Introduction
Quite often we’ve heard ourselves cursing the Government, the democracy, and more so cursing the people at the helm of affairs. When was the last time you heard this comment from a colleague at work or a friend on” Mr. A is caught up at the wrong place. He is so not fit for this job”. But then we come back to the premise here, who in the first place elected Mr. A to be in charge of the post he currently holds. Directly or indirectly it comes down to us the common mass. We are responsible for the person running the office there, and handling the affairs. It’s a fair argument here to say that I didn’t vote for Mr. A to be in charge of Portfolio X. I voted for a candidate in my ward, who belongs to Party Y. Y party got the majority and they allotted the portfolio X to A. Not my fault. Agreed. So it would be reasonable to say that the Party Y in its own wisdom and experience, of the different roles required to play in handling the different portfolios, looked among the candidature pool available and decided that X goes to A. The real question hence is, how credible is this Party Y’s wisdom and experience, and hence the leadership.
In this regard, I have an idea which I’d like to propose in this article. Before I arrive on the topic, let me delve a little bit into our history. Let’s analyze the Indian Political scenario at the time of Independence. It was the days of Gandhi and Nehru. People looked up to them. Why? Single word answer. Credibility. They had proved their mettle on the grounds. They had answered the country’s calling and got independence for us. They were accepted as Leaders by the whole country. It was pretty much assumed that the people who led the effort for the country’s freedom, would definitely take up the responsibility of keeping it intact and running the country’s economy, effectively, at the same time. For the 3 decades post independence, we grew at 3.5%. Still wondering where we missed the bus? This is not the place to be discussing India’s growth story, but just to put a simple point – The skills of leadership are different when it comes to running the country’s economy. As much as it is about abilities of a person, it is also about the best person doing the job.
The Idea
Let me come to the topic of this article here. Consider a top business house in India, say Reliance Industries. Mukesh Ambani is the man now. How many of us doubt his abilities. Agreed that he inherited a big deal from his father, but he has taken it to all new heights on his own accord. And there are many more such stories which we can talk about. Why are these companies successful? It’s the people in these companies doing their jobs. A lot depends on the policies and work environment, but we’ll take that up in a little while. What I want to come here is, Democracy should also be by Merit. Why should a party get to decide who runs the affairs of the country. And who certifies the merit of the individual put in charge? Let’s pause and see how we can change this scenario.
A Bottom-Up Approach
The idea in a nutshell is to assign people to their jobs by means of merit. People who want to “Enter into Politics” should show merit in some field in which they want to pursue politics. The point is to start working at the grassroots level and then go upwards. Essentially, a bottom-up approach. To facilitate this, we would need to build institutions which would ‘train’ the interested candidates to work at the ground level. I’ll get to the concept of Institutions in a short while now. The candidates who pass out of these Institutes will be provided an opportunity to work in their trained area in their Area of Candidature. Depending upon the performance of this candidate in his work-area, they’d become eligible for their next assignment, a promotion if you will. The candidate is responsible to transition his responsibilities to an adequately meritorious person before moving to the higher role.
The Institutions
Today, we have different levels of Operations of the Government such as Municipal Corporation, Municipality, Gram Panchayats and so on. We build institutions at as low a level of granularity as feasible. Lets say a few villages would be catered to by an institute. This institute would need to be funded well. It will take up few candidates, give them some basic level training on communication and such soft skills. This would be about 15-20% of the training work. The rest is all about Ground Work. They would be then made to work on the different issues that the villages are currently facing. In view of the existing constraints – social, economic, technological, environmental, legal etc, the participants have to solve these issues. These can be any issue such as getting a road developed where there is none currently, or improving the state of an existing kachha road. It might be electrification, irrigation, water facilities, new initiatives, etc. The candidates are also encouraged to come up with suggestions of their own if they feel something can be done outside the box.
The institute funds the development activities of the candidates. The candidates are responsible to the institutes, which in turn are accountable for their candidates to the Government. The candidates will be scored based on their performance across multiple projects over a span of 2-3 years, which can be the period of the “course”. I am keeping the course period as 2-3 years as it is not really feasible to finish multiple projects in 6 months to 1 year on a quality basis. And it would be unfair to judge somebody’s performance on just one assignment.
Functions of a Democracy
Once more, let’s take a step back and try and understand the basic Functions of Democracy. What are the constituents of a democracy? What is the role of the public? What are the general expectations of the common public from a democracy?
