Given the seeming chaos and anarchy that have encompassed life in India, certain institutional correctives need to be brought into play immediately. To begin with, no member of the Rajya Sabha should get more than two terms, thereby making way for fresh blood and ideas. At least ninety per cent of the members of the cabinet should be elected to the Lok Sabha. If a few need to be brought in because of their special expertise, they must fight an election after the stipulated six-month period.

This single act will make those who govern us personally accountable to the citizenry, and not merely to their parties. Just count the number of Rajya Sabha members who have lost their elections to the Lok Sabha but have found their way into the cabinet with prime portfolios. There are too many of them, most of them much too old, incapable of shedding the irrelevant baggage they carry. Experience of another age and time incapacitates them when they have to deal with problems of another time and for another generation.

Surely, we cannot afford to mock our democratic processes so blatantly if we are to grow as a healthy democratic polity. These leaders are setting India back with their lack of passion to promote a new and dynamic, intellectually-energetic and physically able nation state. In this 60th year of independence, these men and women should pledge to step down voluntarily with dignity. Hanging on to a seat of power is, by no stretch of the imagination, the definition of statesmanship.

Desperados

Our prime minister and ministers for home, defence, finance, external affairs, education and commerce must be elected to the lower house of parliament. The Central cabinet cannot look like the House of Lords, white wigs and all! If old men need to be rewarded for their experience and loyalty, they should be sent to Raj Bhavans or given homes and perquisites, a free and comfortable life at the cost of the taxpaying public. That expense would keep them away from running the government in an archaic fashion with a weak and infirm hand.

Desperate to hang on to their chairs, bungalows, red-light cars, security personnel and other endless perks, much of the leadership in India remains silent when terrible events confront our democracy. They are scared to invoke the constitutional provisions, laws and acts that were framed to protect our freedoms, lest one faction or the other gets upset and angered. They run scared. They do not have a dialogue or debate or stand on the basis of their beliefs. They do not fight for rights and, instead, compromise their positions. These men and women have allowed the values and ethics, framed in our Constitution and other books of law, to corrode and rot. They are responsible for this unacceptable state of affairs.

Writing on the wall

The security cordon, flung around those who rule us, makes them blind to what is happening around them. There are several definitions of ‘blind’ and the most appropriate in this context is ‘lacking perception, awareness or judgment, not controlled by reason, not governed by purpose, moving purposelessly in a world of blind chance’.

Weak leadership shows up when it begins to emphatically dismiss criticism, which it regards as unworthy of consideration. When that happens, the public which sees and experiences the failures and weaknesses, the insular and isolated responses and retaliations, realizes very quickly that the powers that be are now defensive and ineffective, and that the people must consider bringing a fresh political dispensation to power next time round. The graffiti on the wall may soon come true.