Dear All, The next greatest thing that can happen to India is the electoral reforms. Democracy is rule of majority and just see number of votes got by our ruling govt , then how is it Demcracy?.. people who did not vote their votes by default assumed that they support hte elected govrnement which is obviously not true. and more the politcal parties will do whatever is necessary to secure their minority votes.. 'votebank politics' how can we expect the large to be benefitted by the govt.
In my opinion 1. We should allow any party to rule only if they get more than40% vote other wise cre taker giovt. or presidential rule. 2. voting option _ one the candidates/parties must be introduced in voting achines. 3. people who do not vote must be penalised by doubling income tax... community service, since we are unable to create any awarnss amongst the people abouthte importance of their vote there is no other option. Harsha H.C. (B.E. telecom , PESIT,Bangalore) --- On Sun, 4/11/10, heera lal <[email protected]> wrote: From: heera lal <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [bm] Electoral reforms To: [email protected] Date: Sunday, April 11, 2010, 2:46 AM 1. Long term reform: It is evident that India neither has any direct constitutional provision regulating the functioning of political parties, nor any legal sanction establishing political parties as a necessary governmental regulation for the political parties. Moreover no specific laws are enacted to control and regulate the parties in India . In view of the international practice some countries are having specific laws while others are not having like India . The Federal Government of Germany has thoroughly institutionalized the structure of political parties, by introducing the 5% clause, which makes it extremely difficult for minority or splinter parties to form and flourish. The Canadian practice of Registration of Party or Party foundation is very comprehensive. Parties are registered on certain conditions and party leaders are selected through a national leadership convention composed of provincial party delegates voting as individuals rather than as a bloc. Like Germany and Canada , India needs a detail specific law. It will discipline the parties and they will get directions for different activities from such available legal frame. In the absence of any such law they are managing according to their short term gains and keeping political ethics and values aside. Above all they are not taking into account the public interest utmost. This is the reason criminals and illegal money is dominating the Indian politics in disguise. If law will mandate that only clean person without criminal records can be candidate in the elections then criminals will not be fielded as candidates by the parties. In non existence of any such law it is very difficult even for the parties to avoid fielding such persons having criminal background under different types of pressures, situations and circumstances. The other most glaring evil with which Indian political system is highly infected is misuse of illegal money- particularly in elections and in forming the government in case of lack of required majority. Its role is like black money of the Indian economy. In case of clauses in proposed specific laws on all such issues things will be better than now on different fronts related to Indian politics. Indian political parties are the holy mother of political leaders and actors and political system. Unfortunately, India doesn’t have any specific and comprehensive law to regulate and discipline the holy mother. Short term reforms: Indian politics is open to any one with a very minor restriction of age and sound mind. No screening test is taken before entry and no systematic capacity development practice is in place after joining it. Under these circumstances, our politicians are lacking required knowledge and skills. This in tern is affecting the good governance. Irony is that all departments, sectors and fields are having such program in place except political field. Why it is so. It is very difficult to find its reasoning. UNDP, USAID and other international donors and institutions are active in this area. UNDP initiated the Asia Young Leaders in Governance (AYLG) initiative addresses the need to build a critical mass of young leaders in the Asia region, who will be trained as leaders in democratic governance processes. It recognizes that young leaders are an important constituency that requires further attention and investments to enable them to serve as more effective leaders for the future, but it is not exclusively for the political leaders. It is a mix of different groups. To develop political leaders, managers and actors for the first time a private institute MIT School of Government Pune (Maharastra) has created a platform for such young men and women to assimilate and adopt the intricacies of government functioning. Yet, no public institute is started and no public intervention. Fortunately, at least some private initiative has been started to train young leader before they enter into the politics. There is no exclusive program for the capacity development for political actors who are in this field. All initiatives are, in places, are adhoc arrangements. International organizations are also not having any exclusive program for the young leaders. Therefore, under this situation, India needs to have an exclusive training program for the young leaders. It is a basically capacity development approach as a new field in a systematic way. Program: Preparing young and future Indian leaders for the 21st century’s challenges