To begin with, Democracy is a system of Government where the people get a say in who will govern the country. As is more commonly known, Government – Of the people, for the people and by the people. In my proposed system, Government is formed (at least a part of it – the candidates passing out from the institutes) by selecting the students from the Institutes in a manner similar to placements in colleges. My intent is to keep the process as simple and transparent as possible. Definitely, the second objective “for the people” holds true since the Projects would be undertaken for the benefit of the society. Similarly, since people from the common society would form the government, the third objective is also kind of fulfilled. I aim to do away with the system of “voting” people into the government. I believe that we the common people are not in-touch with the skillset required of a person to handle the responsibilities. Rather, we the common people are more in touch with “What needs attention and what needs to be resolved”. Therefore, I propose that people should “Vote” the issues for which they seek quick resolution / redressal.
In general in a democracy, we would see that there are political parties, few are holding power and few others are in the opposition. These are, in today’s democracy, essential parts of the democracy. In the proposed system however, if everything has to go according to Merit, there won’t be an “Opposition” party required. I do maintain though that there should be a regulatory body overseeing the activities of the Government. Who would be the regulatory body members. These can be a panel of experts from the current set of credible people. There should be people from different fields viz., an economist, a legal advisor, home affairs, infrastructure (power, transport, etc) and so on. Again not necessary that these should come from today’s political scenario. These can be from any industry. A Domain expert should do well to be in this panel of experts.
Now to come to the general expectations of the public from a democracy. First and foremost, people expect to be heard. Since I vote for a person (or party), I expect that when the person (party) comes to power, I ‘ll get heard and my problems would hopefully get addressed. To note here that the final sense of achievement lies in the fact that “My problems would hopefully get addressed”. This is what I propose in my system of Governance, wherein people get to raise their Concerns / Issues. The government (the selected candidates – as opposed to the elected candidates currently) would see if there are any trends in the Issues seeking redressal. These would be taken up on priority. Since there would be many issues, all of which might not be within the feasible scope of the Government, a good chunk of these Issues would get passed over to the Institutes. The institutes would then draft these as Working Projects for their participants. Thus, the participants get to work on Live Projects, at the grass-roots levels, in touch with the expectations of the people. It is an indirect benefit that with all these projects, the villages should see sustained development.
Recap
So, whats the summary of the entire article.
- Democracy should prevail, but instead of voting for people, it should be voting for Issues.
- People should be Selected rather than Elected. This selection should be on the basis of merit. Merit would be proven by the participants in the results of the projects that they undertake as a part of the training in the Institutions
- Selection to be done in a transparent manner similar to Job Recruitment in Corporate companies. To go a step further, placement should be encouraged in the Institutes.
- Institutions will take up the Issues out of scope of the government and draft them as Projects for the participants of the course. To begin with, the institutions to be led by accepted leaders who have brought about significant change in the society. Later on, the participants / candidates can come back to teach. Alternatively, 2 year stint could be made mandatory as part of assignment. Although making things mandatory would probably kill the purpose of keeping people motivated about the work.
- Participants would train in the institutes for 2-3 years working on multiple assignments over the period of the course. Thereafter, depending on their performance (as graded by the trainers in the institutes, and the public satisfaction – a CSat survey if you please), they can avail of placements as and when they happen.
- After successful performance at the base level, a candidate gets promoted to a higher level. So, maybe from a Gram Panchayat level to a district level, then to a multi-district or State level. Promotions are important part of the job otherwise the candidate could tend to feel stagnated. Also with promotions, added responsibilities could be thought too, thus increasing not only width of scope but also depth of scope.
- Bad performance should be penalized to maintain the discipline in work.
- At the head of the system would be the President, who would be like the CEO of the Corporate Companies overseeing the Company and taking strategic calls. Big Business Houses like Tatas can take up this role initially, and later on by meritorious candidates efficient at all levels.
Barriers to successful Functioning
On paper while this might seem to be a successful scheme, some of the existing issues might come back to plague this system of democracy also.
- The integrity of people is difficult to grade. We cannot give for people’s behavior as money and power come together
- Money is not the sole motivator, but it definitely is one of the biggest motivators, well at least to a certain level. If the funding for the projects at the institution level is not managed well, it might lead to loss of interest amongst candidates.
- Difficult to rule out corruption – pretty much related to point 1.
All in all, a very high level proposal. Need opinions and thoughts from people to understand the quirks in the system, to see whether those can be fixed and to know whether we have a system to provide us a better democracy
