Finally Anna and his team won! At least Anna's supporters think so.
If we carefully look at Anna's agitation and campaign against corruption, it would be extremely clear - actually it was against inefficient system of parliamentary democracy. It was about limitation of representative democracy. You can not win an MP position without spending a lot of cash and therefore, politics is a business now. Else how could one manage 10 /30 Crore needed to win an election? And since in India, legislative members can manupulate judiciary ( 2G case is an exception), corruption in public position turns out to be the most lucrative business. In Delhi, I have seen agents of the foreign banks freely moving around in all the high class parties seeking and convincing the prospective clients on how to keep their "black" earning safe in other countries! There is no stigma attached for being corrupt in public position as it has become norm and only way to catch up with the "others" ! Over the time, I have met a lot of Indian students in USA who have joined US Universities funded by their parent who are mostly public servant and they too perhaps do not consider their parent's illegal earning as crime as they think their parent's high income in public position is perfectly fine and in norm! Most of them are so rich, their parent who perhaps earn 30,000/ per month in public job , can afford to buy them an apartment close to the US University which would cost around a crore in Indian rupees. Maladies run that deeper !
Limitation of representative democracy is well known and well debated topic in all the democratic countries in the world. USA is also suffering from same issue of money driven democracy as it is leading to corruption in many places although due to tough law enforcement, USA is lot more clean in terms of corruption in public position. Tough law enforcement is the key but not the final solution. Political corruption in USA is also rampant. Basically same election funding evil runs deeper in US as well.
A few notable anarcho-leftists like Arundhuti Roy thinks, real demon behind the corrupt India is free market and economic liberalism. That is probably the most stupid thing I ever heard because all the top clean countries ( as rated by Transparency international) are Scandinavian and they too practice free market and capitalism! They are free from corruption because of two reasons-limited form of direct democracy exists in those countries ( like direct voting for new law is mandatory in many of these small countries) and judiciary is independent of parliament. Therefore, India needs political reform to enforce more direct form of democracy and we need to make sure no elected representative can exert any influence on judicial system or police system like we experience in advanced countries.
Next question will be -how could we evolve to direct form democracy? Is it possible?
Answer is absolutely yes. 80% of India's population have access to cell phone now and that device integrated with UID project is enough to enact a direct voting system which can be practiced in a few cases like passing proposition ( small laws) which we see in California and many other US states. Social media, specially mobile social media in India can take a decisive role in the formation of new parties, may be a virtual one which can drive this kind of propositions into law. Last year, I was helping a group in Calfornia who were driving prop15 -a law to limit corporate fund into politics:
http://californiachoices.org/ballot-measures/proposition-15
Although they were defeated by a slim margin, it raised hope for the common people that election reform is possible by means of direct democracy. Supporters of Prop-15 were scattered around whole California- a state slightly smaller than India! They were all organizing themselves through Facebook/ Twitter and group mailing. There was no party behind them-common people came forward for a cause to defeat vested interest in politics.
Democracy is no absolute system of politics. Greatest essence of a democracy is its ability for auto-correction to give birth to a better form of democracy. Critics and office bearers of democracy have one thing in common-for them democracy is a stationary form of political system. But in reality, a successful democracy should be an evolving one which pays attention to its system error and constantly seeks for solution adopted through democratic means.
