….Of The People, By The People, For The People…

Let us have a Government which

·        has our welfare at heart,

·        has a proven formula for overall progress,

·        can elevate us to stand proud at the World Stage.

The soils of our Motherland need us. We need an excellent government to guide us, direct us and regulate us. Our inner voices are alerting us to unite and make a right choice in selecting a strong, insightful and experienced government. There obviously are many political parties who want to ‘grab’ the reins of running our Country. But only those who have proven record of governing, can effectively lead us a country and liberate us from the perils of sloppy governance, scams, corruption, slackness in enforcement of laws and order, etc. A highly renowned Hindi writer had once written:

“सरकार बन ने  और बनाने का अर्थ है काजलकी काली कोठडी का निर्माण और उसमें प्रवेश”

The theme of this sentence leads to the fact that there are certain “Do’s and Don’t’s” for every member of a governmentwhich must first be ‘self-imposed’ and then to put out a frame work of rules, regulations  in form of a manifesto, which should be systematically implemented as an integral part of governance.

As we all have witnessed with several governments, the manifesto of some parties had remained very short and vague, which can be described in a small phrase: “What Is In For Me?” 

Whereas, the manifesto of a party having a record of good, effective governance is:, “What Can we Do For our Country, our citizens?”

In good old days (ages ago) countries used to be strong, prospering and their people were happy, content, and were living in harmony with each other. Virtues like friendliness, feelings, compassion, harmony, empathy, sympathy used to reside in their hearts. Times kept on passing. Ages passed, years passed, Kings came and went. Democracies were born, challenged and survived. Dictators were born who ruined their countries, suppressed their people and there were some who even thought that their families and heirs were supposed to rule the country generations after generations. Many of such rulers were either dethroned, humiliated and/or killed. Such rulers who believed their dynasty, made in heaven was sent to the Earth only to rule, managed by hook or crook to keep the reins of the power in their hands. They even found supporters to back them up and to promote their agenda and wasted interests. They ruled, they ruined, they robbed, manipulated regulatory framework to extract whatever they could to build their own empire; they offered to keep people happy with big promises, complicated and scrutiny-less schemes, and lucrative verbal offers. They even managed to find loopholes in laws and regulations that can allow them to abscond after doing wrong and to escape from enforcing authorities. In many countries several schemes led to scams under which tax-payers’ money kept filling up wrong treasures in outer countries.

When Britishers ruled, snatched, ruined and ultimately were forced to leave, they had left behind, a slow-spreading poison of corruption which ruined people’s minds, habits and lifestyles. Like a cancer which quickly spreads through lymph nodes to other parts of the body, corruption became a widespread virus among people’s minds, homes and states of country. Virtues like honesty, ethics and transparency have become mere words printed in dictionaries. Values of life became mere excerpts from Gita, Bible, or any other scriptures, just to quote but not to follow.

The words above may sound like some excerpts from a politician’s speech before election. But stop. These are the words or rather an alarm buzzing for awakening, since, we will need to ‘select’ a Government who holds our interest.  There is so much to be learnt from the history of our own and other nations that have prospered and also those which have gone down.  We do learn from our own experiences and learn hard, but some lessons are too costly to learn from our mistakes. In such instances, wisdom dictates that we study the history of our own Country, our governments, our leaders, as well as political parties and policies and practice they used to be in power. In order to help us select a right party or right government, let us study how the governance was during the tenure of each government under each leader. Let us set common parameters like, health of economy, commodity prices, rate of inflation, unemployment, Consumer Price Index, Nation’s Infrastructure, Law and Order, peace and harmony among citizens of different faith, how many scams were committed, how many came to light, of all the scams committed, how much damage they caused to the Nation’s economy and public tax money, and so on. Let us also examine under which government where did we stand with respect to the other countries on the world stage and how much voice we had in international markets and trade. Having set these parameters let us then compare, the records of each government that came into power and parties which joined hands to form coalition to form government.

India, once upon a time in long past was considered a pioneer in knowledge, educations, discipline, and holding high spiritual values. People from different parts of World used to come to India to learn and  study Sanskrit Vedas and other Scriptures. There was so much wealth that the treasures of kings and kingdoms were in abundance. We blame moguls and other outside invaders who stole, robbed and snatched our treasures. But that was in pre-British era and in British era. But let us take a close look. After Britishers left and we gained freedom, the reins of our Country came to our own hands. We certainly have prospered since then. If we scrutinize the statistics, our resources certainly have increased. But then how come the poor continued to be poorer? How did the rich continued to be richer? Where did the gains and surplus which we used to see on papers, have been going? In the long gone years of history, outsiders who invaded us looted us, our treasures and valuables it is easy for us to blame them. But we have witnessed that in the past decades, people from or own Country, those who were in power whom we had trusted have looted and robbed us and our Country. If we check all the scams and make a total of all looted money we can feel our blood boiling, because all those monies were public money and were supposed to be used for the welfare of us – the citizens of our Country. These were the monies which could have been used towards expanding and strengthening the infrastructure of our states and entire Country. The problem is that we in our ignorance and lack of awareness select an arsonist as the Fire Chief and a thief as a Policeman. It is an irony of ‘Kaliyug’ that people and parties want to form and become government so they can form a systematic network to loot public money with as less obstructions and watchdogs as possible.  There are people are looking for easy money.