through building their capacity by providing them opportunity to learn the best national and international practices about party, economic and public management. UNDP, Government of India (GoI), Election Commission of India (ECI), Institutions active in this filed, NGO -National Election Watch (NEW) and the Association for Democratic Reforms) for good governance, all national and regional parties registered with ECI and national and international donor agencies will be involved. The proposed duration of training will be for two months, one month in India and one month outside the country. The program of training will be designed with keeping the following in focus: Making ready for the role of Government actors (For MP, MLA, Minister, Mayer, to village head man) 1. The main focus in the role is how to make a balance among government, public, bureaucracy, party etc. It is a multidimensional task and really challenging. 2. Policy formulation, reform and its efficient and successful implementation. How to make and implement pubic policy (demand driven policy and supply driven policy): theory and practices with case studies. 3. Which are the 20 best economically performing countries in the world. Why they are performing well? What are main factors and reasons of their performance? Which leader did what, how and why and when (time of policy implementation and reform plays a major role)? It will be better if leaders’ interactive sessions are organized to make the program more effective useful and fruitful. 4. Who are and were 20 best leaders in the world who perform superb at each level of government in government official capacity. Their study will sharpen the acumen and the best practice of one will be the rule for others without experimentation. Participants: To begin with, young leaders up to the age of 45 years should be getting the chance to learn. It can be later extended to include older leaders. Every national and regional party has youth wings. In each training batch parties will nominate their young leaders up to the age of 45 years. The number will be fixed according to resources and strength of the batch with national party’s nomination more than regional one in each batch. Funding: Whole expense on each participant can be shared: contribution by the parties (5% - token amount to make them serious towards the program and awareness generation), contribution of central government (30%) and state governments (15%) and 50% donations from donors and NGOs in the leadership of UNDP. Key actor, Co coordinator, owner of the program: The election commission of India as all registered political parties is its clients. Additional benefits: 1) It is a form of the one best effective political reform. 2) If such systemization is practiced in politics in a professional manner it will attract the educated youth to join politics which is not a trend now and it may change the trend in reverse direction. Then choosing politics would be by design and not by default. As a result the problem of criminalization of politics will be addressed to some extent. 3) It may prove a boon to Indian politics as it aims at professionalizing the political management. It will reduce the economic wastes of money during the elections and in other political activities. 4) It will bring good competitions among the politicians which may lead to over all enhancement of efficiency. 5) It will reduce the usual frictions and conflicts which develop between political actors and bureaucracy. 6) It will be a model and can be implemented in other countries with similar situations. Reference: http://www.un. org/democracyfun d/XAboutUNDEF. htm http://mitsog. com/ www.usaid.gov/ our_work/ democracy_ and_governance/ UNDP – Democratic Governance Group - Oslo Governance Centre, July 2005 http://aptel. gov.in/pdf/ constitutionof% 20india%20acts. pdf http://www.adrindia .org/ Thanks and Regards, Heera Lal EMPA -10, Maxwell School ofCitizenship and Public affairs Of Syracuse University , Syracuse . Apts-220, Building No. 2 121 Lafayette Road, Syracuse,NY, USA-13205 315-214-5558( landline); 315-395-0291( Mobile ) heeralalpcs@ yahoo.co. in ; heeralalpcs@ gmail.com http://heeralalpcs. blogspot. com/ From: Amitabh Thakur <amitab...@yahoo. com> To: bharatudaymission@ yahoogroups. com Sent: Sat, 3 April, 2010 11:56:13 AM Subject: [bm] Electoral reforms Friends, The 5th National Conference on Electoral and Political Reforms is being organized by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch (NEW) on April 10 and Apr 11, 2010 at Bhopal. The Chief Guest of the Conference shall be Shri Navin Chawla, Chief Election Commissioner of India along with Dr. Quraishi, Election Commissioner. I shall also be participating as one of the panel speaker in one of the sessions on 11/04/2010. The topic of our discussion is "Important issues in Electoral Reforms and achieving them along with many other". It would be great if I could be provided some important issues/input by this august group as regards the important issues in electoral reforms that you feel are highly pertinent today. This will help me bring these issues for discussion at this Forum initiated by the much-celebrated Sri Trilochan Sastry of ADR, whose seminal efforts in this field have gained huge attention and have paved way for some of the great electoral reforms we have seen in the recent times. Something important might germinate out of this. Waiting for ur kind response. Amitabh Thakur IPS, Currently at IIM Lucknow # 94155-34526 Send free SMS to your Friends on Mobile from your Yahoo! Messenger. Download Now! http://messenger. yahoo.com/ download. php
