, pro-rich policies (such as bailouts for overindebted corporations and wealthy individuals) that enrich the top earners at the cost of everyone else, and do nothing for growth. If the US and UK experience is any guide, asking the poor to tighten their belts, in the hope that giveaways to the rich will eventually trickle down, does nothing for growth and even less for the poor. If anything, the explosion of inequality in an economy no longer growing has the risk of being very bad news for growth, because the political backlash leads to the election of populist leaders touting miracle solutions that rarely work and often lead to Venezuela-style disasters.

In 1991 the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won many seats in India’s general election. These were gained by a clear religious appeal to Hindus to make India a Hindu nation. This has often been accompanied by criticisms of Christians and Muslims for being aliens, not true Indians. Sikhs are fearful of the rise of Hindu militancy for two reasons. If the Hindus tell them that they are really Hindus (as the Vishnu Hindu Parishad, a Hindu religious and political group, suggests, calling them ‘Keshdhari Hindus’) their distinctive identity is threatened. If churches and mosques are attacked they fear that gurdwaras will be the next chosen targets. Some Sikhs have moved to the Punjab from other parts of India, anxious to avoid this danger. Occasional Sikh attacks on Hindus in Punjab should be seen in the context of creating an exclusively Sikh state de facto by forcing Hindus to flee, if the Hindu government, as they see it, will not grant them one de jure. This is a form of ethnic cleansing. In every respect it goes against the teachings of the Gurus.

Let alone the border states, there was a problem in the capital itself. Many complaints were received after the draft rolls were published on 25 January 1993 in Delhi. The complaints said that the names of foreign nationals were included and genuine Indian citizens were excluded. It was decided by the commission that action would be taken against the Delhi administration for ‘lapses’ in its procedures for including the names of foreign nationals, particularly Bangladeshis, in the revised electoral rolls. The final lists were to be out by 25 March in 13 sectors where a large population of illegal immigrants was supposed to be living. The result was that in the final roll, only 17,000 could be declared as voters from one area where there were 128,000 in the draft rolls. These figures were alarming. The publication of final rolls was held up for some time. In fact, according to police sources, there were possibly around 400,000 illegal immigrants in Delhi at that time. There were speculations in the press suggesting that this was just the tip of the iceberg. It took up to November for elections to be held.

Despite these constants, in recent centuries, politics has taken on a particular ideological shape that would have been alien to those living in the ancient or medieval world. Modern politics around the world has been characterized as a contest between the Left and the Right. The simple demarcation of Left and Right has traditionally said a lot about where someone stands, whether in Brazil, the United States, Germany, or India: on the left, a stronger state with more economic regulation and redistribution; on the right, a freer market with less governmental intervention. This left-right divide had long dominated the political landscape of the world, defining elections, public debates, and policies, even provoking violence and revolution. But these days, this fundamental ideological division has broken down.

younger, with a cutting wit and a sharply sardonic

leader

Subsequently, the two prime ministers were able to meet quietly in the privacy of Jindal’s hotel room in Nepal, where they are said to have spent an hour together. Elections in the sensitive state of Jammu and Kashmir were just a month away and Modi explained that while he was keen to find ways to reopen some formal channels, circumstances did not permit him to do so immediately. Sharif, in turn, told him about the constrictions imposed on him by the security establishment in Pakistan—his negotiating power with the army had been gradually whittled away. Both agreed they needed some more time and greater political space to move forward publicly.

any political loss for the next General Election in India especially when Gujarat was the only State to have Bharatiya Janata Party in absolute majority was process that required test of knowledge, skills and temperament.

