Hello Good people, here we are presenting you some of the views of Mr.Balaji Vishwanathan, a political observer, read on, Cheers!
Q: Why don't we have debates between leaders of top political parties face to face in India like in Presidential elections of USA?
A: In the US, two people fight it out to be the leader. It is a fight of personalities. In India, we don’t choose the leader but the party to lead in the Parliament. It is a multidimensional clash. Often times, we won’t even know who is in the fray for the Prime Ministral post.
But, there is a deeper issue.
US political system is somewhat elitist at the top. Top candidates usually are from Harvard/Yale/Princeton, where they honed their communication skills and are in the process of quickly rising up their careers. The politicians are young, attractive, suave [this election is an exception and you can notice that in the debate quality].
US system has its advantages - of selecting the most presentable leaders, but also has the disadvantage of filtering out all but the perfect communicators. Media and people there lampoon candidates for even minor mistakes. Once they heavily critiqued a candidate for not knowing the capital of a nation. This is super silly. Why should a candidate know the capital of all the nations? His aides can Google that in 2 seconds. By filtering out promising candidates for silly reasons what the Americans end up are substandard executors at the top.
For instance, President Obama is a brilliant speaker and writer, but even with such a brilliant refined person ruling two full terms you would be hard pressed to find any real change made to the US. The country was as mired in Middle east as 8 years ago, still in Iraq & Afghanistan, still has Guantanamo, still has a broken healthcare & education, still shoots a lot of blacks, still have not completely out of Great Recession that his predecessor brought. But, in their polity they favor presentation over substance.
India is at the other end of the spectrum. Our bar to enter the Parliament is super low. If you can sign your name, you are probably good enough to become a politician. Most top politicians are less educated and none of them are from the elite institutions where top students go to. These politicians are also quite old and got there not necessarily for their oratory skills. Watching them debate would be like watching Muttiah Muralidharan batting with Ishant Sharma. It would be fun for sure, but they would not be playing the thing they are strong at. And it would be hard to judge them as a cricketer based on that.
Finally, an average Indian voter is too ignorant about the manifestos and too lazy to follow political issues well. We simply don’t care about the plans and the key issues the parties are fighting for. Even if the candidates were smart and debated well, we would not grasp their points well. Only when the voters educate themselves and study the issues being fought, would the politicians even care to debate that.
Q: What is the goal of Naxalites. If they are working for betterment of the country, why cant they use peaceful means. What have they achieved till now?
A: Naxalbari uprising was originally a China-backed one in the post Indo-China war period. Immediately after the Indo-China war in 1962, China supported a number of communist groups in India and within 5 years of war brought about the Naxalbari uprising near the border.
The leaders of the uprising such as Kanu Sanyal and Charu Majumdar actively and openly solicited China’s support. They raised slogans such as “China’s Chairman Mao is our Chairman” and the group continues to call themselves Maoists - named after a person who fought a war against India. Red corridor
They even smuggled documents to China and got it approved from Mao himself. Once the uprising happened, the China’s government dailies announced it as a “spring thunder” happening to overthrow Indian government. Road to Naxalbari
In that sense there is some similarity to the Jaish and Lashkar terror organizations sponsored by Pakistan. But, far more potent. The Maoists kill far more people [Fatalities in Left-wing Extremism : 2005-2016] than the Pak-sponsored terrorists in J&K - [Annual Fatalities in violence by terrorist].
While the organization’s violence and motives are to be attacked, we cannot ignore the fuel that fires that. A lot of the naxal infested regions are poorly governed and with high crime levels. The governments in those regions did a poor job with land distribution post independence and let the landlords continue their feudalism. Poverty is rampant and facilities non-existent. In parallel to using our police forces, we must reform and modernize those regions.
This is what Indira failed to do after crushing the Maoists in 1971. Had she built economic growth, Maoists would not have come back with that potence. We have to secure the people’s rights, increase jobs, give access to basic amenities and improve law & order if need to succeed in this war over the long term.
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