Seasons come and seasons go; Countries rise and they may fall; Leaders come and go; Governments may be formed, they govern, they rule for sometimes, they may get re-elected or changed. Amidst all these changes, what remain unchanged are we - the people who keep holding our stake, our family, our responsibilities, and striving to keep the promises that we have made to our future generations. Amidst everything changing around us it is we who have to struggle to keep standing firmly to the ground. It is we who have to make decisions about selecting a solid, non-failing, full proof system that can work for our wellbeing, our progress, our peace, prosperity and inner happiness. We struggle hard to make two ends meet; we work hard to build our future and the future of our children. So, let us make this promise to ourselves not to get blindfolded and misguided by anyone or any party or any government who may make false claims and hollow promises that they are the right people for us. It may be that they are the right people for us, but how to assume that they really are who they say, they are? This can only be ascertained from their past records.

Straightforward and honest people do not like to tell lies or make false promises. But in these days, how to believe that they really are who they claim to be? Well, it may not be that difficult, because there is a system. People, parties or leaders who may have served for a short period of time may not get a chance to prove their performance because certain policies and system which they might have put in place may take some specific time to become effective and successful. Every organization, every corporation and every government take time to formulate one’s own set of rules, policies and performance criteria. There are milestones and deadlines which allow us to evaluate their performance how well they performed or where they failed.

This evaluation of good performance or successful governance depend upon the measures they took, policies and rules that they put in place to achieve the goals and fulfil fundamental agenda which they promised to implement before coming to Power. So, now on, or whenever the time comes for us to select a new party or a new government or to decide whether to vote for the current ruling party or current government, or to change, let us scrutinize the records of their ACTUAL performance; let us go over the measures they took and policies, rules, schemes they introduced which might have benefited us, elevated us – the  common people, which might have helped to boost the economy, which might have brought the law and order situation to a safer state, which might have put our Nation at a high pedestal – high enough in the world where other countries might feel inclined to look up to us for advice and guidance. We need to be led by a party or a government which has new paradigms for achieving success, prosperity and overall peace in the Universe. We need to select the party or government who has established proven records in building up higher infrastructure, who holds the vision and intuition for farsighted feasible and achievable success. We need to be governed by a party or a government who believes in “Entire World is Our Family” and who has the knack of establishing friendly ties with other Nations of the World.

So, friends, let us join hands, let us tune in our minds and establish a link by which we can formulate a system enlisting questions, criteria and parameters to help us decide selecting a right leader who can work intuitively, with faith, inner zeal, confidence, inner srength and work for higher goals for wider spectrum of mankind.

·        Producing before the public proven records of accomplishments and achievements towards the welfare, quality of life of common people, providing amenities and building up infrastructure and what level of economic growth was achieved during the tenure of their regime.

·        What were the factors, mistakes, wrong decisions, failure of schemes, policies, scams which ate away hard-earned tax money of common people of our Country and from government’s revenues? How long were they in power?

·        How much did their party invest in infrastructure of the Country and what are the projects they built and maintained?

·        What were the reasons that led the other countries to look down upon us with prejudice and neglect?  What did their party or government do to change this hateful image?

·        What solid scheme, agenda, proven experience does their party have to take our country up from where we are now in 2018? Do they put the interest of the Country, her people before their own interest? Do they have the discipline, one voice, one leader whom every individual of the party will respect and follow?

·        What are their policies which they think can enhance the economic growth, law and order situation, communal harmony, safety and security of citizens and above all, the strength of our Country as a whole?

These are only preliminary questions, which can be further elaborated, added to or modified. The main intent of such a system is not to put down any person, party or government but to intuitively look deep into our hearts, to seek from the people or parties as to who is the right choice to lead our Country towards a higher height.

So, friends, Let us help ourselves to select the right people, right party and the right leader.  The largest Democracy of the World must have divine blessings to progress and prosper. When the Universe feels a need to establish a country as a true leader with the insight of becoming a World-Power, there must be a leader who can guide us with intuition, wide knowledge, proven experience and who might have been blessed one – like Moses had lead the Exodus through the Red Sea.

May God bless us all, May He bless our inner Self, May He bless our Country,

May He enlighten all parties, all individuals to seek what is right and follow what is righteous.

ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः            Om, May All become Happy,
सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः                  May All be Free from Illness
सर्वे भद्राणि पश्यन्तु              May All See what is Auspicious,
मा कश्चिद्दुःखभाग्भवेत् ।                May no one Suffer.
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥   Om Peace, Peace, Peace.

In Divine, we rest.