In 2005, when Congress still depended on Communist votes for a majority in Parliament, a National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was passed, assuring any household in the countryside a hundred days labour a year at the legal minimum wage on public works, with at least a third of these jobs for women. It is work for pay, rather than a direct cash transfer scheme as in Brazil, to minimize the danger of money going to those who are not actually the poor, and so ensure it reaches only those willing to do the work. Denounced by all right-thinking opinion as debilitating charity behind a façade of make-work, it was greeted by the middle-class like ‘a wet dog at a glamorous party’, in the words of one of its architects, the Belgian-Indian economist Jean Drèze. Unlike the Bolsa Família in Brazil, the application of NREGA was left to state governments rather than the centre, so its impact has been very uneven and incomplete, wages often paid lower than the legal minimum, for days many fewer than a hundred.75 Works performed are not always durable, and as with all other social programmes in India, funds are liable to local malversation. But in scale NREGA now represents the largest entitlement programme in the world, reaching some 40 million rural households, a quarter of the total in the country. Over half of these dalit or adivasi, and 48 per cent of its beneficiaries are women – double their share of casual labour in the private sector. Such is the demand for employment by NREGA in the countryside that it far outruns supply. A National Survey Sample for 2009–2010 has revealed that 45 per cent of all rural households wanted the work it offers, of whom only 56 per cent got it.76 What NREGA has started to do, in the formulation Drèze has taken from Ambedkar, is break the dictatorship of the private employer in the countryside, helping by its example to raise wages even of non-recipients. Since inception, its annual cost has risen from $2.5 to over $8 billion, a token of its popularity. This remains less than 1 per cent of GDP, and the great majority of rural labourers in the private sector are still not paid the minimum wage due them. Conceived outside the party system, and accepted by Congress only when it had little expectation of winning the elections of 2004, the Act eventually had such popular demand behind it that the Lok Sabha adopted it nem con. Three years later, with typical dishonesty, the Manmohan regime renamed it as ‘Gandhian’ to fool the masses that Congress inspired it.

Rahul. ‘He is our leader,’ was the cryptic response. Truth

Since 9/11, the level of terror attacks has only increased. In late 2001, terrorists launched a suicide attack on the Parliament in India, intended to cause anarchy. In 2002, a Passover Seder in a hotel in Netanya, Israel, was bombed, killing 29 and injuring 133. In the same year, a café was suicide bombed in Jerusalem, a Hindu Temple in Ahmedabad, India was attacked, and a Bali nightclub was bombed, killing 202. In 2004, four simultaneous attacks took place in Casablanca, killing 33. On March 11, 2004, multiple bombings took place on trains in Madrid, Spain, killing 191 and injuring 1,460. Al Qaeda claimed credit, particularly so after the near-term Spanish elections turned out of office an administration working with the U.S. in Iraq.

Here, let me quote only a prediction by a sympathetic visitor, the British journalist Don Taylor. Writing in 1969, by which time India had stayed united for two decades and gone through four general elections, Taylor yet thought that the key question remains: can India remain in one piece – or will it fragment? . . . When one looks at this vast country and its 524 million people, the 15 major languages in use, the conflicting religions, the many races, it seems incredible that one nation could ever emerge. It is difficult to even encompass this country in the mind – the great Himalaya, the wide Indo-Gangetic plain burnt by the sun and savaged by the fierce monsoon rains, the green flooded delta of the east, the great cities like Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. It does not, often, seem like one country. And yet there is a resilience about India which seems an assurance of survival. There is something which can only be described as an Indian spirit. I believe it no exaggeration to say that the fate of Asia hangs on its survival.9 The heart hoped that India would survive, but the head worried that it wouldn’t. The place was too complicated, too confusing – a nation, one might say, that was unnatural.

political instincts, and her instincts told her that food security

that many Opposition-ruled states had already initiated

Since 9/11, the level of terror attacks has only increased. In late 2001, terrorists launched a suicide attack on the Parliament in India, intended to cause anarchy. In 2002, a Passover Seder in a hotel in Netanya, Israel, was bombed, killing 29 and injuring 133. In the same year, a café was suicide bombed in Jerusalem, a Hindu Temple in Ahmedabad, India was attacked, and a Bali nightclub was bombed, killing 202. In 2004, four simultaneous attacks took place in Casablanca, killing 33. On March 11, 2004, multiple bombings took place on trains in Madrid, Spain, killing 191 and injuring 1,460. Al Qaeda claimed credit, particularly so after the near-term Spanish elections turned out of office an administration working with the U.S. in Iraq. In 2005, 36 Christians in Demsa, Nigeria, were killed by Muslim militants; al Qaeda bombed London’s Underground, killing 53, and injuring 700; 64 died at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh; 60 died in bombings in Delhi; and 60 died in a series of coordinated attacks on hotels in Amman, Jordan.

since 1989, all-India elections have been fought over such non-issues as the Bofors and hawala scandals, the reconstruction of a non-existing temple, reservations of a few thousand jobs in government service, the merits of a Vajpayee over a foreign-born Sonia Gandhi, or victory over a few hundred intruders in Kargil.

Why are so many young men staying on in universities earning multiple degrees—and that, too, in liberal arts?’ whispered Chandini to Gangasagar. ‘So that they continue to remain as students on the campus,’ explained Gangasagar. ‘But why do you need them there?’ asked Chandini. ‘So that they can contest the elections,’ explained Gangasagar. ‘Which elections?’ ‘Students’ Union elections.’ ‘Why does the ABNS need to involve itself in Students’ Union activities across the thirty-odd universities of Uttar Pradesh?’ ‘Because if our young men control the Students’ Unions of the universities, we—the ABNS—control the youth, a key constituency in the state’s power balance.’ ‘And then what will they do?’ ‘A liberal arts education is general enough for the IAS—the Indian Administrative Service or the IRS— the Indian Revenue Service.’ ‘So they’ll enter the bureaucracy?’ asked Chandini. ‘Some of them will become trade union leaders, others income-tax commissioners, secretaries within the Reserve Bank of India—there are so many jobs that need us to have our own people!

If someone tries to break the queue—as actor-MP Chiranjeevi tried to in Hyderabad this time—you can find your voice and ask them to get back in line.

The sometimes noble, sometimes ignoble, “structure of renown” erected by Motilal Nehru and his descendants is now merely a heap of rubble.

first BJP chief minister of Gujarat at a function in Gandhinagar. Again, Modi wasn’t the focus, but already the whispers in party circles projected him as the ‘super-chief minister’. The sweet smell of success, though, would quickly evaporate. The Sangh Parivar in Gujarat

countered. Rahul, though, clearly seemed to lead two lives. In the day he would engage with thinkers and activists, but at night he seemed to draw comfort from being in the company of family friends from the glamorous Page Three set. Perhaps the India–Bharat divide was most in evidence in his own personality,

Privately, Congress leaders whispered that maybe Rahul didn’t want to sit in the front row of the Lok Sabha where he would be caught out if he dozed off!

If we’d got the economy on the right track, nothing else would have mattered in 2014. It wasn’t corruption or scams, it was the economy which destroyed us in the general elections.

If in 2009, we gave sixty paise to the Congress and forty paise to the BJP, this time, it’s eighty paise to the BJP and twenty to the Congress.

One of the standing examples of Gujarat strides in solar power is the Charanka Solar Power Generation Park in North Gujarat which was raised in just one year. The park, which is today Asia’s biggest single-point solar generation facility, produces 225 MW of solar power by 22 private producers who have invested Rs 3400 crores in the park. A work force of 5,000 worked on it for 1 year during peak hours everyday. Says D.J. Pandian, Gujarat’s Energy Secretary: ‘Charanka is a shining example of Gujarat’s enterprise and efficiency.’ What is more, the governance in the energy sector is not marked by just goal setting and achieving. It is a reflection of farsightedness of a rare kind that isn’t visible elsewhere in India. It is best demonstrated in its steps to control the depleting water table with an eye on future. In an age in which populism and vote-bank politics are the norm in Indian democracy, the Modi Government has purposely kept the supply of agriculture power to 8 hours though it can afford to give more power with an eye on rural votes, power being surplus now. The reason is simple, the more the power to the farm sector, the greater the exploitation of groundwater by farmers wanting to earn more by producing more. Striking this fine balance between the farmers’ needs and balancing the natural resources is seen as a fine example of precise planning and farsighted governance free of populism. Interestingly, Modi has been able to maintain this balance even in the face of electoral pressures. In 2012, an election year, the Modi Government did allow new bore connections to farmers in 40 banned tehsils but with a rider: those taking new connections would have to adopt drip or sprinkler method of irrigation which consumes less water and therefore less power.

Narendra Modi versus Rahul Gandhi—the pracharak versus the prince, the ‘outsider’ versus the ‘insider’, the meritocrat versus the dynast, the small-town tea boy versus the child of elite privilege.

In Pakistan, when we want to change the government, we bring in the army; in India, you just use the ballot box.

So the great democratic experiment that was the Janata government began with a lack of democracy. JP and Acharya Kripalani said they would choose the next prime minister. They ruled out anybody from the Jan Sangh because it had the Right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS antecedents. They ruled out Charan Singh who was regarded as a difficult customer. But more significantly, they ruled out Jagjivan Ram, the leader of India’s Harijans, the man whose defection had swung the election for the Janata Party. Jagjivan Ram announced that this was part of the traditional prejudice against Harijans. And who knows? Perhaps he was right. In

the Indian Ocean, American and Indian interests in the region are gradually converging. It is difficult to say which government was more quietly gratified this month when Sri Lanka’s Beijing-aligned president lost his re-election bid, making it less likely that the island off India’s coast would eventually provide a foothold for Chinese

For many years South Africa was occupied primarily by Dutch farmers known as Boers who had first arrived in the Cape of Good Hope in 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck established the Dutch East India Company and later by British settlers who arrived in the Cape colony after the Napoleonic wars in the 1820’s, on board the sailing ships the Nautilus and the Chapman. For the most part the two got along like oil and water. After 1806, some of the Dutch-speaking settlers left the Cape Colony and trekked into the interior where they established the Boer Republics. There were many skirmishes between them as well as with the native tribes. In 1877 after the First Boer War between the Dutch speaking farmers and the English the Transvaal Boer republic was seized by Britain. Hostilities continued until the Second Boer War erupted in October of 1899 costing the British 22,000 lives. The Dutch speaking farmers, now called Afrikaners, lost 7,000 men and having been overrun by the English acknowledged British sovereignty signing the peace agreement, known as the “Treaty of Vereeniging,” on May 31, 1902. Although this thumbnail sketch of South African history leaves much unsaid, the colonial lifestyle continued for the privileged white ruling class until the white, pro-apartheid National Party was peacefully ousted and the African National Congress won. Nelson Mandela was elected as the first black president on May 9, 1994. On May 10, 1994, Mandela was inaugurated as The Republic of South Africa's new freely elected President with Thabo Mbeki and F.W. De Klerk as his vice-presidents.

Personally, I am far from convinced that the British system is suited to India. The parliamentary democracy we have adopted involves the British perversity of electing a legislature to form an executive: this has created a unique breed of legislator, largely unqualified to legislate, who has sought election only in order to wield (or influence) executive power. It has produced governments obliged to focus more on politics than on policy or performance. It has distorted the voting preferences of an electorate that knows which individuals it wants but not necessarily which policies. It has spawned parties that are shifting alliances of individual interests rather than the vehicles of coherent sets of ideas. It has forced governments to concentrate less on governing than on staying in office, and obliged them to cater to the lowest common denominator of their coalitions. It is time for a change. Pluralist

In 1949 a group of Ramaswami’s followers broke away to form the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). In 1967 the DMK became the first professedly regional party to come to power in a major provincial election in India. The Congress, once dominant in Tamil Nadu, has never since regained power in that state. Without the ideological and organizational ground work laid down by Ramaswami, it is hard to see how this could have happened. To be sure, he may have himself seen this as somewhat less than ideal—for he wanted a separate country for the Tamils, not merely greater autonomy within the existing nation-state of India. Ramaswami’s message is nicely captured in a statue of his in Tiruchirapalli which carries this inscription: ‘God does not exist at all. The inventor of God is a fool. The propagator of God is a scoundrel. The worshipper of God is a barbarian’.

Bose was correct in identifying Vallabhbhai Patel as his main opponent within the party. The two had an old rivalry, at once personal and political. Their relationship rapidly deteriorated after the death of Vallabhbhai’s elder brother Vithalbhai in 1933. Bose had nursed Vithalbhai during his last illness. In his will, the elder Patel left three-fourths of his estate to Bose, to be used ‘preferably for publicity work on behalf of India’s cause in other countries’. Vallabhbhai now cast aspersions on the authenticity of the will. A long legal battle ensued, which ended in a triumph for Vallabhbhai, with Vithalbhai’s next of kin getting the money instead of Subhas. This familial history apart, Patel was also opposed to Bose’s militant socialism. When, in 1938, Gandhi decided to propose Bose’s name for the presidency of the Congress, Patel opposed it. Gandhi overruled his objection. In 1939, when Bose sought a second term, Patel opposed him again, unsuccessfully. ‘I never dreamt,’ wrote Patel to Rajendra Prasad, ‘that he [Subhas] will stoop to such dirty mean tactics for re-election.’ In another letter, he told Prasad that ‘it is impossible for us to work with Subhas’. The resignation of the working committee members in February, and Pant’s resolution at Tripuri in March, were both approved of—if not instigated by—Patel.

Nehru agreed to be Congress president in 1936, the crucial year leading up to the elections mandated by the new Act. But he was clear in his own mind that the real leader of his party, and his country-in-the-making, was Gandhi. As he wrote to an English friend: ‘The only person who represents India, more than anyone has done or can do, is Gandhi. I may differ from him in a multitude of things but that is a matter between him and me and our colleagues. So far as I am concerned he is India in a peculiar measure and he is the undoubted leader of my country. If anybody wants to know what India wants, let him go to Gandhi'.

the installation of Congress ministries in six large provinces of British India was a major milestone in the constitutional history of the subcontinent. Much more power had devolved on to the shoulder of Indians than at any previous time in the history of the Raj. Indeed, since precolonial regimes were themselves devoid of democratic representation, and were run by unelected kings who nominated their ministers, this was the furthest that Indians had thus far got in the direction of self-rule, swaraj. Surely it was now only a matter of years before the Congress, and India, achieved the next step, of Dominion Status, thus to place themselves on par with Canada, Australiaand South Africa. A sign of how much of a departure from colonial practice these elections were is underlined in a humble office order issued by the Central Provinces government after their own Congress ministry was installed. It was signed by an Indian ICS officer, C.M. Trivedi, then serving as the secretary to the general administration department. The order was sent to all commissioners and deputy commissioners, the chief conservator of forests, the inspector general of police, all secretaries to government, and a host of other senior officials (including the military secretary and the governor), almost all of whom were, of course, British. The text of the order was short and simple, albeit, in the eyes of its recipients, not altogether sweet. It read: ‘In future Mr. Gandhi should be referred to in all correspondence as “Mahatma Gandhi”.

You're right of cribbing against a government is none, if you can't take out time to vote for one.

YOU LEARNED ABOUT this period in high school: The standardized global curriculum calls for a month focused on it. Those decades just before the establishment of Shareholder Government, when we brought ourselves to the verge of a global breakdown. The system of economic interdependence created after World War II and reinforced after the Cold War had succeeded, more or less, in its original goal: keeping countries’ fortunes so intertwined that they could no longer afford major wars. Other benefits emerged as well. Fewer people were poor than ever before. Fewer infants died, fewer mothers. More children were enrolled in school, more young adults in universities. So many people in once-poor countries—China, India—were becoming rich that inequality between countries had fallen for the first time since the 1820s. This would seem like a positive development. But then why, the question had emerged forcefully at the turn of the twenty-first century, did people seem so upset, so convinced that the whole setup was bad for them? It had to do, it turned out, with fast-growing inequality within countries. If you were an Indian citizen who wasn’t among the newly rich, you weren’t gladdened by your countrymen’s suddenly acquired wealth. If you were an American or European who had always been poor, learning that children of Chinese peasants were becoming billionaires didn’t charm you. The defining sentiment of this late capitalist period was disaffection, and it began to take alarming forms. Mass murders became so frequent that they no longer trended on Social. Sure, you could go through the exercise of psychoanalyzing each killer in an attempt to classify him, as they used to, terrorist or psychopath, but what good did that do at this scale? The only useful conclusion was the broadest one, which was that the world order itself was making people murderous. But then, the politicians most equipped to address the unrest were those least invested in ending it. Race-baiting nationalists from oligarchical families began winning elections all over the world. It was the oldest trick around, promising the poor members of your own ethnic group that you’d help them become as rich as yourself, in large part by making sure that the poor members of other ethnic groups stopped stealing your group’s opportunities, thus dividing the poor so that they wouldn’t rise up together against the rich.

It was the Muslims in Hindu majority provinces led by UP who provided the spearhead for the movement for Pakistan right from the beginning. And they have remained solidly here even after Partition. In those elections[1945-1946] Muslim League had contested making the creation of Pakistan its election plank. The Congress had also set up some Muslim candidates all over the country. But, at almost every such place, Muslims voted for the Muslim League candidates. It only means that all the crores of Muslims who are here even now, had en bloc voted for Pakistan.

BN Jog, a contemporary RSS author argues that even after the 1937 elections, though often mentioned as proof that the Muslim electorate was largely 'secular' because of the poor results for the Muslim league, had already disproven the Congress claim: most Muslim votes had gone to other Muslim-dominated parties, chiefly the Unionist party of Sir Sikandar Hayat Khan in Panjab and the Krishak Praja party of Fazlul Haq in Bengal. Even the supposedly defeated Muslim League had won 108 of the 492 Muslim-reserved seats in 1937, against 26 for Congress. So, Jog concludes, the Muslim vote was largely motivated by sectional interests rather than by commitment to the national struggle.

Millions of refugees from East and West Pakistan had to be found homes and gainful employment. An undeclared war was taking place in Kashmir. A new constitution had to be decided upon. Elections had to be scheduled, economic policies framed and executed.

Some said that rather than making piecemeal amendments to the Constitution, a committee should be constituted to suggest comprehensive changes to be made to the Constitution once and for all. Citing a paper published by a senior researcher at the Indian Law Institute, H.N. Mukherjee said that words like 'sovereignty' and 'integrity' were vague and were susceptible to being misinterpreted by courts. H.V. Kamath cited the example of the Scottish Home Rule Party which was permitted to contest elections for seats in the House of Commons, and said that only speech which amounts to incitement ought to be outlawed.

Thus, if the government tells you that you can't hold a sign which says 'Please elect Mr. X', you could invoke your fundamental right to free speech and challenge the government's decision. However, if your private employer threatens to dismiss you from service if you hold up a sign which says so, you cannot invoke the fundamental right to free speech, because such rights are only available against the government and its instrumentalities.

As the 2019 elections were approaching, the Modi government felt the need to appear less pro-rich and more pro-poor again. But the union budget passed in February was somewhat a missed opportunity so far as the peasants were concerned. No loan waivers were announced in their favor, simply an enhanced interest subvention on loans and an annual income support of Rs 6,000 (80 USD)—6 percent of a small farmer’s yearly income—to all farmers’ households owning two hectares or fewer.131 In fact, the union budget was once again more geared to pleasing the middle class. The income tax exemption limit jumped from Rs 200,000 (2,667 USD) to 250,000 (3,333 USD), and the income tax rate up to Rs 5 lakh (6,667 USD) was reduced from 10 to 5 percent. The income tax on an income of Rs 10 lakh (13,333 USD) dropped from Rs 110,210 (1,470 USD) to Rs 75,000 (1,000 USD).132 The poor were doubly affected by the fiscal policy of the Modi government in 2014–2019: not only did the tax cuts in favor of the middle class, the abolition of the wealth tax, and, more importantly, the reduction of the corporate tax rates have to be offset by increased indirect taxes, but the stagnation of fiscal resources did not allow the government of India to spend more on public education and public health—all the more so as Narendra Modi wanted to reduce the fiscal deficit. First of all, tax collection diminished. The exchequer “lost” Rs 1.45 lakh crore (1.933 billion USD) in the reduction of the corporate tax, for instance. That was the main reason why gross direct tax collection dipped 4.92 percent133 in 2019–2020, a fiscal year during which gross tax collections were less than those in 2018–2019. Tax collections had never declined on a year-on-year basis since 1961–1962.134 Second, government expenditures diminished. The central government reduced its spending on education from 0.63 percent of GDP in 2013–2014 to 0.47 percent in 2017–2018. The trend was marginally better on the public health front, where the Center’s spending declined from 0.37 percent of GDP in 2013–2014 to 0.34 percent in 2015–2016, before rising again to reach 0.38 percent in 2016–2017.